To excel as the architects of workplace culture and the designers of the employee experience, HR practitioners need to design HR strategies that resonate with their workforce. This often requires a creative approach, such as applying design thinking to their initiatives, says Lisa Burquest, Chief People Officer at Virgin Australia.

“In a world where you’ve got finite resources, you’ve got to be able to work yourself through a process of prioritising your focus areas very quickly,” she says. 

“The design thinking model approach allows you to get quick cut-through. It creates relevance because it’s built in the context of who you are, what you’re doing and where you need to go.”

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a creative approach to problem-solving which originated in product development as a way to understand and meet the needs of consumers. IDEO, a global design and consulting firm, is credited with popularising the application of design thinking to a broad range of industries. 

“Design thinking has its origins in the training and the professional practice of designers, but these are principles that can be practiced by everyone and extended to every field of activity,” said IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown in 2009. 

Employers are increasingly recognising the value of human-centred design thinking to inform the development of HR initiatives. Global leaders such as AirBnB, Apple, Bank of America, Google, IBM, Nike, and Uber have all adopted design thinking to address a range of workforce challenges, including workplace culture change, skills building and organisational transformation.

At Virgin Australia, following the disruptions to the airline industry brought by the pandemic, the HR team used a design thinking mindset to help navigate a period of significant transformation. 

“Our strategy post-administration was repositioning Virgin Australia as a value carrier in the market. Our strategy specifically puts our people at the centre. We call it Virgin Flair,” says Burquest, who is speaking at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

“It’s all about how we work with our people to rebuild the business in a way that delivers for our customer, [leads to] financial and operational outcomes and makes us a better, more focused business as we move forward.

“Some people thought, ‘How can you possibly get that business back on track?’, but we had a methodical and aspirational strategy that we were chasing [to rebuild the business].”

“Human-centred design thinking forces you to think back on what the business is here to do. It’s not creating a plan that’s HR for HR’s sake.” – Lisa Burquest, Chief People Officer at Virgin Australia

The five stages of design thinking

There are a number of frameworks employers can use to guide them in the design thinking process, including the British Design Council’s Double Diamond framework and American Institution of Graphic Arts’s Head, Heart and Hand model. 

Among the most popular frameworks is the five-step design thinking model developed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, which offers a formula for effective human-centred design thinking.

“Human-centred design thinking forces you to think back on what the business is here to do. It’s not creating a plan that’s HR for HR’s sake, it’s creating focus areas and priorities that are directly linked to what the business needs to achieve,” says Burquest.

The Hasso-Plattner Institute’s framework breaks down human-centred design into five distinct stages: 

1. Empathise

Human-centred design must begin with empathy in order to ensure solutions align with the needs of people who will be impacted by them, which are employees in this instance.

By forefronting the voices of employees, employers can get their buy-in and ensure they feel like the changes are happening for them, rather than to them.

In recognition of the diverse needs of different cohorts of employees, Virgin Australia first broke down its workforce into employee personas, from new starters through to long-standing employees close to retirement. Segmenting the workforce in this way helped the team empathise with each group and ensure everyone felt heard and understood.

“During this early stage of transformation, we thought about the moments that matter for our people,” says Burquest. “As we designed our programs, we were taking into account all of these groups and how they might play into the initiative, and making sure it was something that would be engaging for them.”

Download a template to create employee personas here.

2. Define

During the define stage, HR practitioners will converge to determine specific workforce challenges to address, and/or gaps in current HR practices. Framing the challenge in this way can provide structure to the next phase, ideation, and ensure objectives remain consistent, even when methodology changes.

For Virgin Australia, a data-driven approach was key to defining the specific challenges faced by the different employee personas they had formulated. 

“[Data] allows you to dissect your workforce and look at it from different angles, whether its turnover or diversity, [et cetera],” says Burquest. “It’s really important because it helps you build a real case for change. I can’t encourage people enough to look at the data and use the insights to drive how you build out your strategies.” 

3. Ideate

The ideation stage of the design thinking process tends to involve brainstorming sessions and collaborative workshops to generate practical solutions to the defined issues, with input from both employees and leaders.

“[At Virgin Australia], we went through a collaborative process with all of our people around resetting our values, resetting our identity and resetting our expected levels of behaviour,” says Burquest. 

Guided by the objectives set in the Define stage, brainstorm participants should be encouraged to pitch out-of-the-box strategies and build on one another’s ideas. Creativity is a cornerstone of design thinking, and it should be made clear from the outset that innovation and lateral thinking are welcome in these sessions.

4. Prototype

Creating and piloting prototypes of HR programs on smaller employee groups is crucial, since it allows adjustments to be made before the full-scale rollout.

Virgin Australia uses its employee personas to guide the prototype stage of design thinking, which helps them tailor equitable and effective strategies for each cohort, says Burquest.

“We have half a dozen different personas that make up our workforce. We test each of the initiatives against those personas to see if this is going to drive the right outcomes for those team members,” she says.

5. Test

By gathering data and continuous feedback to refine initiatives, HR will continually adjust and test to ensure strategies evolve based on real-world, real-time experiences.

While HR should not be afraid to make changes to their strategies when tests demonstrate deficiencies, Burquest says practitioners should ensure the defined challenges and objectives should always be kept consistent and front-of-mind to ensure the process does not become erratic.

“Sometimes, you might have to make a radical adjustment in some part of your strategy. But you don’t want to be doing that around all of your strategy. You don’t want to be chopping and changing, you want to be evolving,” she says.

“It’s about creating processes that allow you to focus on the business context that matters. In a finite world of resources, what are the priorities that matter most? That helps you control your environment in a sensible way as you move through the process.”

Lisa Burquest will be speaking on navigating todayʼs capability challenges while building for tomorrow at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Lisa and other experts, including Seth Godin, Ravin Jesuthasen and more.

The post How to use design thinking to enhance your HR strategies appeared first on HRM online.

A big part of our job as HR professionals is understanding and supporting the capabilities that our people need to drive the delivery of organisational objectives. Ambiguity tolerance is the new ‘super capability’ that can enhance current and future performance, while also supporting wellbeing. 

Ambiguity tolerance refers to the comfort a person feels working in situations with novelty, complexity or conflicting information. Tolerance levels range on a spectrum from ‘aversion’ to ‘attraction’. A person with higher levels of tolerance (i.e., attracted to ambiguity) will feel more comfortable working in these circumstances, enabling them to problem solve faster, with less stress. 

