HR Trends: Get Inspired by Agile Approaches

Agile company definition

Any company that can adapt to the various changes in the market quickly is known as an agile company. There are numerous changes that take place in the business world currently and the sooner a company shifts and adapts to them, the better it will be for their performance and that of their workforce. It may not be easy to identify an agile company, but some characteristics include; flexibility, quick responses to changes, good customer relations, and is always fast-moving. Such companies are usually competitive and they have a good structure that facilitates effective communication.

Agility and Human Resources

In business, there are always challenges that most organizations face even when they have good initiatives in place. When pandemics such as COVID-19 occur, they bring about restrictions that affect the movement of goods and services in and out of countries. Specific strategies are put in place that cause changes in HR trends, such as lockdown, curfew and closure of businesses and recreational centers.

Businesses are forced to develop an agile mind-set that will facilitate their survival in the digital HR. They also need to work on diversity and inclusion so as to create a system that favors both male and female leadership. businesses had to put pressure on their Human resources departments since that is the main sector that deals with efficiency, effectiveness, and organizations’ growing capabilities. The human resource sector is best engineered to provide agility to a company thus realigning the company’s strategies.

Why go for an Agile HR?

Most organizations understand that the HR sector is the best place to focus on when planning to incorporate an agile mind-set. The Human Resources department also is the best sector to initiate innovation management. Therefore, for the HR professionals to effectively include agility in this department, they should use the following approaches.

1. Be Systematic
   Agility is a huge process that requires an organization to be systematic. For this to be effective, it would be best not to introduce the agile approach to the entire HR department. Please select a section of the department’s members, then introduce agility to them experimentally. It is better when you do it in shifts. Watch how they react to it and how effective it is turning out to be. After you prove how worthy it is, then you can decide whether to incorporate it or not.
2. Be Consistent
   Ensure that agility touches on all sectors of the human resources department. This ensures that there is balance and thus equal and timely progress in the department. For example, Do not start on it then give up along the way.
3. Use all Agile Tools
   Your employees will be able to keep track of their progress and generate real-time feedback which is necessary when implementing new strategies that affect the business. Agile tools will enable CEOs and employees to be able to set straight their goals in regards to the overall business.

How to Implement this HR Innovation

For the existence of an agile organization, the human resource managers ought to convince their workers to unleash their potential and put all their focus on effectiveness. The agile organization will, in turn, have to follow the following four managerial practices:

• Empowering, and the autonomy of workers using the principle of holacracy.
• Appreciating and valuing the contribution of all employees through rewards and bonuses as motivation.
• Actively listening to their opinions and views on various matters affecting the company, thus encouraging open communication.
• Planning of jobs and skills through proper training and coaching.

Implementing Agile Management

For an organisation to successfully implement agile management in its spheres, it will have to focus on the efficiency of flow and not capacity utilisation. A company does not necessarily have to utilise all its resources to full capacity to implement this HR innovation. They may otherwise enforce frugal innovation to cut on costs.

1. Focusing on Work Flow Efficiency

Full utilization of capacity usually does not work well for most organizations due to lack of collaboration. Most workers will focus solely on their tasks, leaving little to no room for cooperation. The companies’ workers will also be overworked, thus leading to a decrease in productivity.

Most companies need to understand that when implementing diversity management in their workforce, pay close attention to work and not workers. Also pay attention to how you can optimize workflow efficiency by engaging in a methodology known as swarming.

Swarming simply means that whenever one of the HR professionals completes a task, they go round and help those who are yet to complete it instead of starting a new one. Swarming is an effective method since it encourages collaboration among professionals. In business, it is always about teamwork, optimizing team effort and not individual achievements.

2. Use of Work In Progress

Companies should also use the Work In Progress tactic when implementing agility in the workforce. This is because WIP will clearly outline and control the total number of tasks a team is working on. In business, when a workforce has a lot on its plate, it will slow down the general workflow efficiency even if the employee experience is good.

When using the work in progress, companies need to adjust task limits in each stage. That means that no task should be added to the current workload if employees are not yet done. In this manner, you will learn the work capacity that your workers can accommodate at a given time and the type of response they give during that period. You can also implement neuromanagement and holacracy to increase performance and productivity of your workers.

3. Employ the Use of Decentralized Decision Making

A company can only successfully implement agile approaches when they develop a decentralized decision-making system. This means that the HR managers have the power to decide on different projects for the company’s well-being since they work and understand the intricate details of the job. It also means that they give voice to their workers and listen to their opinions about various issues affecting the company’s performance. Agility encourages matrix management thus improving collaboration and communication.

In this case, one can define it as a liberated company. Decentralized decision making also promotes workplace diversity and focuses more on creating a digital culture usually encourages working collaboratively. However, workers should not mistake this and do as they please.

What could be Better as an HR Innovation for a Company?

One better way for a company to steer ahead is through innovativeness. Innovation improves the culture and well-being of the workers and focuses on the company’s main agendas thus ruling out any uncertainty. Effective innovation comes when an organization offers chances for upskilling for their employees.

