Recharge Your HR and Increase Your Contribution Value (Without Leaving Your Chair)

Some Smart Reasons to Travel to HR's Edge

Can you feel the El Niño winds blowing the new work-life-business reality in your face? I feel it too.These winds are blasting through the HR discipline, rattling old structures and shaking timeworn foundations.Are you haunted by the sense that, perhaps you should be doing something or perhaps everything differently to make a difference?Perhaps this feeling will pass and everything will settle down.NO.Thinking that everything will be OK if you keep your head down against the gusts and continue to do what has always worked is attractive but sadly mistaken. Because “what got you here, won’t get you there.” Adam Grant, “Originals”.Where is “there”?“There” is the new reality revolutionising our understanding of the employee relationship with organisations.What must we do “there”?“There” demands a different style to leverage the HR’s considerable strengths and take a lead role in helping businesses seize new opportunities.We are already “there”!The ‘new’ reality is here!What will you do?Last week we went cross-discipline adventuring; traveling to the edge of HR on behalf of a client. We ventured to the edge because it is where the interesting and transformative stuff can happen for you AND your organisation.Right at edge, where the conventional borders the unconventional, is the place HR can create meaningful value and make a positive difference. Being an ‘Edge Dweller’ is hard work. If it were easy, everyone would do it.But access to the interesting and the transformative demands daily commitment.Every day, consciously choose to self-disrupt. Deliberately step to known edge of your discipline and capabilities. The edge is uncomfortable. It is supposed to be.Don’t worry you don’t have to linger long on the ledge to snag useful and valuable nuggets to help you recharge your HR.Let's take a quick trip to the edge together. Don't worry, you needn't leave your chair.Shall we begin?Here we go.

HR’s Higher Purpose

Brainpoke 1.RELEVANCE: In the new reality, relevance means going beyond the familiar emphasis on employee engagement as the Holy Grail to achieve optimum organisational performance.HR must use its intimate knowledge of the motivations and aspirations of future and existing employees to create novel ways to attract, develop and connect employees to work that matters and makes a difference.Re-wire your thinking to put more prominence on purpose.To do this will mean applying the precision skills of a surgeon to find the threads to connect your employee’s (personal and professional) purpose to the purpose of the organisation at every key contact point of the employment relationship.

• Recruitment Marketing
• Recruitment and Selection
• Learning and Development
• Performance Management
• Recognition and Incentivising
• Work environment, culture and well-being

"We take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something." Schopenhauer.

Create  and nurture an environment that encourages employees to gift their talents and attention (mind and heart) to the organisation every day.  Build a place where employees are happy to come to work and do your work.  These are the foundation elements for 'Alchemy'.Alchemy is achieved when the organisation’s and the employee’s purposes are fulfilled through the strategies and activities led by HR.Brainpoke 2.FRICTIONLESS FLOW: This is the state where ‘Purpose Alchemy’ can happen.I am not speaking about HR ‘going with the flow’ – upholding the status quo.I am talking about HR removing obstacles, clearing the path for the organisation’s employees to ‘achieve a flow state’.This is “when you lose a sense of self-consciousness and are operating with all your mental and emotional powers. This level of engagement, […] requires deploying your highest strengths and talents.” Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi quoted in The Purpose Economy by Aaron Hurst.For more on flow from Mihaly, listen to his TED Talk.When your employee community achieves flow – a collective state of ‘in the zone’ - the organisation is set on the path to grow and flourish.But there is much work to be done first.HR has a notorious reputation for issuing clunky and unworkable policies that invite ingenious and creative ways to ignore or bypass them.HR has earned a name for churning out processes that often frustrate more than facilitate the flow of business and human connection.We know that products and services that remove friction from our lives attract a premium value.  Apply this thinking and concentrate on "high value activities."Hillary Rettig tells us that "High Value Activities are within your mission, leverage your strengths, and create impact or change" in her book The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block.Become flow-minded. Positively transform your HR’s brand reputation by focusing your attention on creating value through the HR service experience provided to the organisation’s leaders, candidates and employees. Serve products, services and tools that will deliver what the business and your employees need and want.To help you understand what to tackle first, carry out a Value Creation Audit on all HR-led processes. Then test for friction.For example, review your organisation's capacity to achieve flow through it's people. Here are 3 questions to limber up your mind.

1. Are the roles and scope of responsibilities detailed in your organisation structure appropriate and mission critical?

2. Are your employees in the roles best suited to their talents and interests?3. OR do you have square pegs in round holes?Finally , take decisive action and (re)design for flow.

• Give these 2 brainpoke quests a try to recharge your HR and increase your contribution value. Let me know how they work for you.
• What else can HR do to contribute value to employees and the business?
• How are you creating value through your HR?

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Until we meet again next week down the HR Rabbit Hole…