DISRUPTING HR IN A VUCA WORLD

DISRUPTING HR IN A VUCA WORLD

HR DISRUPTED - THE BOOK EVERY 'HR' PERSON SHOULD READ

HR DISRUPTED - THE BOOK EVERY 'HR' PERSON SHOULD READ

Lucy Adams ‘doesn’t mince her words’ as my Scottish mother would say!

As a fellow Glaswegian, I was drawn to Lucy’s compelling case and urgency to waste no time getting HR folk to refresh and reinvent their business of ‘people’. Acknowledging the VUCA status of our world, her advice is generous, her reasoning credible and if you’re not on her wavelength then you’re in dire straits.

No matter where you are on the ‘HR Change Continuum’ I know you’ll glean plenty of useful ideas for your organisation. And no doubt, some of you should share your super HR practices with Lucy. However, I was appalled listening to a now ex-employee of one of Australia’s most iconic sporting institutions who recounted their ‘manager’s inability to lead’ and HR’s lack of support; sadly it was too late when the CEO listened and acknowledged his plight. This recent encounter heightened my drive to change Australian workplaces and getting the HR space involved in leadership.

HR Disrupted asks you to turn your HR upside down and:

·        Help leaders be more human in their communications

·        Become the people experts, not the policy police

·        Encourage staff to challenge the status quo

·        Be a provider of opportunities to innovate and be creative

·        Get fresh people to lead departments to see possibilities

·        Treat Employees as Adults, Consumers and importantly, as Human beings (a new HR model = EACH)

·        Listen to the five generations in your workforce, they all have different needs, and

·        Ask, How was work for you this week? Or, What policies frustrated you most? (And do something immediately about it.)

It would appear that Australia isn’t alone in creating policies based on the lowest common denominator (i.e. one person stuffing up) opposed to removing the ‘HR Policy Handbook’ and creating the People Book – building great people and leadership. 

Three components of the book were standouts:

PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS/REVIEWS

I cracked open the champers when I read “remove appraisals” – thankfully someone agrees with me on this one. I have honestly never met anyone who enjoys the performance appraisal system. Have you? We waste so much of our time, people’s time and money to roll out, stuff it up and roll it back up. We would be best investing in helping our people and leaders give and receive awesome feedback.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Chapter Thirteen delved into my world of Leadership Development; challenging the approach to developing leadership by sending people off on a one day workshop or a six-week program. Whilst I didn’t agree with all of Lucy’s thinking, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to listen to the employee as a consumer of our products - not HR or the business alone. We do know that people struggle to implement their learning – it’s too easy to fall back to what is known opposed to showing courage and experimenting and failing in our attempt to change.

MOTIVATION

Motivation was examined at length; identifying that the key role of HR is to help leaders learn and understand, what drives people. Given that we know most people want to be respected, appreciated and work with a company doing something special, we can focus less on the need to onboard and off-load as people will be motivated to stay. When HR become the people experts they will be doing things terribly different.

The crux of Lucy’s message is this: HR need to work with leaders to become amazing human beings, helping them communicate in a human way: saying sorry if they get it wrong, use storytelling to engage, and praise staff in a natural and spontaneous way.  When this is done, HR have done a super job. In actual fact, HR might do them out of a job!

As more Millennials take on leadership roles and ‘command and control’ baby boomers leave their roles of authority we will have a greater opportunity to disrupt HR. However, that might take a while, so we need the current HR gang to take the lead and exemplify the mindset of VUCA world ready leaders. They’ll do this by building trust, lessening threats, encourage collaboration, connecting people across organisations and have a generosity of spirit.

I believe you get the gist that I’m quite fond of this book – so much so, I’d say it’s been the best read in my reading challenge.

Your actions include: read the book, share the book with people in your organisation and start doing HR differently. And, whilst I prefer to spruik my own workshops, I notice that Lucy will be in Australia in May – check out www.disruptivehr.co.uk

I’d love to discuss Lucy’s ideas and of course my practice – so let’s connect.

I’m endeavouring to read 52 Business/Professional/Personal Development books in 52 weeks. Yep, that’s one a week. As I read each book, I’ll share my thoughts, learning and recommendations. If there is a book that you’ve been meaning to read, let me know and I’ll read it for us!

Source: HRDisrupted