The Importance of Agile in HR

Agile refers to a mindset shift and practice that aims to bring value to your customers and your business. The Agile approach breaks complex ideas into achievable pieces. It involves constant feedback to improve, collaboration among team members, and greater discipline and regularity in the teams.

In a world with rapid and unpredictable changes, it is important for your workforce to be prepared to deal with new challenges as they come. Unlike in traditional hierarchies, an agile workforce encourages innovation, efficiency, and flexibility when new opportunities present themselves.

According to clinical associate professor of Human Capital Management, Anna Tavis, many organizations have made the shift from traditional waterfall-style processes to implementing a “more frequent ‘in the line of work’ approach with regular check-ins”.

Anna also states that the adoption of the agile approach in HR has a lot to do with HR embracing digitization. As the HR function diversifies its workforce and works cross-functionally, there has been growth in the adoption of agile which could be the result of this diversification.

Why Agile is Important in HR?

A Deloitte survey of over 10,000 HR and organizational executives in 140 countries revealed that 94% of respondents stated that being “agile and collaborative” is critical to their organizations' success.

In the context of HR, Agile refers to the ability to adapt and evolve people and processes in place with fast-paced and unpredictable changes - to support individual, strategic and organizational agility. HR professionals aim to drive employee engagement and retention in alignment with the overall organization’s goals.

Agile facilitator, Thiaggo Brant, states that HR embraces the organization's initiatives and can execute all HR processes in an agile manner, and in a way that ensures people’s agility. If HR fails to become agile, it becomes an obstacle in the daily business execution and may become costly or irrelevant.

Organizations are considered to be agile when their workforce makes customer satisfaction a priority. Traditionally, the HR function is not designed to bring value to the customer and is often criticized for its inability to take immediate action.

These practices lead to tension in the workforce, and as a result, it becomes crucial for organizations to encourage HR to be more attentive and receptive to ever-changing business requirements to stay competitive and attract top talent.

According to Ralph van Roosmalen who has a background in software development, many frameworks in his field assume they can predict the future. For example, they think big projects can be managed by making big plans.

When the software crisis occurred, the industry had to do something. One option was to introduce even more frameworks, and the other was the agile approach to managing complex projects.

One of the factors that make these projects complex is the fact that you work with people, and people cannot be managed like a machine since they are unpredictable. In every organization, HR provides a framework for helping people grow and for managers to evaluate people.

These people all have unique functions, abilities, and skills, so a one size fits all framework won’t be practical in the long-run. Agile HR allows teams and departments the freedom to develop their own approach while also offering their expertise when asked for guidance.

How Agile Helps HR to be Forward Thinkers

Agile HR is all about adopting perspectives and tools to become more quickly adaptable in decision-making. The traditional HR model emphasizes the development of standardized policies and procedures, whereas Agile HR lets HR professionals design programs and processes that are adaptive.

Rather than managing employee lifecycle and performing general administration routinely and transitionally, HR leaders should focus on creating integrated HR-Business solutions. This is accomplished by emphasizing individual competence and organizational processes, along with culture and climate.

According to a LinkedIn article by Agile business coach, Wayne Tarken, there are three components to HR agility: the ability to “quickly and easily identify issues that need to be addressed”, the ability to decrease “the time it takes to develop then implement a response”, and the ability to incorporate “analytics and design thinking to predict, design then target programs with the highest probability of being successful.

Given the ever-changing world we live in, it is important for organizations to recruit talent that would help accelerate the growth of the company. Agile HR highlights the importance of constant feedback and how employees and the organization as a whole should respond to feedback.

Cultural Agility is a vital component of an agile organization. An organization with high cultural agility is self-aware of its strengths and weaknesses. Team members are adaptable, curious, and have a shared belief system that drives decision-making throughout the organization.

When an organization is easily adaptable and practices the necessary skills needed to tackle issues as they arise, the organization becomes more agile. By improving processes in a quick and collaborative way, the organization shifts from the traditional top-down practices to a more agile one.

Benefits of Agile in HR

Agile in HR can help improve team collaboration, faster product launch times, increase efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction to name a few. Himanshi Jain lists other benefits of Agile in HR that include:

Forming unities: Agile HR unites teams with a common purpose that brings genuine efforts.

Punctual delivery: Agile teams can deliver work at a consistent pace by breaking down complex problems into smaller pieces, and solving each piece individually.

Embracing innovation: Agile HR promotes innovation. Innovation allows you to break down complex problems into core elements, and these elements based on priority apply new solutions.

Effective communication: Agile HR encourages collaboration whereby each team member is clear about their role and communicates it to others in order to perform tasks collectively.

Attentive input: Agile emphasizes attention in listening. When issues arise in the team, members look out for each other and adapt to changes accordingly.

In simple terms, to be agile is to be customer-focused by being quick to respond and take action when an issue arises. While traditional HR focuses on control and alignment to create order and control, agile HR focuses on efficiency and bringing value to customers. This creates an adaptable, innovative, and efficient workforce.