While research on this topic dates back to 1949, the past 20 years has seen a resurgence in its interest across disciplines including clinical and organisational psychology, economics and politics. This interest may be due, in part, to the global and local shifts brought on by advancements in AI, the COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity threats, economic instability, and many other destabilising changes. 

Given predictions about the future and evidence about the average low levels of ambiguity tolerance in the population (<10% have a high tolerance of ambiguity) this capability is likely to become even more important in the workplace. 

The future is uncertain

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2023 Global Risk Report found ‘older’ risks such as inflation, cost-of-living crisis, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation, and nuclear warfare have returned. 

However, few of our business leaders and public policymakers have hands-on experience in responding to these risks of the past. On top of these threats are relatively new global risks, such as unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, de-globalisation, rapid and unconstrained development of technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions. 

HR faces additional upheaval. New employment regulations are on the horizon, along with the challenges of an aging workforce, the increasing importance of culture, and the changes in employee expectations about flexibility and associated impacts on collaboration.

The WEF found that: “Together, these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come”. PwC’s Future of Work 2023 report agreed that today’s challenges are complex, and our environment is “volatile”. The latter report admonishes that these challenges can only be successfully overcome if they are met ‘head on’.  

Ambiguity can take a toll

Managing the waves of uncertainty and ambiguity, however, is easier said than done. 

Ambiguity is stressful. This stress response is natural, thanks to our brain’s flight or fight response. However, this response can impact our ability to function, make decisions and perform as needed. People typically find making decisions in ambiguous situations harder, compared with making risky or difficult decisions.

Counterintuitively, leaders are particularly susceptible to the negative impacts from operating in dynamic uncertain environments. Research has confirmed that managers are less comfortable with ambiguity than non-managers, which particularly impacts leadership self-efficacy and performance.

It’s no surprise then that half of Australian leaders currently experience significant levels of stress most of the day, every day, according to research from Gallup. Australian leaders experience the second highest rate of stress, compared with leaders in all other countries included in the research.

This impact doesn’t stop with leaders. A leader’s ambiguity tolerance can have a direct effect on how their team performs and copes with their own stressors and challenges.

That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for signs that your organisation may have a low tolerance for ambiguity. These can include:

• Slow progress. This can signal overwhelm at the volume and complexity of work.
• Lack of momentum. People are like deer in headlights; unable to maintain focus, make decisions or be productive when faced with ambiguity or uncertainty at work.
• A focus on the status quo. You need innovative solutions to respond to challenges and people are stuck in old ways of thinking.
• A ‘can’t-do’ attitude. People are focused on the obstacles and limitations instead of exploring other perspectives that could lead to new possibilities.
• Decision delay. Crucial decisions are being avoided because people don’t have all the information they want.
• Giving up. People give up too easily and are unwilling to take risks or try new things because they’ve a hard time dealing with failure and setbacks.

The pace of uncertainty and ambiguity is unlikely to slow down. When guiding teams through turbulent times that are rife with uncertainty, the ‘discomfort curve’ only gets steeper. At stake is our people’s wellbeing as well as our organisation’s performance.

The question then becomes: if most of us are uncomfortable dealing with volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity, but we know it’s coming, how can we prepare our workforce to meet the challenges head on so they can respond and adapt?

Develop a tolerance baseline

Like any capability, the first step towards improvement is measurement. There are a number of evidence-based diagnostic instruments that can assess an individual’s unique response to ambiguity. 

One example is the Indicator of Ambiguity (I Am), which specifically measures tolerance of ambiguity at work. It identifies a person’s response on the spectrum of very unclear (aversion) to very clear (attraction). This diagnostic will also ‘prescribe’ the specific skills and activities that can be practiced to strengthen ‘immunity’ against ambiguity and uncertainty. 

However, building ambiguity tolerance isn’t just about performance through responding and adapting to tricky situations at work. It can also act as protection against burnout and other negative workplace outcomes. 

Research has shown that higher levels of tolerance are associated with greater resilience and levels of wellbeing, emotional intelligence and creativity, along with reduced stress.

So what can HR leaders and managers do to help people to feel more comfortable operating amid uncertainty (which is fast becoming a requirement for all)? According to research, there are eight skills that we need to embed into our teams:

These eight skills are:

• Mindfulness – being aware and present without being overwhelmed. In other words, being in control.  
• Assertion – being able to take control of a situation and influence others without aggression. 
• Finding focus – minimising distractions and focusing on the task at hand when confronted with a new, uncertain, ambiguous or unfamiliar environment.
• Unlocking inertia – being able to look and move forward rather than focusing on the past and what has been.
• Curiosity – being able to query, challenge and look beyond the conventional to solve a problem or seize an opportunity.
• Creativity – thinking outside the box, or even creating a new box to find creative solutions.
• Courageous actions – facing fears, speaking the truth and taking steps towards the unknown despite the fear.
• Flexible thinking patterns – considering multiple perspectives to find a solution rather than being wedded to a ‘way of doing things’ as well as being able to see the bigger picture and adapting as the situation changes. 

HR at the frontlines

There will undoubtedly be countless crises that will arise in the next 12-24 months. HR plays a critical role in ensuring that organisations are adequately prepared to navigate these crises through greater ambiguity tolerance, which I believe is fast becoming the new super capability.  

Samantha Rush is an expert in decision-making. She has formal qualifications in HR, psychology, an MBA, and is currently undertaking a PhD in decision making. She combines this evidence-based knowledge with 20 years’ experience as a corporate executive, company director, business advisor and consultant to help unravel complexity and facilitate great decision making that drives results.

Need help navigating workplace change? AHRI’s short course will arm you with the skills to understand change dynamics at an individual, team and organisational level.

The post Organisations’ new super capability is ‘ambiguity tolerance’ appeared first on HRM online.

By now, many of us will have experimented with nascent AI technologies. But far fewer have gone beyond using them for rudimentary writing tasks, basic ideation or general amusement.  

While many HR professionals have been using AI in recruitment practices for some time now, and will be aware of AI’s potential beyond email drafts and job ads, AHRI’s September quarter Work Outlook showed that only 20 per cent of respondents were investing in AI technology, with 26 per cent saying it was a near-term priority.

That’s despite research finding that up to 40 per cent of all working hours could be impacted by large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 – which is just a fraction of AI’s potential.

These figures suggest that employers have a significant learning opportunity ahead of them. And it goes beyond ChatGPT. There are impressive, big-picture ways AI can change how we work for the better.  

