HR Transformation

HR Transformation is Critical to Competitive Advantage

Companies that want to thrive in their industry must consider HR transformation and find new ways to support their most valuable asset – their people.

How to Make Your Company Competitive through HR Transformation

HR transformation builds a competitive advantage by helping businesses must continually adapt and improve their processes and systems. While organizations must focus on utilizing their capital and assets, nothing is more important than human capital.

What is Human Capital Transformation?

Human qualities which can be used by a business to increase its performance and capabilities are classified as human capital. The goal is to increase the income and profitability of the company. It might include the knowledge and skills which the employees bring to the company through previous education and ongoing training. It can also include their strength and energy.

In some instances, it can be easy to identify human capital as it relates to the business. For example, with sales positions, their ability to get new customers and the effort they expend to acquire leads and conversions would be considered under this heading. However, it may not be quite so easy to recognize the skills and abilities that are used to complete all work-related tasks.

The Need for Human Capital Transformation

Human resources must continually innovate the policies of a business to better utilize the skills of employees. It must go beyond basic training to completely transform the way the company does business.
The goal of this process is to completely change the environment from within, which will be identifiable outside the organization from the point of view of the customer and vendors as well as the community at large. HCM transformation isn’t a static approach; it must be ongoing. Companies must continue to improve their products, processes and customer service. It will entail identifying who the customer is and what they want. Every staff member must learn to manage their tasks and process through the eyes of the customer.

HCM becomes linked with this new approach from determining job classifications to hiring new staff to training each employee. Everyone takes a stronger interest in improving customer service even when they work in back-end jobs and don’t interact directly with customers.One of the goals in this HR transformation is improved communications with customers, outside vendors and other employees. Changes in IT, the physical work environment and the company culture all reflect the goals of the company.

Issues with HR Transformation

To change a company’s way of doing business and transform HR to make the business more effective is a major undertaking. There are often issues which limit the ability of the organization to achieve its goals.

One of the first issues is in the ability of HR to recruit and promote those who follow the goals of the company. They may need to find new ways to reach the right candidates and to keep employees who already follow the best practices of the organization.

Another issue is in how new employees are trained and how thoroughly they learn the skills which are necessary to keep the business competitive. Even the support operations must be focused on the customer so that everyone is working towards a common goal.

One of the tasks of HR is to find out how to motivate employees to give their best. At the same time, it’s the responsibility of the HR department to empower those employees to reach the goals and to improve company culture.

When all of this is put together in one package, you have a clear path to HCM transformation.

Results, Not Just More Training

To completely change a culture of a business takes time and the effort of everyone involved. Employees and customers as well as others in the community must be able to see the reasons behind the changes and the results and not just focus on more training.

Many times, employees don’t understand the “why” behind the training, which limits their efforts in working with the changes. HR must be able to connect the dots or explain the benefits behind the training. This ensures everyone is on board and willing to do their part to see the company succeed.

Strategic human capital management means choosing the right people to do the right jobs at the right time and measuring it in the right way. What HR has done in the past and the way it’s been done must change because the way businesses function today has changed from the past.

While recruitment is the beginning point for this transformation, it doesn’t end there. Current employees must be trained to the new standards and processes. Companies need to ensure the message being sent is the same for all employees. Learning systems provide a solid base from which companies can work. They can develop training and informational materials for every department and employee which all focus on the company goals.

HR can use these learning management systems in various ways. They can create testing to ensure competency and compare scores to see where more training is needed. They can develop policies that are the same across the board and then test to see how many employees have a thorough understanding of these policies. Simulation is another important component of training. It goes beyond learning the skills to figuring out how to implement them in real-life situations. What this means is the employees are better able to deal with issues that arise and utilize their strengths and skills to provide exceptional customer service.

As the way of doing business changes, it becomes more important for companies to focus on a transformation of how their human resources works. HCM transformation means utilizing all that each employee brings to the company to achieve a common goal, and that must be the goal for HR departments to ensure the continued success of a business.