It also presents itself when CEOs send out applications to applicants in various countries and conduct a diverse recruitment process in their company. In addition, Innovations confirm better response and result when a company is trying to upscale and beat all odds in the market.

During the onboarding process, managers ought to check in with the new hires and watch how well they integrate with other employees. Here, we shall look at some of the ways agility and human resources trends intertwine.

HR Trends and Agile Approaches

When misfortunes strike businesses, CEOs develop uncertainty on the fate of their businesses. They are forced to develop solutions and strategies to help them stay at par. Businesses and companies in 2020 had to come up with agile approaches that went hand-in-hand with the HR trends

Most companies learnt that agile project management is effective and it changes the thinking and operations in most workplaces worldwide, including Google, Microsoft and many others. These HR trends saw that employees gave priority to their customers and leaders developed a common ground for all employees to air their views and opinions.

The human resources department, in turn, had benefits when they adapted to agile approaches such as upskilling and onboarding depending with the employee experience. Below are HR trends and how they incorporate agile approaches in performance management.

1. Improving Workplace Agility: How much Freedom do your Employees have?

As an agile approach, diversity in the workplace means that you accord your workers some amount of freedom. As the head, since the world is digitalising, it is best to use remote management whenever it is convenient. By giving employees the freedom to work from home you will be enforcing the current HR management trends. You will also be giving room for improvement in performance management.

Managing remote employees is one of the most famous HR trends in 2020. Currently, most business organizations are incorporating digital HR in their organization thus they prefer to work remotely than report at their stations as they used to.

Managers are now confident that remote working is compelling and they no longer have doubts. Remote working requires a desktop, access to strong internet connectivity and a peaceful environment to help them focus on the tasks at hand. Even after the pandemic ends, remote working is likely to continue, for it is convenient for most employers and employees.

2. Improving Workplace Agility- Is it time for Virtual Learning

Most companies in different countries are embracing agile approaches through virtual learning. Since the HR department is slowly converting to digital due to various new technologies, the corporate culture is slowly coming to shape. Virtual learning is part of agile project management and it requires utmost cooperation from all members of the company.

But ever since the pandemic, workers have needed to learn how to incorporate agile approaches in business through virtual learning. The ability of organizations to swiftly shift to remote learning rather than the physical one is one step ahead into success. Thus, the situation developed among HR professionals who had to steer ahead of virtual classrooms, organizing webinar meetings, online lectures, and exams. They also had to develop ways to make the learning sessions interactive and fun so that the learning process could be objective. All these brought about diversity and inclusion.

3. Improving Workplace Agility: Remote Team Building Activities

Team building activities are vital to any company as they strengthen the bond between employees and their employers. It is an important aspect of agile approaches that bring about collaboration and innovativeness. These activities also motivate employees to work harder for the better of the company.

Most employers understand that they need to find different ways to motivate their workers. Team building encourages skills such as cooperation, communication and teamwork.

Since working from home is the new trend, employees undergo different changes and receive various responses that affect them. Agility, therefore, creates room for all these to happen.

Coaching to Support HR Innovation

It is the responsibility of HR leaders to invest in coaching support for other workers of the company. With the ever-changing world of technology, they also need to develop current flexible solutions for any matters arising in the market. The ratio of HR professionals to employees is small; therefore, HR professionals will have a hard time if they decide to offer coaching support to employees personally. In such cases, there develops the need to hire experts.

HR professionals need to understand that there is workplace diversity and that each individual relates differently to different goals. Also, human beings need to connect with various philosophies and phenomena to give 100% cooperation. Therefore, HR managers need to offer coaching opportunities to employees to boost their morale, psyche, offer them a platform to air their grievances and discover various learning and growth needs. Employees should feel safe to report toxic managers and any form of mistreatment. This way, they will be meeting the critical needs of their employees.

Example of Companies that have already taken the Plunge

Numerous companies all over the globe have taken coaching support due to the benefits it offers to them as a company. The Human Resource Director of BNP Paribas has received rewards and awards from the digital HRD in September 2015, which is an annual award by the ANDRH.

The company BNP Paribas offer support to retail employees who are spread across fifteen different countries; in three phases.

• Training their employees on the implications of digital HR, its applications and implications.
• They provide new management strategies that focus not on the hierarchical order but collaboration.
• The company raised awareness of digital tools to employees, such as the use of e-book, laptops and smartphones.

The CoachHub solution

Through tenets such as group coaching, this company provides ground for agility and improved adaptability; thus, it is in a better position for competitiveness. CoachHub aims at supporting organizations and companies that have an interest in going through this digital transformation. The company offers to coach and uses the internet and online platform to facilitate the mastery of digital tools. CoachHub has multiple objectives, such as offering simple, pragmatic and easily accessible coaching services and experience.

The company allows your employees to materialize the training and experience they have gained and use them effectively for long-term goals. It offers both individual and group coaching depending on the needs. What are you waiting for? Hire them today!