de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Sample

Now is the time for a “radical reinvention of human resources,” declares a report from IBM’s Institute for Business Value.

Businesses are adapting to the rapidly and dramatically changing world, says the report, prefacing the findings and recommendations from a survey of more than 1,500 HR executives from a variety of industries.

How they engage with employees must also change. “Enterprises now must become inherently humanized, build engagement with remote employees, foster trust in uncertain times and cultivate a resilient, diverse workforce capable of facing whatever the future may hold.”

This, says the report, is HR 3.0.

HR thought leader Josh Bersin, who collaborated with IBM on the report, explains what that means in his introduction:

“Traditional HR 1.0 departments focus on compliance, administration, and highly efficient service delivery.

“HR 2.0 teams move toward integrated centers of excellence, and focus on training and empowering business partners to deliver solutions at the point of need.

“HR 3.0, which only 10 percent of companies have achieved, turns HR into an agile consulting organization, one that not only delivers efficient services, but also practices design thinking to push innovative solutions, cognitive tools, and transparency into the organization.”

The report found substantial agreement among the surveyed executives on the key ingredients of HR 3.0, but uncertainty among them about how to evolve their operation. Providing that guidance is the essence of the report.

After studying multiple HR practices, Bersin and IBM identified 10 “Action Areas” drawn from what the most successful companies are doing. “Our analysis has identified ten priority Action Areas critical to the HR 3.0 model. The Action Areas span the breadth of the human resources function, in some cases wholly reinventing traditional people practices.”

These 10 are:

1. Measure employee performance continuously and transparently
2. Invest in the new role of leadership
3. Build and apply capabilities in agile and design thinking
4. Pay for performance — and skills — in a fair and transparent way
5. Continuously build skills in the flow of work
6. Design intentional experiences for employees
7. Modernize your HR technology portfolio
8. Apply data-driven insights
9. Reorient and reskill your HR business partners
10. Source talent strategically

Though few companies are on the path to 3.0, those that don’t begin to evolve will be left behind.

“Even as leading companies transform their HR model, it’s clear HR 3.0 is not a destination, just a way station. The world is changing too quickly to allow even a hint of complacency,” the report concludes.

“As we continue to face unprecedented opportunities to build better businesses and a much better world, an HR 4.0 will evolve as a model to help us keep doing just that.”

Image by David Mark

[bdp_post_carousel]

When Genpact hires, it looks for people with curiosity, humility and learning agility.

Instead of focusing entirely on the usual talent indicators of background and experience, the 90,000 employee global professional services firm decided a few years ago that, as Piyush Mehta, Genpact’s CHRO, explains, “We need people who can look around corners.”

In an interview, Mehta pointed out that, “No single person has all the answers. And the answers today are not going to be relevant one or two years from now.” Leaders and future leaders are needed “who are curious and who will learn and unlearn every day.”

It began as a sort of experiment, at first hiring 100 people using that criteria. “You’d be surprised how easily curiosity and learning agility comes through when you get them talking about a topic that is important to them,” Mehta said.

Hiring managers asked behavioral questions about “How they’ve approached projects they worked on. How broad was their thinking? How were they able to connect the dots?”

“You get to understand how and what they have learned,” said Mehta.

Many of the roles those first 100 hires filled were jobs that traditionally would go to people with years more experience. Today, he said, “Many of these people are in some of the most important roles in the company.”

He, himself, was promoted to CHRO from a junior HR position several rungs down. It happened, Mehta explained, because he impressed the CEO by speaking up at a meeting he was covering for his superiors. He took a different position from the views of nearly everyone else in the room and turned out to be correct.

It’s a lesson that’s shaped his leadership style and one, he urges, new CHROs should learn. In sensitive discussions, he counsels, be transparent and avoid becoming enmeshed in the politics. “You have to lay out the facts and say, ‘This is the way it is. You may not agree with the interpretation of the facts, but if these are the facts, how would you react to them?’”

“It’s important that people see you as being transparent and trustworthy. That’s not learned overnight, and that doesn’t come with your title.”

Photo by Zach Lucero

[bdp_post_carousel]