In a recent article I highlighted the importance to transform your business in order to stay competitive in the Digital world. Your business has to become a true digital business. In a simplistic way that could be described as a business that has a strong and integrated digital sales & marketing function, has a digital & user centric approach to customer experience, embraces an agile & mobile workforce, and has an environment that fosters continuous improvement and innovation. That view is maybe a bit oversimplified but it can really help to rethink your business strategy and set targets for a digital transformation journey.

Considering the impact digital has on various parts of your business it is important also to rethink about expectations you have on various parts of your business, and HR in particular. What skills do you need in house? What type of skills do you source in a per project basis? When do you hire? Are there functions you can outsource? Are there business processes you can outsource? How do you design an Organisation that can cope with change without having to restructure every 2 or 3 years? How do you deal with talent management in a more dynamic way? These are all questions that are in the realm of HR.

When you are embarking on a digital transformation journey, it will impact most functions of your company, and HR could play a key role in such a journey. The reality though is that HR is often falling short! Why? Mainly, because the HR function has become more and more of an administrative function, that manages costs, skills and performance. HR has in many places become a weaker function focusing more and more on managing workflows rather than growing and empowering people. The risk here is that most of this can be automated or outsourced. So if HR wants to stay relevant, I has to change as well. HR needs to take a more active role in developing employees, leaders, the environment, the mindset and culture in order to fully support a digital transformation journey. If HR doesn’t move beyond managing workflows, there is little room for it as permanent function. It will be automated and outsourced.

In order to better understand how HR and organisations need to evolve, I think it is good to look at what insights we have on changes to come and how these could potentially impact organisations and culture.

• Leadership style: Are leaders equipped to quickly act on new trends and insights? Are you in a growth mode where you just want to optimise output through command control leadership? Or do you need a more user-centric approach focusing on value creation? Are you leaders familiar with concepts like design thinking or lean methodologies? How much of the company’s leader have a strong digital identity and brand? How do they engage customers and employees through social media channels?
• Mindset and Culture: Finance driven companies tend to be more risk averse than a company that has user-centric approach. How do you change the mindset so employees are not threatened when taking risks? How to do you create “safe” environments for experimentation and innovation? How to you infuse pro-activeness?
• Workplace and Culture: Can you transform your workplace to trigger more collaboration? Is the workplace designed to maximise interactions, to efficiently communicate and collaborate? Can you make it more fun to go to work? How do you get employees more energised?
• Incentives: How do you incentivise people to become more pro-active, more engaged and take controlled risks? How do you measure the contribution of the employee? Are there new metrics to put in place? Do you have platforms and processes in place that help capture internal ideas and turn them into concepts? How get employees rewarded for this?
• Modular organisation: One key question also would be how modular is your organisation? Are there processes or functions that can be automated or outsourced as your digitalise your business? Do you you need in-house marketing or is it better to purchase this as-a-service? How about HR? Are there functions that maybe should be designed from the beginning to be short-lived and outsourced? How do staff and fill skills gaps?
• Learning culture: How do you secure your employees learn and grow? Online education, video channels and platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Lynda can be a good complement to in-house training. Today we are used to Bring your own device at work, and bring your own software. Learning becomes ubiquitous. As continuous learning becomes increasingly important for individuals they will not wait for the corporate learning programs to be fall in place, how do you satisfy their learning needs to stay attractive as an employer?
• Performance management: How do you evolve your performance management metrics? Are the ones you use today still relevant? Do they need to be enriched? Should you for instance start measuring aspects like ideas generated by employees, or engagement done through social media? Can you for instance take linkedin recommendations as way to benchmark performance?

These are just a few areas where I believe HR could make an impact in a digital transformation journey, but for that the HR needs to evolve. HR has to become much more strategic, it has to go back to its roots and become more user-centric. It needs to understand evolving technology and consumer trends much better to shape the working environment.

I think the role of HR in the organisation of the future will be to design and manage an environment that captures both the aspirations and passions of employees while also delivering on the strategic objectives of the company. If HR fails to align these two, it will become obsolete or fully outsourced.

I know this article is a bit thought provoking and there might be parts missing to get a full picture, but I hope we can start a dialogue here. I look forward to hear your stories! What failed, what succeeded for companies small or large, what organisational changes and HR adjustments did you have to do to facilitate a digital transformation journey.

You can also reach out to us directly on at info@innoopolis.com