Here are four ways HR can leverage AI for more complex tasks and bigger-picture business goals, according to experts:

1. Using AI to predict turnover

Employee retention has always been a key concern for HR and leaders alike, but the pressure to retain people has become more intense amid the skills shortage.

According to the Work Institute’s 2022 Retention Report, the average cost to replace an employee is 33 per cent of their base pay, and there’s also a significant time cost to HR leaders – often before they’ve even hired a replacement.

“For decades of turnover research, the key reason why employees stay at organisations is due to their embeddedness: fit, sacrifice and links,” says Andrew Dhaenens, lecturer in the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School. 

“Building connections at work, and the perception that these benefits and relationships would be lost by leaving, are the primary drivers behind why employees stay.”

Read HRM’s article on how to develop social capital at work.

While these emotional connections may be hard to quantify, there are contributing factors to an employee’s decision to stay or quit that can be measured. This typically requires HR leaders sifting through complex datasets, containing metrics related to employee demographics, job history, performance and engagement. 

“If you make some healthy comparisons with viable alternatives – locations, industries and competitors – and track some affective factors such as work-life balance, satisfaction and emotional exhaustion, you’ll have a strong idea of the people who will voluntarily leave the organisation,” says Dhaenens.

By implementing AI solutions, it’s possible for algorithms to comb through the data and potentially uncover hidden patterns, helping organisations anticipate employee turnover. This can significantly improve retention rates and free up HR leaders’ schedules, he says.

“What AI can add is the speed to which this information can be processed, particularly among other factors and large datasets.”

There is a crucial caveat though, says Dhaenens. 

“AI will commonly circumvent other organisational and employee goals in pursuit of its outcomes. It’s important, right now, to think of AI just as you would an overly eager junior employee: if you assign a task, it’s going to work with you to provide answers, be hesitant to admit it’s wrong and miss some important nuances.”

Nevertheless, Dhaenens says this information can be very valuable in identifying employees who may need additional HR support. This means human expertise remains vital.

2. Creating inclusive work cultures

There is potential for workplace AI to aid employees living with disabilities. Today, NLP helps people more accurately interpret complex information, such as lengthy company policies, and OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model powers a ChatGPT add-on enabling users to hear AI-generated responses, as well as provide AI-powered visual assistance to blind users.

This technology is currently in its infancy, says Mark Purdy, Managing Director of business and tech advisory firm Purdy & Associates. 

“Right now, the biggest D&I gains through AI are in [more inclusive] recruitment. Principally, the technology can help access global talent databases, deeper pools and a wider hiring net, job matching a vacancy to individual candidates.”

“Think of AI just as you would an overly eager junior employee: if you assign a task, it’s going to work with you to provide answers, be hesitant to admit it’s wrong and miss some important nuances.” – Andrew Dhaenens, lecturer, UNSW Business School.

Rather than rely on traditional hiring processes, which mean organisations often turn to favoured staffing agencies or universities for graduate hires, AI and machine learning can look at a broader set of candidates.  For example, Purdy says some of the technology ignores surnames and ethnicity in terms of a candidate’s suitability to a role.

“Instead of the process depending on a couple of hiring managers, who will by nature always have limited attention spans, and cognitive biases, AI offers a more structured and analytical approach to recruitment,” he says. 

“As a managing director, I often have to review 500 CVs for a vacancy and, by the time you reach CV number 50, it’s very hard to keep your concentration. That’s where machine learning can really help HR.”

However, as is often discussed, the output of such platforms is only as effective as the data that’s input.

“If the AI is simply an algorithm using the organisation’s past recruitment data, then its version of a successful hire will often be similar to the human recruiter’s choices in the past,” says Purdy. 

“If the data suggests people from certain backgrounds tend to be the ones who are best recruited and are successful, there’s a strong chance the AI system will begin to mimic pre-existing biases.”

3. Free up brain space

We often attribute the ‘scatter-brain’ feeling at work to a proliferation of technologies that leads to frequent context switching, seriously damaging overall productivity levels. 

However, if we implement the technology correctly, we actually free the space in our brains that enables productivity to flow, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London, Chief Innovation Officer at employment agency ManpowerGroup and author. 

“Technology, like productivity itself, is about doing more with less, or achieving the same with less effort,” he says. “Theoretically, every useful app cuts down effort, thinking and decision-making time.”

Read HRM’s article on ‘infobestity‘ – the proliferation of information and its impacts on us.

However, workplaces often use too many tools, requiring teams to spend workdays switching tabs and apps. Therefore, AI has to be implemented strategically.

In order to maximise AI’s benefits, HR leaders need to ensure that efficiency gains are invested back into businesses, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

He recommends time-tracking tools that help optimise productivity. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee that an employee writing a business proposal 50 per cent faster through generative AI will spend their freed-up time on strategic work.

“The only way to manage processes is by measuring them. So, as much as it may sound creepy and Orwellian, we cannot avoid quantifying inputs and outputs and have AI connect both.”

Productivity and time-tracking tools aren’t the same as employee monitoring software, he says. The goal is to enable teams to work smarter, not to track their every move.

“Even if AI turns us into productivity machines, people aren’t machines. So you have to create the cultural conditions whereby people can enjoy work, thrive and fulfil their core needs. That doesn’t come from AI – that comes from leadership.”

In other words, AI can only succeed with a culture of openness, he says. 

“The best way is to have ethical AI charters in place. Be open and transparent, invite people to opt in, and show them it’s for their own benefit. You’re ultimately trying to be fairer and more equitable in how you measure and reward performance.”

4. Approach innovation differently

AI platforms can expand people’s thinking – debiasing organisations and democratising the brainstorming process, says Chamorro-Premuzic.

“AI can help us detect hidden patterns of behaviour and decision-making in a system or organisation. For example, it can tell us that people with certain qualities are less likely to get promoted, if their emails are more likely to be ignored or if people use more negative words when they communicate.”

“Even if AI turns us into productivity machines, people aren’t machines. So you have to create the cultural conditions whereby people can enjoy work, thrive and fulfil their core needs. That doesn’t come from AI – that comes from leadership.” – Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology, University College London, Chief Innovation Officer, ManpowerGroup

Through a data-driven approach, leaders can use their findings to launch new workplace culture initiatives projects, reward high performers and boost engagement. Chamorro-Premuzic cites how it’s been utilised at ManpowerGroup.

