Not another HR Operating model POV…
A reflection on the future of HR: Siloed HR service delivery models are no longer sufficient to deliver on today's business demands.
Driven by technology disrupting HR operations, we see an increasing need to integrate, collaborate, deliver faster, and, most importantly, bring different skills and mindsets to the table. This emphasis on new skills and mindsets underscores the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the future of HR.
But what does this mean for how we organize our HR functions? We do not believe there is one magical operating model that will solve the problem. Still, the future of HR should be more agile, data-driven, and, most importantly, focused on experience-driven outcomes. This focus on experience will guide our decisions and actions, ensuring alignment with business outcomes and HR end-goals.
Most midsize to large companies have some version of the “Ulrich model” where shared services answer HR inquiries and run operations, COEs deliver programs and policies, and HR Business Partners provide a range of services, from fielding HR questions and transactions to strategic talent planning. With the seismic shifts in HR technology necessitating both process and skills changes; and ultimately impacting HR organizational design, it is time for HR to evolve and rise.
REVOLUTIONIZE THE EXPERIENCE: MOVING BEYOND HR SERVICES TO HR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES.
Rethinking HR's Purpose
In the future, HR will no longer just be a service and risk reduction function. HR must define and OWN its core customer experiences, which deliver services to its end users. Reframing what HR does through the lens of the customer experience allows us to solve problems in a more integrated way with shared outcomes and measurements. This new lens means we must look beyond HR to think about the daily issues that employees and managers may face and create practical experiences with digital and human channels to solve them. By doing this, we reshape HR organizational design and the skills needed for HR's success.
For example:
· New technologies such as LLM-driven chatbots can significantly reduce the need for service agents but increase the need for new skills in HR, such as experience design, content editing, and chatbot development.
· Moving to a SaaS HCM requires new skills and teams made up of subject matter experts and technologists to manage quarterly releases.
These changes must be underpinned by a solid operational core connecting accurate HR data and a strategic vision unifying around shared outcomes. This model delivers continuous process improvements and automation, requiring expertise from data scientists, data architects, risk and operations experts, technologists, user experience and design experts, and business strategists.
CREATE AGILITY: FROM COEs > INTEGRATED PRODUCT TEAMS
What a new model could look like
HR teams need to look for opportunities to break down functional silos that have created friction in HR operating models of the past and find ways to collaborate differently, with speed and agility. Technology continues to push what is possible, but organizations must create teams that can solve problems together to take advantage of technological innovation. Bringing together the people who develop strategies, processes, and programs into the same team as those who build, test, and program will be critical to the future success of the HR function. How HR organizes capabilities into these teams also matters, and while there is not one correct answer as to how, there are a few suggested starting points in the market including Bersin's Systemic HR 4 R Framework* where HR is organized into Reskill, Redesign, Recruit, and Retain and Deloitte’s People Product Operating Model*, which organizes HR into Join, Experience, Plan, and Perform. McKinsey summarized 5 emerging trends in this article.
From a skills perspective, HR needs to shift away from its too-heavy reliance on program managers and subject matter experts and towards new skills such as product management, experience design, and engineering expertise. HR senior leadership will need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset more akin to that of a software startup CEO, leaving behind the quest for perfection and moving towards a celebration of iterative experience improvement.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BUSINESS PARTNERS: DATA-DRIVEN STRATEGIC ADVISORS, INNOVATORS, AND VALUE CREATORS
This shift in HR's way of working has the potential to unlock and evolve the role of the HRBP to that of a business value creator and innovator. These teams drive a business unit- or geography’s people and talent agendas. They know the people issues of their business intimately, but instead of each creating their solutions in a silo through "projects" relying on scarce resources, in the new model, they share their business issues with the product team, relying on data to help tell their story, and letting product teams solve their most pressing challenges; they remain the voice of the business and the primary customer.
This differentiated approach is where innovation happens; data provides insights to shape solutions that product teams can scale to other parts of the business. Everyone wins. The business partner of the future is a business major with a double minor in HR and technology. They leverage a consultative skillset across organizational design, change and adoption, talent planning, leadership coaching, and technology investments to support their key strategic initiatives.
This change in focus and capabilities will also necessitate a change in the silos of corporate functions at enterprises of scale. The HR Product leader will own their own HRIS and HR Product Strategy. The HRIS technology budget and people will need to be fully embedded into the HR Product Operating model.
Some concluding thoughts
This new way of working requires a new way of thinking about HR and the larger enterprise as a connected ecosystem of services, systems, and experiences. We do not recommend a wholesale shift at once; instead, focus on your business reality. Is your business doing a lot of M&A? Is the business creating a new business vertical? How can you rethink what services you put into a new architecture to deliver better solutions that can drive optimal business outcomes?
