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HR to drive organisational agility

Regina Pazvakavambwa
By Regina Pazvakavambwa, ITWeb portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 26 Sept 2016
In an agile workforce, HR will need to rethink how it develops career paths, salary bands and job descriptions, says Sage's Anja Van Beek.
In an agile workforce, HR will need to rethink how it develops career paths, salary bands and job descriptions, says Sage's Anja Van Beek.

Human resource (HR) has a major role to play in driving organisational agility by shifting its focus from reducing risk and managing red tape towards a highly strategic role of guiding change and improving agility.

This is according to Anja van Beek, vice president for people, Sage International Africa, Australia, Middle East and Asia.

Van Beek says most organisations are under pressure to evolve their businesses at a faster pace as they try to get in step with rapid changes in the business landscape, technology and customer behaviour.

That means HR departments need to become better equipped to lead the organisation's people through constant and rapid change, she adds.

They need to build a more agile workforce that is ready to adjust to the evolving needs of the market, notes Van Beek.

This goes beyond offering people flexible working arrangements such as flexible hours or the ability to work from home, she notes.

The HR function has the opportunity to use the people management practices to find mutually beneficial solutions for both employees and organisations, and improve organisational responsiveness to change through talent planning, training and development, job and organisation design, and cultural transformation, says a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development report.

As the world becomes increasingly volatile and unpredictable, organisations that can quickly and easily adapt to changing business conditions will outpace their competitors, says Accenture.

To compete in a rapidly changing world, HR will fundamentally reshape itself so that the function becomes a critical driver of agility, it adds.

In this role, HR will enable a new type of organisation - one designed around highly nimble and responsive talent, notes Accenture.

"Agile organisations won't depend on just a few decision-makers at the top to become more nimble. Rather, they will count on their entire workforce, those within and even beyond their borders, to fluidly and proactively respond to change.

"Therefore talent - and the function primarily responsible for managing it - will play a central role in driving organisational agility."

Sandra Swanepoel, MD at Sage HR & Payroll, says line managers and senior management are putting more pressure on HR departments to add value to the business and to serve as their strategic partners.

As a result, HR departments need to become more tech-savvy, notes Swanepoel. They need to put in place systems that allow them to automate routine paperwork, make sense of growing volumes of data, and respond to the needs of the business and employees in a more agile fashion, she adds.

"In an agile workforce, HR will need to rethink how it develops career paths, salary bands and job descriptions.

"It will need to support managers and their teams as they organically develop their own roles and tasks, often on a project-by-project basis. This will also mean new ways of measuring performance and rewarding employees that meet the needs of a changing workplace."

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