Owning Employee Transformation: The Important Role of HR

HR.com Live! podcast with guest Shrikant Pattahil on disrupting your cradle-to-grave HR strategy

When it comes to business transformation, what is HR’s responsibility? 

Believe it or not, it’s not only the job of top management, rather it takes a holistic approach where everyone is aligned with the company vision. It’s important to note that, HR is a crucial part of successful business transformation as it bridges the gap between job roles and creates a winning company culture. 

In this week’s podcast, I invited Shrikant Pattahil, the President of Harbinger Systems and Lead Architect of Harbinger Offline Content Player, to discuss how changes in organizations are happening so fast because of technology. HR is the catalyst for transformation and they have to be independent and adaptive to changes; HR has to lead.

I asked about the personalization trends where you bring people onboard and upscale them in the right ways. According to Shrikant, “HR needs to make sure they have onboarding programs, learning management programs, or learning rescaling programs specifically targeted to each and every job role.

I’m delighted to be able to sit down and talk to Shrikant about this topic. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation:

Business transformation is quite the topic, Shrikant, and it's been an ongoing conversation for a long time and yet very little has been done about it. Business is ripe for disruption and HR is ready for transformation. The problem is those words have all become buzzwords at this point. Can you talk to us a little bit about what this actually means when we say this is about HR transforming?
If you look at the next 15 to 20 years in the organization's history or any organization's history they have to transform so rapidly because technology is changing so fast especially organizations with more than a thousand employees or more. They have to take the employees consistently and every three to five years things are changing. So HR needs to play a very crucial role in this.

So if they are well aligned with the organization's strategy I think the process is going to be much smoother and faster. HR, overall, needs to take more ownership about transforming employees and not leave it to just the leadership but be a leader and part of that. 

That can be done if they actually become more technology aware and they're more tech-savvy and they don't only depend on their partners and the vendors for all the information so they have to take the lead.

We understand that there is a scale thing but times have changed and particularly around the importance of listening to our employees, what motivates them and what does not, and what our role is in bridging the gap between employee expectations and the experience of work. We hear things like this all of the time now: "Look, what I want as a worker is something that appeals to me, that's based on me, that gets me from where I am to where you want to be in the company.” So talk to us a little bit about some of the personalization trends particularly around bringing new people on board and then being able to upscale them in the right ways.
Patti, that's a great point and I think there is one thing that is very important and we all know that today, people join organizations they are not looking for a lifetime to be spent in the organization. They are looking at probably 3 years, 5 years and what they can achieve in that space.

So what HR needs to make sure is that they have onboarding programs, they have learning management programs, or learning rescaling programs specifically targeted to each and every job role. They cannot look at you knowing we have one single system which will cater to everybody in the organization and they need to make sure that every 2-3 years as the organization is changing.

They need to consider that we're big investments, almost like platforms and then build small applications and new innovative solutions both in terms of processes as well as technology, so that they can really transform and change as the industry demands and keep the workforce highly productive and highly engaged. 

You said something that is so critical that I really want to call out, and that is when you set up systems for people who you intend to have them start at a young age and leave when they retire. Can you talk a little bit about the employee experience component of where this fits in from getting rid of the cradled agreement and what HR should care about and think about?
Right now I think employee experience is the main thing that every HR has top of mind. What happens is, many people confuse user experience as a learning experience. But employee experience really means people have to be better productive and better engaged. HR kind of defines what employee experience means for their organization and for different teams that they’re catering to and then select the right tools and technologies to do that. 

So it has to connect with everybody because everybody is playing a crucial role in pushing the organization forward. I think that's something, from an employee experience, that I feel organizations need to take into consideration and HR for most needs to understand and do that.

Shrikant, that is so interesting! There's something that you said that really triggered a mindset shift and that about users of systems that we invested in. What you are saying is, in this new world where people are not cradle-to-grave and probably even when they were, we're not talking about users we're talking about people! Understanding where those people work organizationally and physically, how they want to work, what devices they want to use, or what kind of jobs they do requires taking that person-first not user-first approach. That's a huge transformation in mindset and in practice!

What's your call to action to help HR practitioners and leaders to start shifting toward where they need to be?
My call-to-action is to make sure that from an HR standpoint, you are as tech aware because you cannot just be dependent on others to drive how HRs on the technology side is going to do that option and help organizations change.

Secondly, you need to think about, you know each, you cannot think about a whole platform solving your entire HR needs or  people needs. So you need a platform but you also need a lot of solutions that are tailor-made to each and every department and you need to be prepared to handle that and facilitate so that you know every department can function in the best possible way to help the organization. 

Third and most important, I think it's only in their headquarters but all the employees, the remote employees, the gate workers, and everybody that HR means to think about when it comes to his employee experience and help them not with just better user interface and better tools but actually see if those are helping them be more productive and be more engaged in their day to work and achieving the goals that they're looking forward to achieve.

The last point that Shrikant shared really brings us full circle to where you begin. Technology is important but you need to figure out what you want to do with it. Think about “What is the problem we’re trying to solve here?” They are called missions after all. 

To learn more about owning employee transformations you can listen to the full 15-minute podcast here: 

 

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	Dr. Patti Fletcher, Chief Equity Advocate & HR Disrupter, HR.com
	Shrikant Pattahil, President of Harbinger Systems and Lead Architect of Harbinger Offline Content Player