We’d love to talk more about how we help shape our clients’ HR Operating Models of the future, get in touch!
www.horizonhuman.com
Skills Curious? Here are a few things to consider
Why Skills?
Many modern HR organizations are considering or have already begun transitioning to skills-based talent management. This shift presents truly promising opportunities, but skills aren’t a new concept so what do we mean when we say "skills?" We asked ChatGPT and got the following answer: Skills refer to the abilities, expertise, and proficiencies that an individual possesses and can apply to perform tasks and achieve goals effectively. Said differently, skills are data about people.
Skills are the currency of the future of work; jobs are changing faster than before. Using a skills-based framework can enable organizations to:
Hire Faster - Find the best candidate for a job faster in a competitive talent market by analyzing the skills associated with open jobs and matching them with the skills and experience of internal and external candidates.
Retrain - Studies have shown that it is much cheaper and more accessible for an organization to retrain than to hire for skills, "it's not a hire to grow game. It's a reskill to grow game "(Bersin). Skills can be the language used to analyze employee performance data and find areas where more training and development may be needed.
Redeploy - Skills can be used to match talent to alternative career paths, unlocking organizational agility to where a skill is needed the most.
Retain – It’s not a secret, most people want to advance in their careers and keep learning, skills-based talent management strategies can give workers transparency and agency to manage their careers through putting data in their hands, provide suggested training and experiences needed to achieve a new goal.
How does a skills framework change HR?
More than ever, HR must step up and get real about the change that is happening. The role of HR is changing from coach/ talent strategy/ operations to strategy/ work redesign/ digital leadership. HR needs to look at its own readiness to lead the organization into the unknown and start using skills as a common language that can be shared not just within HR but across the business, with finance and other partners.
How to prep for the shift to skills:
Use HR as the use case: study how AI (or other external influence such as a technology implementation) shifts how your team works, find emerging skills, complete a gap analysis against current skills and define a plan to close the gaps.
Leverage skills technology (realistically): Today's HCMs (SAP, Oracle, Workday etc.) were not built to solve the skills problem, they can offer a "skills lake" which will not get you there, nor will an off-the-shelf skills taxonomy sold to you by a skills tech vendor. Instead, we recommend using machine learning technology to help build your skills taxonomy by identifying your organization's skills inputs and outputs, connecting your existing data sources to create a current state map, and continuously analyze how skills are shifting based on training, hiring, and redeployment.
Technology alone cannot get you there. You also need to create organizational agility through a new way of working. To achieve outcomes such as faster hiring, upskilling, and internal mobility, your HR teams need to build agility muscles. This includes shifting to a product or agile operating model where cross-functional teams work in outcome-based sprints to solve big problems. Use design thinking not just to understand the end customers but also to drive culture and adoption of a new way of working.
Start small and scale; have a use case sponsored by the business, i.e., a genuine business needs to solve and work on small test cases that can lead to larger rollouts. One example focused on front-line operations workers whose jobs are being disrupted by AI. By using machine learning to match an employee's skills to potential new career paths and adding in suggested learning and open jobs to apply to, we can create more transparency and give these workers agency over their careers. This pilot could easily be expanded to other areas of the business.
A few concluding thoughts:
Transitioning to a Skills-based organization is a tall order; most companies are closer to being "skills-curious" than “skills-based” today.
Moving to a skills-based workforce design is not just another tech implementation. This shift requires different working methods and a heavy investment in change management for HR, Employees, and Senior Leadership.
Skills is a new way of looking at workforce data- a clean data strategy and tech strategy are needed to derive value from the shift.
Find a willing customer and start small
Want to learn more about successfully building and implementing a skills strategy for your organization? Contact us!
WHY YOUR SAAS IMPLEMENTATION UNDERDELIVERED
~ Five years ago, SaaS (Software as a Service)was at the peak of its hype cycle. CIOs, CHROs, and CFOs were sold SaaS solutions that would help them efficiently and securely consolidate and manage critical information, scale, innovate, and plan for work while effectively reducing operational costs. CHROs were sold on the promise of a better user experience, driving the adoption of employee and manager self-service, lessening the administrative burden on their teams, and reducing the reliance on engineering.
Well, did it happen?
I mean, partially. Maybe? Listen, the cloud has been clouding. It works, although it's added some unanticipated complexity.
We're happy not to have servers, etc. on-premise. But did CFOs get their value, and were CHROs able to deliver a better user experience? I suspect the answer is a pretty resounding "not yet."
So why has the shift to SaaS been so challenging, especially in HR? We have some thoughts:
Overblown expectations - the mistaken belief that technology alone could change how work in HR gets done.
Flawed business cases - to gain efficiency and promise out of SaaS, HR needs different skill sets and ways of working to manage sometimes enormous quarterly releases. Many initial business cases did not consider that HR and HRIS teams needed to change and, in some cases, grow to take advantage of all SaaS offers.
