Restructuring HR functions is not enough, rather HR must become Convener and Catalyzer

💡 Only 9% of HR functions are both highly efficient and highly aligned to their organization’s needs.

Leading HR organizations are focusing on three improvement areas to boost their functional excellence for this convene and catalyze role: 1.Participatory Prioritization; 2.Business-Enabling Digitalization and; 3.Augmenting HR Expertise

HR’s legacy has been in areas like employment policies, and administration where HR is largely the “owner and operator” of their tasks. The new demands on HR are more conflicting, interdependent and novel with no clear owners nor single right answers. To succeed in today’s environment, HR will need to continue owning their legacy tasks while becoming a “convener and catalyzer” in the organization, according to a new interesting research (accessible only for their clients) just published by Gartner using data from their internal clients database.

✅Why HR must become Convener and Catalyzer?

In the post-pandemic workplace, Gartner researchers noticed that the scope of the HR function has drastically expanded - they are getting more requests on a wider variety of topics, and 80% claim their function is facing different challenges to those they faced pre-pandemic.

👉 71% of HR reported that burnout among HR staff was more challenging than pre-pandemic. More than half of the HR leaders surveyed reported increased difficulty in both retaining and recruiting HR employees.

Researchers provided a simple framework to understand the future state of HR functional excellence using 2 questions below:

✔️ Who has the experience?

✔️ Who delivers the Work?

They found a path from Mostly HR to Outside HR: HR shifts clearly from Owner and Operator to Convener and Catalyzer.

🔥 As a convener, HR is best positioned to bring stakeholders together and orchestrate a framework for that group to make decisions and find solutions. HR can then catalyze these stakeholders to ideate and determine new ways of working in today’s environment.  

✅Lack of HR strategic planning process

Another area of improvement for HR is aligned the HR strategy with Organizational strategy. Researchers discovered that only 32% of HR leaders state that their HR strategic planning process is fully integrated with the business' planning process.

Researchers conclude that the planning process should include the following five steps:

1️⃣ Understand your organization's strategy and goals.

2️⃣ Identify capabilities and skills for the future.

3️⃣ Evaluate current capabilities and skills.

4️⃣ Develop HR goals and criteria for success.

5️⃣ Communicate your HR strategy.

✅How to achieve HR Functional excellence?

Leading HR organizations are focusing on three improvement areas to boost their functional excellence for this convene and catalyze role:

✔️Participatory Prioritization

HR functions today face multiple challenges to prioritization :

HR leaders reported they are receiving more requests for support, and they believed that it's more difficult now to handle conflicting demands.

☝️  Participatory prioritization goes beyond internal coordination, putting into place formal mechanisms to involve non-HR stakeholders and empower HR staff, while focusing on flexible reprioritization to anticipate business demand spikes to ensure priorities are not derailed. A

✔️Business-Enabling Digitalization

Researchers found that technology is increasingly integral to how HR functions deliver and is a key part of its convene and catalyze role.

Near Half of HR Leaders plan to increase investments in HR technology this year and look for ways to make processes and systems more user-friendly.

👉 Progressive HR functions are ensuring their digitalization efforts move beyond just HR-centered processes and are truly business-enabling. For this to be successful, HR needs to ensure its roadmap for digitalization is in sync with the organization’s other functions to provide a cohesive end-user experience.

✔️Augmenting HR Expertise

Despite investing in skills development, majority of HR leaders reported they have more issues stemming from gaps in HR employee capabilities than before the pandemic.

👉 Leading HR functions are growing internal skills while simultaneously incorporating non-HR knowledge into the function : for example bring non-HR people into HR roles.

Thank you 🙏 Gartner  researchers team for these insightful findings: 

Piers Hudson Robin Kranich Eugene Hall

Dave Ulrich George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL

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