“We’ve used social network analysis to identify the most connected and influential managers in our organisations – those who receive emails from more people and are themselves more diverse and globally distributed – to identify ‘influencers’ in a culture change project.”

AI can also help reduce expertise bias, in which certain sources are treated as incontrovertible; and phenomena such as the Einstellung effect, where people’s previous experience can prevent them from considering new ways to solve problems.

“Just like how individual decisions can be predicted via factors that imply bias, AI can expose the bias by analysing granular invisible features that determine the hidden grammar of social relations and ties,” he says.

AI is changing work forever 

While many leaders are yet to begin their AI journey, the key message is that, when used appropriately, these platforms help people work smarter – and better. 

A second brain means augmenting human talent with machine learning capabilities, enabling teams to produce their best work yet, says Purdy.

“It’s about finding better talent, maximising employee wellbeing and helping them improve productivity and skills development. AI gives organisations the potential to do just that – when used properly. And that’s the challenge that many leaders face right now.” 

A longer version of this article first appeared in the Dec/Jan 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

How is your organisation preparing for the future world of work? Develop a successful HR strategic plan with the help of AHRI’s short course on HR Strategy Planning.

The post 4 strategic ways HR can use AI at work appeared first on HRM online.

We’ve heard lots of discussion about what Australia’s labour market might look like in the near future, considering our uncertain economic situation. Will organisations reduce headcount as we’ve seen occurring overseas? Will inflation continue to outstrip wages? Will turnover increase as employees continue to reassess their relationships with work?

Of course, much of this is still unknown. However, AHRI has been able to put some data behind some of the most pertinent questions about the Australian labour market with our latest Quarterly Work Outlook report.

This quarter’s survey is based on sentiment from over 600 senior HR professionals and key business decision-makers in Australian organisations of varying sizes and sectors, assessing their pay, recruitment and redundancy intentions in comparison with data collected in the previous quarter.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the report’s insights for the September 2023 quarter.

The recruitment landscape

Our research showed strong employment growth for Q3 2023, with 44 per cent of businesses intending to increase staffing levels over the quarter while just three per cent intend to decrease employee numbers. 

AHRI’s Net Employment Intentions Index, which measures the percentage of employers intending to increase staffing levels and subtracts the percentage intending to decrease staffing levels, is sitting at +41, down from +45 in the previous report.

The modest fall in projected employment growth is likely due to a slight softening in recruitment demand, but overall the results suggest that the impact of recent interest rate hikes on the demand for labour has yet to be felt. 

The question is whether the employment market will pull back further, given subdued economic indicators and the easing of other measures in this quarter’s survey.

Despite positive employment intentions across all sectors, 43 per cent of Australian employers are facing challenges in getting the right talent in their organisations.

The main challenges cited were:

• A lack of suitable candidates (72 per cent)
• High salary expectations (45 per cent)
• Competition from rival organisations (37 per cent) 
• Unattractiveness of the role (29 per cent)

This tells us that despite Australia’s low unemployment rate – which recently increased from 3.5 to 3.7 per cent – we’re still feeling the pinch of the pandemic in terms of a lack of global talent to help bolster specific industries.

As a panel of experts outlined at our National Convention and Exhibition in Brisbane earlier this month, the attractiveness of Australia’s job landscape has decreased in the wake of the pandemic, with a lot of great local talent moving overseas to pursue professional opportunities and a lack of permanent working options for those wishing to work in Australia.

The antidote to this, according to adidas’ Director of Talent Acquisition – Global Tech, Digital and DNA, Michael Bradfield, is to invest in and focus on global mobility strategies.

Speaking to HRM on this topic, he said: “We’ve lost a lot of really good knowledge out of this country and we’re left with a residual base at the moment. This is leaving a lot of organisations pretty short on what they can get. This means they’re not operating to their full potential.”

The solution to this challenge is multi-faceted and reliant on government support, but from an organisational perspective, Bradfield suggested focusing on and investing in internal global mobility capabilities to ensure this is part of your organisation’s strategic agenda.

Skills are lagging

One of the most startling figures to arise from this report was that 20 per cent of employees are perceived as not being proficient in their job. 

One factor driving these skills gaps could be inadequate training. While 90 per cent of employers reported that they’ve provided some training over the past 12 months, on average, just over a quarter of employees undertook external training and only 45 per cent undertook internal training over the same period. 

It’s promising to see four in ten employers say that training investment will increase at their organisation over the next 12 months, but it’s crucial that more organisations make this a priority, as Australia’s future prosperity will be built upon a skilled workforce that helps our nation to remain globally competitive.

Now is the time to invest in workplace training and the broader set of HR practices that boost organisational performance.

Redundancy intentions and turnover

Less than one fifth (17 per cent) of employers are planning redundancies in the upcoming September quarter, which is consistent with the June quarter (16 per cent).

Read HRM’s article ‘When does a redundancy become an unfair dismissal’.

We also saw slight increases in the rate of employee turnover – 14 per cent compared to from 12 per cent in the previous quarter. It’s also worth noting that 23 per cent of organisations reported annual turnover of 20 per cent and above. This is broadly consistent with AHRI’s monthly voluntary turnover poll, which we run in the AHRI LinkedIn lounge, exclusive to AHRI members.

This could tell us that employees are continuing to change roles in search of greener pastures. Changing employee expectations following the pandemic, around benefits such as flexible work options, pay and mental health support, have caused some employers to lose some of their high-performers. 

This could signal that it’s time for employers to rethink and refresh their employee value propositions in order to attract talent in the new world of work.

Read HRM’s article ‘78% of people wouldn’t work for a company without a formalised flexible work policy’.

Productivity challenges

Australia’s productivity is falling short of many of our OECD competitors (see graph below), which is why AHRI wanted to get a better sense of if/how Australian businesses are measuring productivity, and what they’re doing to boost it.

An overwhelming majority of employers (92 per cent) reported measuring productivity in some shape or form. Among the options presented, the most frequently cited were:

• Customer satisfaction levels/feedback (35%)
• Revenue/sales per employee/team (33%)
• Employee engagement (32%)
• Process, project or task completion rates (32%)
• Profitability/margin per employee/ team (32%)
• Monitoring of hours worked/ timesheets (30%)

However, these metrics are often a measurement of business performance more broadly, rather than employee output – which is considered to be the benchmark for productivity. Only 20 per cent measured productivity this way.

