In this age of nonstop disruption, there is a lot of talk about optimizing organizational performance. In plain-speak, it means maximizing the potential of an enterprise’s assets to achieve business goals. Optimization is a now concern for all businesses. Challenges have impacted the talent landscape to such an extent that it has affected roles and responsibilities. Unless a new HR capability framework is set, the issue of when, where, and how a responsibility begins and who owns it, will remain a grey area in this age of disruptive, dynamic, and digital business and workplace environment.
Need for new HR capabilities
HR enjoys a unique position within the organization. In fact, HR can show the organization how it can build, strategize and deploy a new set of capabilities based on business outcomes and enabling technologies. Identifying new HR capabilities gains added significance, given the constantly evolving value chain and outcomes. These capabilities are inclusive of all factors such as processes, technologies, skills and talent at the enterprise level. Moreover, these factors play an important role in sustaining performance against business objectives. To understand an enterprise’s capabilities, one must begin by evaluating the HR function and move forward.
Deloitte’s design-deliver-sustain model focusses on helping enterprises to measure and build capability maturity so that HR can maximize its potential to achieve business outcomes. This model comprises seven critical capability groups with 21 capability elements.
The shift from a “service provider” to a “strategic business leader” includes HR taking pivotal steps for (i) designing workforce and talent solutions that are strategically valued, digitally validated, customer centric and insight driven; (ii) delivering workforce and talent solutions that enable the people to deliver on business results; and, (iii) sustaining performance.
As organizations are now focussing on high-impact solutions, the HR’s role—given the above imperative of becoming a strategic business leader—is on improving people performance and productivity by building new HR capabilities. The focus is on not only managing talent but also building an ecosystem of capabilities that are strategic to business. Therefore, it is important that HR align all its technologies, processes, services and infrastructure towards building these capabilities. It also emphasises the need for a cohesive HR system that links talent to every touch point that converge on business vision. For instance, HCM systems, such as PeopleWorks, step in to address this variance by linking talent acquisition to training, performance management to competency management and leadership development to succession planning. For enterprises, evaluating and buttressing the HR capabilities is the path to creating a high stakes, high impact HR function that will lead and partner in strategic business growth.