Letting vendors set the HR strategic roadmap – the opportunity to continuously improve through technology is a new muscle for HR teams. We're seeing HR leaders being sold solutions on a vendor roadmap that may not even address their primary strategic challenges. The chasing shiny objects syndrome is real.
Skills and organizations not aligned to a new way of working - With quarterly releases, you need a team that understands legacy technology, the latest technology, current workflows, and the future state of those workflows. This is not just a config team, and it's not just an implementation team (both are often woefully understaffed in our experience) but an actual HR product team that intimately understands the current use case and owns the actual transformational strategy.
Five years later, senior leaders stare at the infrastructure they purchased and installed and wonder what happened. They see new hype around Skills and AI and wonder if they should buy additional solutions to keep up with the innovation cycle… Sure, there have been advancements in their tech stack and capabilities, but the hype has generally yet to live up to reality…
We can help you change that. We can help you and your teams clearly define the gaps in expectations vs. reality. We can partner as you think through your organizational design, working methods, and the investment and return you should expect to see. Most importantly, we can help you set your strategic roadmap where technology is an enabler of change, not the only change.
Please drop us a note; we look forward to connecting with you!
before Jumping to AI Ask the Following Questions
I don’t know about you, but it seems as though articles on the opportunities and risks related to AI in HR are hitting us daily. This Forbes Article strikes a nice balance between hype and reality and calls out the important point that HR leaders need to consider their current tech stack and what AI features are being introduced before making any buying decisions. We think HR leaders need to ask themselves the following questions before investing in any AI technology:
Is your team ready to seize the opportunities presented by the AI tools that your existing HR technology vendors are implementing in their monthly or quarterly releases or in features that are already on? Assessing your readiness is critical for setting your team up for success.
Do you have a strategy to define use cases and pilots? And do you have the people power and expertise to run them?
Do you know what the regulations are related to AI use in HR?
Do you have a way to measure ROI? Once these tools are introduced into your environment, monitoring user behavior to determine whether the toolset is performing or creating risk, is critical.
Adopting AI in HR requires a level of expertise that many HR teams may not have today. But don't worry, we're here to help. With our 3 decades of experience, we can guide you through the evaluation and purchasing process and design implementation protocols that will ensure a smooth and successful adoption. Come check us out @horizonhuman.com #behuman
Welcome to Horizon Human
We are not just another HR advisory firm; we are a team of HR enthusiasts (aka nerds) and subject matter experts passionate about shaping the future of work.
Welcome to our corner of the internet, where we have built something special—HorizonHuman LLC. We are not just another HR advisory firm; we are a team of HR enthusiasts (aka nerds) and subject matter experts passionate about shaping the future of work.
For several decades, we have worked in and alongside best-in-class HR teams. We have helped plan and lead HR Transformation in organizations of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, and we have learned a few things along the way.
We are standing on the cusp of a new era. HR functions are undergoing profound change, and the HR teams of the future will be organized differently, will require different skills, and different leadership experience as the result. Expertise in data and technology (including Artificial Intelligence and Automation)and the ability to inspire trust, direct change and support adoption are the future calling cards of a successful HR Executive.
New technology including generative AI and rapidly advancing automation tools also have the potential to revolutionize the way HR works, and just in time, because we are also at a tipping point in HR organizations. Burned out from the pandemic, the Great Resignation of 2021, and the subsequent corporate buzzsaws in 2023 and 2024, HR professionals know they cannot continue as they have.
When we polled our partners and friends asking them about their racing thoughts at the end of a busy day, we heard the same questions repeatedly.
-How can I supply the business with the skills it needs now and in the future without growing my team, or burning my team out?
-How can I set up my organization for success in the race to implement new technology in HR?
-How can I ensure my team is ready to focus on problem-solving, agile enough to move with the speed of innovation, and can effectively lead their own teams through change?
With the promise of innovative technology on the horizon there is reason to hope that HR organizations can quickly transform. However, even in the best cases, selecting, implementing, and supporting the adoption of innovation in HR is a daunting challenge.
That is where we come in. HorizonHuman is here to work with you and your leaders. From defining your current state to understanding how new technology intersects with your existing systems and ways of working we can help you navigate and prepare for the future.
Who We Are
First, we are moms, friends, work colleagues, one of us is a digital native and one of us won’t tell you her age. We are proud HR nerds. We like to laugh, we are curious, and are always open to new perspectives. Collectively we have 3 decades of experience in defining and leading HR transformations.
At HorizonHuman, the future of HR lies in a human-centric approach, where technology is an enabler, not a driver. We are here to help you navigate the future ensuring your employees remain at the heart of your HR strategies.
Sarah & Sofia
#behuman