In terms of improving productivity from an output perspective, the employers we surveyed believed flexible working arrangements (46 per cent), performance-related pay (36%) and on-the-job training (33%) were most effective.

It is encouraging that many employers are adopting high-performance work practices. However, it’s concerning that fewer are investing in line management capability (25 per cent), which is crucial to making fuller use of people’s skills to improve productivity. 

The same goes for an investment in technology and AI, which only 20 per cent said they were actively doing. However, 26 per cent said this would be a near-term priority for them. If this occurs, it will be interesting to see how this impacts overall productivity levels.

For a deeper dive into the insights, you can download the full paper here. If you have any feedback or ideas for next quarter’s focus topic, please reach out to AHRI’s Research and Advocacy Specialist, Gerwyn Davies on gerwyn.davies@ahri.com.au.

Ensure your team is thinking and acting strategically at every stage of the employment lifecycle with this short course from AHRI.

The post 1 in 5 employees are deemed “not proficient” in their roles appeared first on HRM online.

When Lucy Adams was working as the HR Director of the BBC, she started to realise she was falling out of love with HR.

“I got sick of people saying to me, ‘Lucy, you are the conscience of the business.’ I mean, you can’t abdicate your conscience to one person,” Adams told the crowd at day two of AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition.

“You’d walk into a room with two grown men talking to each other and they’d say, “Oh, shhh. The HR police are here.” I got really tired of working really hard to come up with new initiatives or practices, only to be met by indifference at best or, at worst, outright hostility.

“But I think mainly what I got tired of was trying to equip organisations, employees and leaders for a disruptive world, and yet I was still giving them stuff from the 1980s.”

This is when she realised it was time to step away from what she perceived as “traditional HR” and shake up the people profession.

The EACH framework

Adams, who is now the CEO of Disruptive HR, a UK-based consultancy, has encapsulated her thoughts on ‘disruptive HR’ in a framework she calls ‘EACH’ – Employees as Adults, Consumers and Human Beings.

Importantly, she caveats all her advice by saying, “Everything I criticise, I have done.” She doesn’t want anyone to feel like they’re ‘doing it wrong’, and she acknowledges that the complexity of certain sectors and legislative requirements might mean that not all of her advice will work for everyone.

Instead, her intent is to spark intrigue in people to consider if the traditional way of doing things is really the best way, and to inspire HR leaders to be the champions of new ways of operating.

“Most organisations are incredibly parental,” she says. “We have two types of parenting. The first is the ‘caring parent’. This comes from a good place, but it leaves us trying to do everything for our people.”

She uses an example from an organisation she used to work for. It was snowing and she was told it was time to send out the ‘all staff snow email’ to let them know they should stay home.

“And I was like, ‘Really? Can’t they just look out the window? And what if they don’t get the email? Will they just sit there and wait for directions?’ Of course not! They’re grown ups and are completely capable of making a decision about the weather and their journeys to and from work.”

The second type of parental role HR sometimes takes is the ‘critical parent’, she says.

“This is when we feel it’s our responsibility to protect the organisation against every possible eventuality and bad behaviour that might happen. We think it’s our responsibility to write a policy and make a rule or process to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Both approaches are counterproductive, she says.

“If we want people to be agile, productive, collaborative and innovative, then we can’t just have them passively waiting to be told what to do. We have to have people who are able to take a risk, speak up and challenge the status quo. We need a different type of mindset to the one we’ve had over generations.”

Small changes, big results

While she might be advocating for some big shifts, Adams’ suggestions for changes are relatively simple (in theory).

She wants employers and HR to take a step back and assess all the processes they take as a given and ask themselves if there might be a better way – a way that centres around the EACH model.

During her keynote, she shared some examples of how other organisations are doing this, including:

Removing ‘probation’ periods – This is the language we use in our criminal justice system, she says, and it doesn’t belong in our workplaces. Plus, it “puts the fear of God into people”. 

Recognising this, Virgin Atlantic’s HR Director removed probation periods from the organisation.

“They looked at the number of people who failed their probation period and, on average, it was two out of around 10,000 staff. So they got rid of it. Instead, they now have ‘getting to know you’ periods.”

This aligns perfectly with Adams’ framework – treating employees as autonomous humans who, more often than not, will strive to do the right thing.

Not tracking leave – Motley Fool, a private financial and investing advice company, decided to stop tracking its people’s holiday or sick leave. Employees can do that themselves and take leave for the moments when they need it.

“This may sound too far-fetched for your organisation, so instead think about where you could say, ‘We trust you,'” says Adams.

That might be things like allowing employees to determine their start and finishing times, for example, or having them take ownership of the types of training they do and when they do it.

“We will have influence because we will be proud of the fact that we are the voice of human behaviour and human understanding. And that’s where our superpower lies.” – Lucy Adams

“We haven’t got the time for monitoring. Our role is to enable people to do their best work, to be more agile, productive, innovative and collaborative. We’re not sickness monitors.”

She also uses the example of bereavement leave policies, which can feel stuffy and impersonal.

“They say things like, ‘You can have this number of days’ leave for the death of a mother and this much for an aunty.’ But who are we to say what’s appropriate in terms of that grief?”

Adams showed an example of what she believes to be a much more human approach, which read: ‘From time to time, there might be events occurring in our lives that make us tremble and fall. It could be the death of a loved one or signs of anxiety when we least expect it. Not all things in life are within our control. We’ve got your back. We’ll make sure you get the time and support you need.’

“How much more engaging is that?”

“We haven’t got the time for monitoring. Our role is to enable people to do their best work, to be more agile, productive, innovative and collaborative.” – Lucy Adams

However, she notes that while trust and autonomy should be given to everyone, there are still instances where discretion will be important.

“For instance, I trust my husband implicitly, but I wouldn’t trust him to do my make-up.”

Embrace light-touch approaches

Adams wants HR to reduce the number of policies and procedures it uses. This is a point that will likely resonate with many in HR, but that can’t always be executed due to red tape or legislative requirements in their organisations. 

However, perhaps there’s a way to make your existing policies a little more people-friendly.

Mercury (formerly Trustpower), a utilities firm, audited its policies by asking, ‘Does this policy promote autonomy and trust?’ And if it didn’t, they’d change it. The organisation moved from policies to light-touch principles.

“That’s things like ‘dress for your day’ instead of a detailed dress code policy. Employees know what their day looks like and what’s appropriate. And if they don’t, then the problem is greater than them just turning up to work in flip flops.”

