Working in HR has always demanded adept multitasking, but the disruptions of the pandemic and the numerous changes to our work dynamics have necessitated expanding HR skill sets even further.

“During COVID, HR got called into really high-level, strategic conversations that they didn’t always get brought into previously,” says Tani Jacobi, HR Standards & Capability Development Manager at AHRI.

“No one else had the skills; no one else had the reach and the capability to be able to navigate these situations because it was so heavily focused on the impact on people. It accelerated the path that HR was already on – that we’re not just focused on policy and compliance, or the ‘fluffy’ stuff. We are business contributors and leaders that enable business performance and growth.”

Since then, HR has become increasingly integral to decision-making conversations, which Jacobi asserts is “exactly what businesses need”. However, this shift has revealed that some HR practitioners were not fully prepared to assume these new responsibilities.

A byproduct of the rapid business changes from the past five years is that the HR practice has changed, says Beth Hall CPHR, General Manager of HR, Standards and Capability at AHRI.

“To stay commercially viable and support business growth goals, there is an increased expectation for sophistication in HR capabilities.” – Beth Hall CPHR,  General Manager of HR, Standards and Capability, AHRI

“HR has had to think differently about how to attract, engage and retain people, and how to navigate employee relations in a landscape that’s become even more complex. 

“When you think about the increase in criminalisation and individual decision-makers being held personally liable for some of the decisions they’re making at work, that’s a lot for HR to manage.”

As the professional body for HR in Australia, AHRI was determined to support its members and the broader HR profession to manage these challenges head-on and to grow their capability and influence.

“To stay commercially viable and support business growth goals, there is an increased expectation for sophistication in HR capabilities,” says Hall. 

The Australian HR Capability Framework

AHRI’s refreshed Australian HR Capability Framework (AHRCF) has been created with this increased sophistication in mind.

Designed to promote universal standards of HR best practice, the AHRCF defines the essential capabilities, skills, knowledge and behaviours required of HR practitioners, enabling career progression and empowering organisations to achieve their goals by nurturing the capabilities of their HR teams. 

It also acts as a clear roadmap for becoming a well-rounded HR practitioner, which requires a big-picture mindset, says Hall.

“For example, if you’re an IR/ER specialist, you can’t think about the legislation criminalising underpayments or the right to disconnect without considering your wellbeing skills, payroll, or your HR generalist skills. Nothing should happen in isolation.”

The new design of the AHRCF (see below) purposefully focuses on capabilities rather than specific roles, says Jacobi.

“We’ve been clear in saying, ‘This isn’t a job description.’ It’s about encompassing the broad practice of HR. 

“We’ve also quite deliberately designed the capabilities to flow from the big-picture, strategic level, then work around in a logical sequence of capabilities,” says Jacobi.

The framework begins at business strategy, says Hall.

“That’s about considering, ‘What’s happening from a business perspective, and what impact does it have on the HR strategy?’ 

“Then you go on to organisational enablement. Consider: how am I enabling the organisation to look after themselves and not be constantly relying on HR – because we’re a cost centre; we don’t generate income. We enable the organisation through data, insights and technology.”

Next, you layer in the foundational elements, such as the wellbeing perspective, to make sure you’re looking after the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of your people.

“Then it’s about getting us to a culture that we can be proud of. We can look at ethical practices and DEI to make sure it’s aligned with the business strategy,” says Hall.

Workforce effectiveness speaks to the critical industrial relations skills required of the modern HR practitioner, as well as ensuring that you’re “being strategic in the chess moves of your people, structures and your succession planning to enable a future effective workforce”.

Talent management and trusted partnership runs across all elements of the framework.

“Your talent management and trusted partnership is keeping the lights on,” says Hall. “But if you don’t couple them with organisational enablement and workforce effectiveness, you’re going to come unstuck.

“If you think about old HR versus new HR, old HR was all about trusted partnership and talent management – we found people, we hired them, we gave them the skills and knowledge they needed, we managed their performance and then we moved them into their new role. We did that through employee relations, influence and impact.”

