Evolution of Human Resources
In the
past, the role of the Human Resources (HR) function was to make people and
organizations grow. It revolved around administrating employee life cycle from
hire to retire process, primarily managing attendance, trainings and
compensation.
The
HR team used to perform functions that added limited value to organization,
like performing mundane tasks and operational reporting like % complete
for performance reviews completed, number of employees
hired , number of managers trained etc.. In case of large or global
organizations where the HR data resides in various disparate systems, at times
HR faced issues due to inaccurate reporting of head count data as- one of the important
decision data point for business & finance. All of this resulted in HR
functions being merely treated as an administrative function.
Over a period of time, the job of HR evolved in managing employee aspirations, organizational behavior, employee motivation etc. Performance objectives & measurable assessments became part of the KPI. In the recent times, there is an expectation for HR to be a "Business Partner" and thereby, they must see themselves as business people who specialize in HR and as a partner that can significantly contribute towards the organization's business goals
Expectation from Modern HR
It is time for HR to reassess their role and contribute to successful organizations of the future. In today's world, HR partners need to be agile, creative & innovative. An HR Business Partner is not only expected to be aware of the organization's vision and align its workforce to its goals but they are also expected to have an end to end understanding of organization's business. From having a background of the specifics of how the business works, they are expected to have an understanding of financials to be aware of the performance of peers and competition. This understanding is vital for HR to be able work closely with business leaders.
Getting ready for Next Gen HR
In today's world, there is a change in outlook to recognize employees as Human "Capital" instead of Human "Resources". HR needs to be more digital than manual, more proactive than reactive and more strategic than operational. The expectation is to be predictive & analytical and analyze the data behind the data. In order to be ready for the Next Gen HR business partner, it is critical to identify key performance indicators and effectively measure them and assess vis-à-vis industry standards.
Today, HR partners need to ask few strategic questions like:
- Are we looking at the data beyond the HR reports and dashboard?- How am I doing vis-à-vis my peers & competition?
- How do I keep track of my performance compared with industry benchmark?
- How do I quantify performance across various HR functions?
- How do I identify problem areas and measure actual improvement?
The Problem - What to measure and How to measure?
As
mentioned by HR Folks International - Human capital is
largely intangible and difficult to measure as a component in a company's
business success. It is very
important to measure and analyze the priorities so you can recognize the areas
of improvement and identify opportunities.
In my opinion, effective measurements
of HR KPIs are critical to the success of any organization. When it comes to
measurement of outcomes or KPIs, my observation has been that HR has limited tools
as compared to other divisions within the organization. There are well
established frameworks to measure performance of departments in organization
(e.g. Finance, or Sales or production unit etc.) and co-relate the impact to
the business. However, when it comes to measuring the performance of HR, it
becomes subjective and quite a challenge to quantify the outcome and its
tangible impact to business.
As a result it becomes
imperative to not just measure and quantify, but also identify those indicators
for measurement which actually contribute towards the organization's vision and
goals.
Treat the cause and not the symptom
It is not only important to look
at the scorecard and analyze the results but it also important to look at the
underlying "data behind the data" to trace the root cause, identify areas of
improvement and take corrective action.
For e.g., let's take the
Business Function of Talent Acquisition and analyze Recruitment Metrics &
Scorecard for KPI like Time to hire" to "Cost to Hire"
Key
Questions -
Is my organization taking more
time to hire employees thereby having a direct impact to employee productivity
and top line revenue?
Is there higher cost to
onboard an employee thereby having an impact on the company's bottom line and
losing edge over competition?
Conclusion -
After the analysis of the scorecard in HR Pulse solution, it looks like I may have to review the end to
end hiring process and remediate the bottle necks that are leading to higher turnaround times
to onboard employees and there by losing competitive advantage.
Impact - After implementing the re-engineered hiring business process, the HR Pulse provides ability to generate "Before" and "After" Scorecard for the same KPI and demonstrate continuous performance improvements and tangible impact to the business
Infosys HR Pulse -An Infosys HCM Scorecard Solution
Infosys HR Pulse is an
analytics solution that provides quantitative and visual measures of
performance indicators in the form of a SCORE CARD. The solution defines the
Metrics & KPIs that are critical for an organization with the ability to
track performance of the indicators against the organization's targets and
industry benchmarks. The solution helps to measure and track progress,
highlights improvements and deterioration trends and pinpoints to the HR
leadership, an accurate idea of their performance. The purpose of the Infosys HR
Pulse is to enable the HR Partners to monitor what matters most, so that they can
focus on meeting strategic objectives.
The key features of HR Pulse
are
- Generation of metrics
pertaining to relevant HR KPIs and empower HR partners to formulate strategy to
take corrective action and improve measures
- Logical grouping of HR Metrics
and Key Performance Indicators within business functions
- Provide ability to slice &
dice the data and display trend analysis across entities (business units,
locations, department etc.)
- Compare performance of various
HR Metrics with organization's internal targets and service industry
benchmarks.
- Introspect and align actions
with strategy for continuous performance improvements.
- Primarily focus on improving
the performance and contribution of Unit HR Manager all the way up to the
macro-level decision making of Senior HR Management
- Enhanced decision making
capability of leadership by highlighting areas which need attention
- Enable HR quantifying
corporate objectives with the performance of every employee and department in the workforce
HR Analytics as the foundation - Infosys HR Pulse
HCM analytics is the
foundation of all HR strategic initiatives. The important trend analysis that
will help in decision making can be enabled by HR analytics. In today's digital
world, one would think that HR analytics would be a regular feature by now, but
contrary to this belief there are many organizations that are still exploring
the possibilities to use HR analytics.
Infosys
HR Pulse offering can be a part of the HCM implementation on Cloud or
On-Premise. This solution can be deployed along with the HCM implementation and
lay foundation for HR Analytics as the foundation.
This
solution can also be deployed for clients who have implemented HCM on Cloud or
On premise and enhance their HR analytics capabilities that help identify
functions that are performing better and areas that need improvement. The build-in adapters that comes along with Infosys
HR pulse solution provides seamless integration with leading HR On premise ERP
or Cloud solutions.
I believe once HR is
effectively able to measure and quantify the outcomes, it will certainly have a
positive impression within an organization and contribute to make an impact on
the organization goals and vision. I think this will go a long way to establish
HR as a key business partner and strengthen its value in an organization that
it truly deserves!!!
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