Own the way you work

“I got so excited during COVID-19 when all of that work we’ve been putting in for decades around flexible working suddenly started happening – and the sky didn’t fall in. And now I see that old-school thinking creeping back in about coming back into the office for X amount of days.”

Leaders often make knee-jerk decisions, such as ordering people back to work, and then rely on HR to do the hard work of executing on their decision, she says. Instead, she suggests adopting ‘own the way you work’ processes.

“Employees know when they’re most productive. They know their social responsibilities, hobbies etc… so they should go and have a conversation with their manager about where and when they work. They might not get everything they want, but it’s about having that adult-to-adult conversation and determining what works for the team, the organisation and the customer.”

Treat your employee as a consumer

Adams isn’t a fan of the phrase ‘employees are your greatest asset’.

“Assets are cars and computer equipment. We deal with human beings, who are wonderful, incredible, annoying, frustrating and all different from one another.”

That’s why a tailored approach is called-for, she says. Just like you would go into a retail store and expect to see different-coloured shirts to choose from, employees should also have options when it comes to their experience at work, she says.

“A one-size-fits-all approach completely ignores the fact that our role in HR is to try and cater as much as we can to individual needs and wants without, of course, resulting in too much complexity and cost.”

She refers to companies including 3M and Starbucks who undergo internal research to learn more about the various cohorts that exist in their organisations. This allows them to develop employee personas – just as a marketing team might create a consumer persona – to offer a more tailored experience.

“People work for very different reasons,” says Adams. “You might have people who are motivated by high-risk and high-reward environments and then you might have people who have young kids and a big mortgage and just want stability. Then you have people who are coming up to retirement and want to maximise their pension benefits and perhaps need more flexible working.”

In 3M’s case, they put employees into five categories: 

• In it to win it – those motivated by a fast-paced, highly challenging, risk-taking environment
• In it to experience it – those motivated by developmental stretch assignments
• In it as alpine ascenders – those motivated by rapid, regular promotions
• In it for my life – employees who are motivated by the company’s flexible working arrangements
• In it to stretch – employees who are seeking learning and growth opportunities.

Armed with this information, HR teams can then provide a work experience that aligns with employees’ expectations and needs, which is more likely to lead to a satisfied and committed workforce.

Employees as human beings

The recruitment space is an area where Adams thinks we could be more human-centric. For example, at Dropbox, instead of engaging in transactional hiring processes – i.e. recruiting people after someone has handed in their resignation – its managers engage in relationship-building with potential talent year-round.

“Their managers have objectives to have Zoom meetings and coffee with people, even when they don’t have a vacancy. So they are constantly building a community of talent.”

Performance management also needs to be far more human, she says. Feedback and goal-setting can’t be a once-or-twice-a-year event.

“Atlassian got rid of its formal performance management framework, and instead they just ask three questions: what are you working on? How can I help you? How do you feel?”

The first question touches on alignment, the second question gives leaders a coaching opportunity and the last one is about recognising that you’re dealing with a whole human, she says.

In her experience, this consistent yet simple line of questioning often results in far richer and more authentic conversations.

HR’s evolution

“[HR is] in a really exciting phase. I think we’re in our third evolution. The first phase was what’s often called the ‘tea and sympathy brigade’, where it was all about helping employees and being nice. And then suddenly, overnight, we were told, ‘You’re now a strategic business partner and you will do ‘strategic stuff’.’

“Now we’re in our third evolution. We know that our role isn’t just to support leaders or employees, but to enable people to do their best work and make sure they’re equipped for the challenges ahead.

“We will have influence because we will be proud of the fact that we are the voice of human behaviour and human understanding. And that’s where our superpower lies.”

You can read some highlights from day one of AHRI’s Convention here.

The post How these organisations are doing HR differently appeared first on HRM online.

When it comes to creating more efficient, engaged workplaces, digital data holds much promise.

In fact, recent research from Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia showed that, among computer-based workers, a metric as simple as the quantity of clicks they made in their workday could be correlated with their level of engagement.

And there is strong hope that better data will enable managers to do much more than simply measure engagement, including fostering conditions for greater flourishing and creativity. But while many people seem to have little objection to sharing their data with the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, sharing it with their employers is often another story.

This means it is imperative that employers build trust with their workforce about why they are collecting data and how they will be using it.

Read HRM’s article about what you need to know about storing employees’ data.

Rethink employee data collection

The increasing digitisation of workplaces means that there is a wealth of potential data points for employers to collect. James Healy, a Principal in Deloitte’s Human Capital Consulting practice, says the significant challenge for organisations becomes collecting the right data to make informed decisions.

“Most humans are not aware of what’s called the ‘intention-action gap,’” he says.  “That is, we have every intention of doing something, but we don’t always go through with it. In most organisations, the gap presents itself in the form of an employee engagement survey to measure happiness and preferences.” 

Healy cautions against using surveys, as they tend to reflect intentions rather than actions. They are also dependent on mood and other environmental issues occurring at the time the employee responds.

“People’s responses to surveys aren’t as accurate as people themselves – behavioural data is far more useful,” he says.

“Don’t ask people how they feel about hybrid working versus working from home – look at the swipe card data that tells you how often they came in.”

Healy adds that most organisations have a long way to go in how they manage data.

“Once you’ve met all data hygiene factors, one of the key things is to make the data as openly available as possible,” he says. “One of the great features of data science is that many opportunities are at the intersection of silos.”

“If you’re not able to figure out from the top down where those interesting insights are, democratise the data – open it up for people to look at.” – James Healy, Principal, Deloitte’s Human Capital Consulting

Generally, there aren’t that many surprises in localised datasets because HR specialists are usually across trends in their area and have an idea of what they are going to tell them.

This is why Healy says that the value lies in putting together datasets across workplace silos. 

“For example, take HR data and put it together with the property data, which tells you swipe card information and gives information about building occupancy. Bring that together with IT department data that tells you which terminals in the office and desks have been occupied. And suddenly you have a much more interesting picture,” he says.

Transparency is key

“Data and insights shouldn’t be a closely guarded secret. Acting like they are can really hurt trust,” says Dorothy Hisgrove, Head of People and Inclusion at KPMG Australia.

“By democratising access to data and providing clear guidance on what data will be used for, we can encourage employees to be more comfortable to share their feedback and insights.”

In an attempt to lead the way, last year KPMG began providing all employees access to the data and comments received in their annual employee feedback survey. 