That work is still incredibly important, of course, but there is now so much more nuance and complexity to add on top of this foundational HR work.

“The employee experience is now uber-personalised. It’s not one-size-fits-all; sheep-dipping won’t work. Therefore, how do you use your organisational enablement and workforce effectiveness to start building the personalised, curated employee experience of the future?”

Using the AHRCF and Capability Analysis tool

AHRI’s HR Capability Framework is designed to uplift both individual capabilities and that of your entire HR team.

“We are, by nature, a giving group of practitioners, but we sometimes do that at the expense of ourselves,” says Jacobi. “Our performance as HR practitioners is measured on how we can impact business outcomes, not by our own growth. So we tend to neglect investing in our own capability because we’re so busy doing it for everyone else.”

The intent of the AHRCF and the capability assessment tool (exclusive to AHRI members), is that you can build it into your already established talent management cycles (see below).

“We’re also giving you access to development opportunities so you don’t have to go and create your own HR Bootcamp for your HR team. We have a range of options available that are specifically linked back to this framework,” says Jacobi.

The AHRCF is freely available for any HR practitioner to view. However, AHRI members can also access a career-stage breakdown of each capability, as well as the accompanying Capability Analysis Tool, which helps map and benchmark their skills over time.

Here’s how it works:

1. Assess your skills: AHRI members can log in to their membership dashboard and click on ‘Australian HR Capability Framework self-assessment tool’. Next, answer a few short questions to help AHRI benchmark your skills against the AHRCF. This should only take up to 30 minutes to complete.

2. Design your learning journey: You will receive a personalised PDF report of your results in your inbox. This will include specific recommendations for your learning and development from AHRI’s range of capability development programs.

3. Track your progress over time: Your personalised report will include a set of graphics to help you benchmark your results over time, should you choose to use the Capability Assessment Tool again in the future.

“Being able to benchmark capabilities allows us to see where our capabilities are compared to our peers,” says Jacobi. “Tracking growth over time helps to demonstrate return on investment and celebrate the progress we’ve made.”

Sign up for a webinar on 18 July, 12-1pm, to learn more about the revamped AHRCF and how it will benefit you. AHRI members can register for free.

The post Setting the standard for HR capabilities now and into the future appeared first on HRM online.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for HRM about the Critical HR skills that all leaders and managers should have. To my surprise, I was inundated with feedback from all over the world, from HR and business leaders alike, sharing the view that HR skills are now a must-have for the modern-day leader.

Many people would argue that the HR function has become an organisation’s most important asset, and although I may be biased, I completely subscribe to this view and believe the best is yet to come.

For a long time, we have been working for ‘a seat at the table’ and the pandemic has secured us the seat and the table, all in one.

We know that HR is about people – who, over the years, have been referred to as an organisation’s most important asset. We also know that HR is equally about the business. Savvy business owners and leaders who embraced a people-first approach early in the pandemic are no doubt seeing the benefits now.  

For many people working in HR, during the pandemic it may have felt like we were going in circles, but I believe that HR has made progress that we may not have even realised yet. It’s an exciting time to be a HR professional, as we start thinking about the future of work and what this means for us in HR.

The evolution of HR competencies 

So what does the future of HR look like? 

In my article from earlier this year, I explored the key HR competencies of the strategic positioner, paradox navigator and credible activist, which were established by the amazing HR thought leader Dave Ulrich. 

The research in this area continues to evolve and it’s pointing to what we are starting to better understand, that great HR is less about defined ‘roles’ and more about generating ‘action’ within an organisation to deliver value.  

Ulrich’s latest research is now describing key HR competencies as: accelerates business, advances human capability, mobilises information, fosters collaboration and simplifies complexity. From these competency shifts, we can see that HR is less about the ‘roles’ we hold and more about our ‘actions’ that generate value.

HR is now more about the ‘whole’ and less about the ‘parts’. What this means is that you must have all the ‘parts’ of HR working together to deliver value. For example, you can’t have a great recruitment process that isn’t supported by a great approach to learning and development or workplace relations.  

This shift in the research demonstrates the progress HR is making. It confirms that we certainly aren’t going in circles.

