New year resolutions every HR function should make

As we come into the New Year and decade many of us will be thinking about setting personal resolutions. But it’s also a great time to think about how to revitalise and refresh your HR function. As a contribution to your thinking we have set out below 12 key HR areas you can look at for the year ahead:

1. HR’s role is getting broader and so organisations need to think about who should take responsibility for each specialist area (e.g. HR systems or workforce transitions), get clear on who is accountable and who will bring the right capabilities to tackle challenges and opportunities facing the function.

Resolution: Our HR team will have the right people with the right skills aligned to specialist areas to ensure we maximise our impact with the business.

2. Critical to moving forward effectively is optimising the technology and capabilities that the function has invested in to date. We have a lot of data and new skills, but are we leveraging them to best effect?

Resolution: Understand and use the new data and skills available to us as HR in greater detail than previous years. Bring non-traditional skill sets into the function to drive new insights.

3. In an increasingly complex world of work it’s all the more important to have a ‘north star’ for modernising HR which helps the team embed the direction you’re setting in their everyday activities and be clear about expectations.

Resolution: Define and share your HR function’s ‘north star’ and ensure everyone is bought in and understands the vision.

4. Technology is a key component for HR and having someone who takes responsibility for this is critical. Organisations need to recognise this skill set as a critical part of the core capabilities of the function.

Resolution: Set and name a CIO for HR in your function to drive ownership and accountability for technology within HR.

5. Organisations need to make sure they’re linked in with and learning from marketing to ensure they are maximising the impact and connectivity of what HR can do; both to potential candidates and to the rest of the organisation.

Resolution: Incorporate some of the best practices from marketing to maximise the effectiveness of HR across the organisation.

6. HR has the opportunity to own the experience of its people, linking it to customer experience. The HRD needs to act as the ‘chief experience officer.’

Resolution: Define and begin to deliver an EX vision for your workforce.

7. Social media is increasingly the norm in modern organisations and HR needs to learn how to effectively leverage the various channels, both to align organisational values and to maximise impact.

Resolution: Create an effective social media platform, with both internal and external channels to communicate and engage with current and potential employees.

8. As labour models change language matters. We need to move from an employee to a workforce focus, so that we start our thinking from the right perspective.

Resolution: Think about whether you’re focused enough on your ‘full workforce’ to ensure they deliver on the promise to your organisation’s customers.

9. Investments in AI will be increasingly critical for HR. The function must learn from these and look for ways to build it into core service delivery.

Resolution: Further incorporate AI into HR’s core service delivery and leverage learning as you go as much as possible.

10. Whilst SaaS platforms are a critical part of modern HR delivery, there is an ever increasing level of tech innovation that means that there is a real opportunity to nimbly build on these services to deliver targeted solutions that fill in the SaaS gaps meet immediate term and changing needs.

Resolution: Get more out of your SaaS platform by implementing more functionality or a third party application to enhance your current platform.

11. There is life post Ulrich with a range of new models increasingly being implemented, from Agile to Project based organisations and the rise of global business services are increasingly leading organisations to look at a split between strategic people activities and service delivery.

Resolution: Engage with other parts of your business to further integrate and build out global business services. Think about what’s core to the people experience you want to drive and focus HR accordingly.

12. The core capabilities of the function are changing. HR needs to ensure it has the skills to lead restructures, bring teams together and get them working quickly. Focusing on core deliver isn’t enough in an increasingly complex environment.

Resolution: Hire one person from a non HR background who has skills that you feel your team will need in the future to deliver in an increasingly complex environment.