Driving Change Amidst Business Process Fiasco

Today’s organizations confront the deepest downturn since the great depression. Many companies worldwide face bankruptcy, dissolution, or even suffer severe laybacks. A company that fails to disrupt itself, exert quick changes, and move in line with the new normal will only end up losing out just as Blockbusters lost to Netflix or as Borders to Amazon.

A typical scenario is the responses of organizations during and after the Covid era. The era revealed a lot of effective process changes that were being ignored by organizations. The pandemic underscores the urgency for a more dynamic talent and work model in which Human-resources leaders can help by focusing on identity, agility, and scalability. Business leaders watching their organizations experience profound upheaval because of the COVID-19 crisis may find it difficult to understand what it all means until the dust settles.

But, the pandemic has not afforded them, or any of us, that luxury. It has created profound and immediate changes to how societies operate and how individuals interact and work. We have all witnessed an at-scale shift to remote work, the dynamic reallocation of resources, and the acceleration of digitization and automation to meet changing individual and organizational needs.

Organizations have by and large met the challenges of this crisis moment. But as we move toward imagining a post-pandemic era, a management system based on old rules—a hierarchy that solves for uniformity, bureaucracy, and control—will no longer be effective. Taking its place should be an automated model that is more flexible and responsive, built around four interrelated trends: more connection, unprecedented automation, lower transaction costs, and demographic shifts. It is important to understand that technology does not disrupt, failure to respond does.

To drive change amidst a business process fiasco, the head of human resources and other leaders should do nothing less than re-imagine the basic tenets of the organization. Emerging models are creative, adaptable, and anti-fragile. Corporate purpose fuels bold business moves. “Labor” becomes “talent.” Hierarchies become networks of teams. Competitors become ecosystem collaborators. Companies become more human: inspiring, collaborative, and bent on creating an employee experience that is meaningful and enjoyable.

In changing a business process, organizations should prioritize initiatives that strengthen their organization’s ability to drive change in leadership, culture, and employee experience.

This article highlights ways that the head of human resources can continue to meet the moment by rethinking processes in three fundamental areas: identity, agility, and scalability.

How HR fits in the big picture

According to McKinsey's recently conducted research, he stated that future-ready companies share three characteristics: they know what they are and what they stand for; they operate with a fixation on speed and simplicity, and they grow by scaling up their ability to learn and innovate. HR can help propel this transformation by facilitating positive change in these three key areas.

Identity: HR can clarify the meaning of purpose, value, and culture

Companies that execute with purpose have greater odds of creating significant long-term value generation, which can lead to stronger financial performance, increased employee engagement, and higher customer trust.

Agility: HR’s role in flattening the organization

Organizational agility improves both company performance and employee satisfaction. HR can be instrumental in shifting an organization from a traditional hierarchy to a marketplace that provides talent and resources to a collection of empowered small teams, helping them to achieve their missions and acting as a common guiding star

Scalability: How HR can drive value creation

The new normal of large, rapidly recurring skills gap means that re-skilling efforts must be transformational, not business as usual or piecemeal. Conclusively, change in business process provides HR with the opportunity to accelerate its shift from a service to a strategic function, helping to shape a more dynamic organization that is ready to meet the post-crisis future in the event of a fiasco.

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