“It was a bold move, but it has been received very well from the firm and has dramatically improved transparency,” says Hisgrove.

However, Hisgrove cautions that data is only as useful as it is usable and timely.

“Centralised data management can create bottlenecks in data insight generation that significantly reduce the ability to act on data while it’s relevant,” she says.

Listening to employees at regular intervals helps firms identify trends and emerging themes and act on them quickly. 

“Timely access to data allows you to set targets from where you are to where you need to get to and measure the progress you are making,” she says.

Focus on your end goal

Information overload prevents data insights from being effective. Rather than focusing on the data, Healy suggests, focus on the question – and then find the data that can help you answer it.

“It’s far more productive to start by working out what insights we want in our organisation and employees,” he says. “However, this is a use case that is only illuminated by bringing together different datasets. If you’re not able to figure out from the top down where those interesting insights are, democratise the data – open it up for people to look at.”

After all, Healy reminds us, data can only do so much – organisations still need to be smart about how they use it. Invoking the aphorism of American astronomer Clifford Stoll, he says: “data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.” 

This article first appeared in the May 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

Acquire a sound foundation in people analytics and learn more about using people data to improve decision making with this short course from AHRI.

The post We need to think about employee data differently appeared first on HRM online.

Flexible Work Day is here once again. So what better way to mark the occasion than by looking at what some of the leader in this space are doing.

In order to raise awareness about the benefits of flexible working practices in Australia, a new program has been announced called the Champions of Flexible Working Awards. Recipients of this accolade have demonstrable results about how their flexibility program has “transformed their business”.

The winners from the private sector include GM Holden, which claimed the top slot, alongside American Express, Diva Works, LegalVision, Mercer Australia and Unity Water. In the public sector, the recipients included City of Melbourne, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and South Australia’s Department for Environment and Water, with Lifeline Canberra receiving the non-profit award.

Flexible transformations

So what does it mean to “transform your business” through flexibility? It means having initiatives include pushing back on “flexism” and the “gender flex gap” – which are biased approaches to flexibility which assume it’s for some workers and not others. It could also mean a smart use of technology to ensure the effectiveness of the program.   

According to Vanessa Vanderhoek, the founder of Flexible Work Day Champions of Flexible Working Awards, the normalisation of flexibility needs to come from the very top.

“With all members of the Senior Leadership Team accessing flex, including four in formal part time roles, not only do they lead by example, but they show how as a team they can support one another to challenge the perceived ‘norms’ of how executives ‘should’ work,” says Vanderhoek.

Vanderhoek also spoke of the importance of changing the conversation around flexible working to break down social barriers. “We have seen the conversation mature with companies realising flexibility is key to attracting and retaining talent and also a driver for productivity,” she says.

Is it for everyone?

While these are no doubt important developments, it’s important to remember the inherent nature of these programs is to be flexible, meaning they shouldn’t been forced. Recent research by the University of Melbourne shows that employees don’t always respond well to flexible programs if they are not offered the choice. The research, which focussed on a US-based employer which had enforced a flexible work program, found that 35 per cent of employees were not in favour of it.

“What we were looking at, in particular, was a workplace where the employer had decided: ‘You know what, this is what’s going to work best for the business, and we think people are going to like it because we’ve heard that it’s a flexible option and people should love it’,” says researcher Edward Hyatt.

“The only people that were really happy with it were those that didn’t mind that it had been made mandatory.”

But it really boils down to careful planning in term of what works for the business as well as employees, and what the organisation hopes to achieve from a flexibility program. The research also found that core hours were preferential for a business, so that a business can be fully functioning at certain times, and so it’s easier to schedule meetings.

Another thing to keep in mind is the pervasive “always on” culture, which can be an unfortunate byproduct of flexible working. New York recently instituted a bill to counteract being on at all times, called the “Right to Disconnect”, where private companies comprised of 10 or more employees are no longer legally allowed to expect staff to respond to digital correspondence outside of work hours. Failure to comply will result in a $250 fine per occurrence. As HRM reported last year, France was and Germany both have similar bills in place. Could Australia be next?

While flexibility in the workplace is overwhelmingly positive, it’s important to keep the option open, ensure digital communications don’t get out of hand and, well, be flexible.

The post It’s Flexible Working Day! How does your organisation compare? appeared first on HRM online.

Good advice doesn’t necessarily come from the sources you might expect. After an absence of 10 months, rapper Kanye West returned to Twitter with some stream-of-consciousness aphorisms that could have interesting application for those working in HR. For instance:

“As a creative your ideas are your strongest form of currency.”

HR isn’t often identified as a hub of innovation but the question is: why not? HRM recently wrote about how HR can measure innovation, and become innovative itself.

From recruiting to exit interviews, and everything in between, there are multiple opportunities to stand out by adopting creative HR practices. Take two companies unique approach to hiring and firing.

Amazon and online retailer Zappos both have a Pay to Quit policy. In order to weed out the really committed employees from the also-rans, Amazon offers employees $2000 in their first year to quit the business. This increases each year after that with a maximum of $5000. At Zappos, the company offers to pay new employees for all the time they spend training, plus one month’s salary and all they have to do in return is quit. They say it saves them megabucks in time wasted on the wrong hire.

Back to our hip-hop sage who also proclaims:

“Distraction is the enemy of vision.”

Here Kanye is right on the money when it comes to one of the central issues for HR right now. The transactional side of HR that has for years occupied the profession – such as benefits admin etc – is becoming a distraction. It’s the part of HR already receiving a heavy dose of automation, and predictions are it will one day be fully automated.

HR can and should be positioning themselves as the ‘people strategy visionary’ of an organisation. Just saying “people are our most valuable asset” isn’t good enough. HR must help shape the vision for what employees can achieve individually and together for the success of the business, and then empower individuals to get there.

When Kanye posted this tweet, it showed how much (unintentional) insight he has into changing management styles over the past decade.

“Make decisions based on love not fear.”

Adopting a stoic, strong, remote persona in the workplace isn’t going to win you any fans. If leaders disregard the importance of connecting with employees, they lose the benefit of a dedicated, long-term team.

While it may not be their obligation, for a lot of organisations people’s personal issues are now being tackled head on. In other companies, organisational resilience is beginning with building resilience in all employees.

If an employee is struggling with money problems, domestic violence or depression, decisions about their working life need to come from a place of caring and compassion. Doing that will create a loyalty that is hard to break.

