TOPIC.

8 AGILE HR
LEARNING OUTCOME…..
1. Discuss and understand the context for Agile HR
2. Explain and explore four areas of Agility
3. Explain and analyse the current HR functions transforming into Agile.
4. Explore and analyse the challenges of Agile HR
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
S = Social
T = Technological
E = Economic
P = Political
E = Environment
D = Demographic
Pace of change
VUCA = Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
Source: CIPD
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND IMPACT

Source: 2017 Global Human Capital Trend, ‘ Rewriting the rules for digital ages’. Deloitte University Press
Source: 2017 Global Human Capital Trends, Rewriting the rules for digital ages. Deloitte University Press
Understanding those four curves (figure-2), and the growing gaps among
technology, individual, business and public policy is now essential to effectively
navigate the world of human capital.
HR has a unique role to play: It can help leaders and organisations adept to
technology, help people adept to new model of work and careers, and help
company as a whole to adept to and encourage change in society, regulations
and public policy.
Today’s VUCA world demands organisation to respond quickly to customers and other
stakeholders in order to gain competitive advantage.
Speed is now the new source of competitive advantage in this fast changing
environment. Speed is the new business currency.
Agility is now the buzz word. Agile has been traditionally been used in Information
Technology (IT), Marketing, Finance, Operations but now it is used in HR. HR must be
now respond quickly and fast to the changing needs of the business rather than being
a slow bureaucratic process.
Agility is the ability to anticipate and quickly respond to emerging market
opportunities. Agility combines being able to change, learn continually, and act
quickly and with flexibility for both organisation and individuals. In a world of
unrelenting changes, agility matters at four levels.
Source: Dave Ulrich
STRATEGIC AGILITY
Strategic Agility differentiates winning business strategies as they pivot from;
Industry expert to industry leader.
Market share to market opportunity.
Who we are to how customers respond to us.
Penetrating existing markets to creating new and uncontested markets.
Beating competition to redefining competition.
Blue prints for actions to dynamic processes for agile choices.
Strategic Agility is less about what an organisation does to win now and more about
how to build a capacity for continual strategic change.
ORGANISATION AGILITY
Organisational agility enables the organisation to anticipate and rapidly respond to
dynamic market conditions. More agile organisations win in the customer and investor
marketplaces.
NEW TYPES OF ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE /
MODEL
Agile isn’t for tech anymore, its been working its way into other areas and functions,
from product development to manufacturing to marketing and now its transforming
how organisations hire, develop and manage their people

Source: CIPD
INDIVIDUAL AGILITY
Individual Agility is the ability of people and leaders to learn and grow. More
Agile individual find personal well-being and deliver better business results.
Individual agility is the competence of an employee to learn and grow (learning
agility) as a leader or an employee. Learning agility has been found to be one of
the key indicators of effective leadership, and individuals who cannot change as fast
as their work demands have limited impact. Individual agility is a mindset (e.g.,
growth mindset, curiosity) and a set of skills (e.g., asking questions, taking
appropriate risks). Therefore, individual agility comes in part from predisposition
(nature)—which implies hiring individuals who are naturally agile (learn, change, and
act quickly)—but can also be enhanced through training on asking questions, taking
risks, experimenting with new ideas and actions, continuously improving by auditing
what worked and what did not, observing others, embarking on stretch assignments,
and so forth.
HR AGILITY
Human Resources practices around people, performance, information and work can
be crafted to foster strategic, organisation and individual agility. People can be
hired, promoted and trained to signal and encourage organisational and personal
agility. For example, Agility can become a behavioural factor in talent choice. As
stated by one executives ‘ If I put the right person in the right place at the right time,
I don’t have to worry about strategy because it will happen.’ Putting learning agile
employees and leaders into key roles foster strategic, organisations and individual
agility.
Rewards can be aligned to agility or the ability to change and adapt. Financial
incentives can be predicated on agility skills like learning and change. Non-financial
rewards can signal the importance of agility also.
Reason for the shift.
Companies core business and functions have largely replaced long range planning
models with a nimbler planning methods that allow them to adopt and innovate more
quickly. HR is starting to use Agile talent practices to reflect and support what the
rest of the organisation is doing.
The Areas of Transformation.
Organisations are radically changing how they manage performance and evaluate
talent, what skills they emphasize and develop, how they approach recruitment and
rewards and what they do to facilitate learning.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
Team Appraisal, Continuous feedback, Project based assessment,
COACHING
Organisation today need more coaches rather than judges.
TEAMS
Projects Work
Multidirectional feedback – upward feedback is valued
Frontline decision right (empower)
Complex team dynamics
COMPENSATION
Re-enforce agile behaviours like learning agility and knowledge sharing.
RECRUITING
Team Recruiting
LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
AI is used to identify employees prior and current roles and training programs
completed. For example what type of training and future jobs makes sense for
employees
Succession planning
CHALLENGES
Not every organisations are in pursuit of innovation.
Some jobs remain largely rule based – Accountant, Nuclear control room operators, surgeons)
Resistance within HR
A lot of processes have to change for an organisation to move away from planning based,
waterfall model (which is linear rather than flexible and adaptive), some of them are
hardwired into information system, job titles and so forth. The move towards cloud based IT,
which is happening independently, has made it easier to adopt app-based tools. But people
issues remain a sticking point. Many HR task such as traditional approaches to recruitment, on
boarding, program coordination will become obsolete, as will expertise in those areas.
Managers will need coaching skills rather than judging
Reskilling in HR function - Need more expertise in IT
THANK – YOU!!