Why is ‘integration’ so important?     

Integration is going to be a key focus for HR in the near future, particularly as we look at reconnecting people and organisations in the post-pandemic workplace.

Brene Brown, in her recent Dare to Lead podcast in conversation with actress America Ferrera, spoke about the importance of ‘integration’ in the context of leadership, explaining that leaders must bring all the parts of themselves to their roles to be effective. The same methodology applies to HR.

I believe that ‘HR cannot be what it’s meant to be, without all the parts of who it is’.  These parts, as defined by David Ulrich’s research, must work together in an integrated way to deliver value. If there is one thing HR practitioners have learnt as they pivoted and adapted to the pandemic, it’s a strong sense of purpose and identity in the roles we hold. How we connect the parts of HR to an integrated whole is going to be what defines high-performing HR teams in the future.

Five considerations as we move into 2022

As we prepare for the year ahead, here are some suggestions that could assist with your planning.

1. Is your HR function delivering value in an integrated manner? This will be a key focus next year and beyond. The structure of your HR function is critical, as you seek to deliver value to your organisation. Here are some questions to help you shape thinking:

• How are the parts of your HR team working together as a whole to deliver value?
• Does your culture support an integrated approach to HR?
• What action does HR generate within your organisation – or is it more about roles? If it’s the latter, what would it take to shift to action?   

2. The pandemic will continue to dominate the HR agenda – experimentation will be key.

Lynda Gratton, who is another exceptional HR thought leader, continues to encourage the adoption of ‘experimentation’ in her most recent article, Why It’s so Hard to Recruit and Keep Employees Right Now, published in MIT Sloan Management Review.  

This article emphasises the focus on employee health and wellbeing, and keeping abreast of the workplace experiments others are adopting in order to remain competitive in order to offset the impacts of the Great Resignation.

Whether it be transitioning workforces to hybrid working arrangements, rapidly responding to new strains of the virus or implementing strategies to support the wellbeing of people at work, we know HR is going to be kept busy. Burnout and fatigue are a high-risk factor for those working in the HR profession. So it will be important for HR professionals to practice healthy self-care behaviours.  

(You can read HRM’s guide on self-care at work here).

3. Take the time to reflect on the role HR has played during the pandemic. We all tend to be quick to move to the next thing, sometimes failing to reflect on what has just passed us by.

The pandemic has made HR an organisation’s most important asset. I’m repeating this point as I know many HR practitioners have been so focused on their people and organisations during the pandemic that they may not have taken the time to look back on the great work they’ve done.

HR professionals have done incredible work in extremely challenging circumstances, and often on top of their ‘normal’ workloads. It is important you know that this work hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

Reflection is useful for all HR professionals to consider what worked well and what didn’t go to plan. This is how we learn and grow.      

This process will assist HR professionals better understand the magnitude of the shift that has taken place for the HR function during the pandemic. It will provide us with the space to appreciate what these changes mean for HR, for the organisations we work in, and, most importantly, what it means for our future careers in HR.     

4. Consider the symbiotic relationships HR has and why it’s important. 

One of the obvious and most important symbiotic relationships is between managers and HR professionals.

We know that managers are more eager to engage with HR as they adapt to the new challenges of leading people. This relationship must not be underestimated and presents an opportunity for HR to create people-focused champions within their organisations, who, in many ways, become an extension of the HR function.

5. Celebrate the progress HR has made.

It has been a challenging couple of years for HR. It’s clear that we’ve been able to be effective, and we must embrace our position of influence and importance within our organisations by celebrating what has been achieved and building on it for the future.

The pandemic may have been the catalyst for making HR an organisation’s most important asset, but we won’t disappear when the virus does. We’ve worked hard to get where we are today and this is something to be proud of – and is most certainly worthy of celebration!

Sarah Queenan is the Founder and Managing Director of Humanify HR Consulting.

HR skills aren’t just helpful for those working in the people department. They’re useful for everyone. AHRI’s short course HR for non-HR people is designed to upskill managers to manage HR matters in their teams. Find out more about this new course here.

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