Embracing HR Practices to Support the Agility

David Dame, enterprise agility change agent and organizational coach, describes scaling engagement agility in the context of HR practices.

Agility is no longer just an IT or engineering movement, it is something that the entire organization needs to embrace. For this to be effective and long lived it needs the full involvement of human resources, organizational leaders, and change agents. Human resource practices need to adapt to this new fast-paced environment. They need to become ‘lean’, they need to become ‘flexible’, they need to become ‘agile’.

James Cleaver, Senior Manager, Global Talent Acquisition at OpenText said:

HR traditionally believed its function is to put order and structure to the organization, yet Agile believes in rapid change by breaking down structure and order.

As per the research report published on CIPD, the experts identified two specific areas where HR can make a difference to supporting agility:

1. Leading the strategic agility agenda – foreseeing and addressing emerging business needs.

2. Using and championing agile methodology – utilising experimentation and incremental change to adapt and build people management solutions geared to support current and future business needs.

Dave says that here is no longer a guaranteed long relationship between employee and employer. In today’s world, organizations need a balance between employer and employees. He explains following things to look at to connect with employees quicker and continually:

1. Job models: Instead of projecting employees career for the next 5 to 10 years HR should shorten the horizon to 2 to 3 years. HR should keep these as lean and flexible as possible. Keeping open and flexible models allows employees to see themselves in a continually changing organization.

2. Training: Dave suggests encouraging employees to take the trainings that might help the organization pivot to new opportunities.

Read the complete article here: http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/05/human-resources-agility