When it comes to feedback, too, honesty is imperative. An employee will appreciate truthful and transparent feedback if it comes from a desire to help them improve, rather than couched in critical terms.

As Vartika Kashyap, HRM contributor and manager at Proof Hub, put it, “as a leader, you must do your best to eliminate this feeling of feedback being a dreaded commodity. Feedback should be something that employees become willing to accept, and ask for on their own.”

Motivation to be in HR

We’ll leave the last words to the self-help/philosophy book West is tweeting, as we’re pretty sure it’s directed mostly at people working in HR:

Amen to that.

Photo credit: NRK P3  / CC BY-NC-SA

The post Kanye West: the world’s best HR adviser? appeared first on HRM online.

For the last 30 years, HR transformation has been occurring along a simple theme: HR is not about HR, HR begins and ends with business. We find that many who focus on HR transformation are focused almost exclusively on how to organise the HR department. We believe in designing the right HR department, however focusing ONLY on the HR department is a narrow focus of the overall effectiveness of HR.

Using our empirical research with over 100,000 respondents and advisory services with dozens and dozens of HR leaders, we have distilled nine dimensions of an effective HR department.

9 dimensions of an effective HR department*

1. Reputation: What is the reputation of the HR Department?
2. Context/Deliverables: What are the criteria (settings) that shape HR work?
3. Strategy: What is the mission or strategy of the HR department focused on capabilities?
4. Design (process, roles, and structure): How is the HR department organised?
5. HR and Organisation Capability: How does HR facilitate the definition and creation of organisation capability?
6. Analytics: How do we make better HR investments and choices?
7. Practices: How do we create HR practices?
8. Professionals: What do HR professionals need to be, know, and do to be effective?
9. Work Style: How does HR go about doing its work

These nine criteria for an HR department may be seen as delivering value at four stages:

1. Foundational/Administrative: HR focuses on efficiency.
2. Functional: HR focuses on best practices.
3. Strategic: HR focuses on delivering strategy.
4. Outside in: HR focuses on stakeholders outside the organisation.

By comparing the nine criteria with these four stages, you can get a matrix that can be used to audit the overall effectiveness of an HR department.

The stages of HR departments

© 2017 Dave Ulrich, The RBL Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

These 9 domains represent the criteria for an effective overall HR department.

Review the 9 domains by the 4 stages of HR departments in Figure 1 and assess where your HR department is today. Use a scale from one to ten, with one being “low” and ten being “high”, to assess your HR department in each domain and stage.

The challenge is that you can’t do everything well, so if you’ve already addressed the low hanging fruit, think about what do you can decide to stop doing. You may be doing work in HR that the business loves you for that isn’t in line with where the business is going.

How do you manage that? It’s about being aggressive with priorities. You need to take one or two items and get real clear. Take the nine domains and focus on the one or two. You get in trouble when you try and do all things equally.

*These nine criteria for an effective HR department build upon and extend the RBL Group’s empirical research and books in a number of areas, such as: RBL’s 13 milestones of HR transformation (HR Transformation), the research results from round 7 of the HR Competency Study (HRCS), research from “Leadership Brand,” RBL’s organisation capability audit tool, RBL’s four practices of an HR department, RBL’s work on HR value creation and “HR from the Outside In,” and HR department questions from the book, “Victory through Organisation.”

The post Audit the effectiveness of your HR department appeared first on HRM online.

On the totem pole, HR isn’t usually first when it comes to decision-making in the C-suite. Despite the fact that culture and people are becoming increasingly important factors when it comes to sustainability, businesses often still treat HR as a go-to only when the going gets tough.

Staying abreast of social issues such as diversity, gender, race, and ableness falls within the realm of HR. Culture is often instilled by how these values are fostered and treated, and how they are intertwined with the mission and values of an organisation. In the eyes of leadership however, these functions often don’t relate directly to driving the growth or profit of a business so down the pole (along with the budget) HR goes.

Less learned and visionary leaders don’t seem aware that these very social lenses HR has developed can keep them buoyant today and well into the future. Let me explain.

Disruption, innovation, agility; whatever trendy jargon you want to use. We’re all looking to find clever, low-cost ways to edge us above the competition. Yes, technology often supplies this. Yet in our hunt for the next big thing to out-think our rivals, we continue to overlook HR’s rich understanding of modern humans, and how this relates externally to a business’ consumers.

It’s now widely agreed upon by the likes of McKinsey, Catalyst and EY that diverse teams, and especially boards, produce better financial profits and ROIs. Yet meeting a quota alone doesn’t bring about more profit just as having a flashy automation process doesn’t necessarily mean greater efficiency. It’s dependent upon two additional things: education and implementation.

The rise of social issues within the zeitgeist (race, socio-economics, gender) is creating movement.  Thanks to the democratisation of the internet, the current is carrying us towards trust, transparency and the making of ethical businesses with higher purposes. Let’s take gender for example. A new $28T global female consumer economy is well on its way full of clever female graduates, disruptive female business owners, and glass-breaking female CEOs – both at home and in the workplace.

In a traditional-lensed world where business was built by men, women are becoming enormous contributing participants both economically and socially and HR understands this implicitly. It’s essential for successful HR heads to lead C-suiters towards the water in understanding why this will impact business strategy in the years ahead. More importantly, they can remind us how valuable the considerations of a gender lens could be for innovating your product and service for this powerful, overlooked “blue ocean” market.

Consider how educating staff from R&D, marketing, sales, and front-facing operations with the literacy of gendered perspectives could reveal blind spots and uncover opportunity. For over a decade now, beauty care company Dove has been praised for its disruptive marketing, revealing authentic insights into the modern woman. BP recently unveiled a new app for on-the-go petrol payment so you never have to leave your car – perfect for mums with kids. Shebah is Australia’s Uber improvement catering specifically to women and mums that are worried by Uber’s lax concern for their safety. Giant bikes have created a new line for women called Liv that don’t just “pink and shrink” but are geometrically constructed to the measurements of women’s bodies.

HR is a game-changer for business in ways that C-suiters and leaders don’t yet comprehend. It’s up to you to build the business case and rewire your leaders’ understanding of HR’s scope as both an internal function and growth driver. It’s time for HR to raze the walls of their business silo and lead the charge towards the bigger opportunity outside its walls.

Bec Brideson is a gender-intelligence entrepreneur and author of “Blind spots: How to uncover and attract the fastest emerging economy”.

The post Good HR is the best weapon a business can have appeared first on HRM online.