The Transition from Strategic HR to Digital HR
In our article "What Is Digital Transformation?" we discussed what transformation is and the key points to keep in mind when putting it into practice. In fact, that article was a short guide for you.
In this article, again taking Digital Transformation as our starting point, we will focus in detail on Human Resources.
The article is built around 2 main questions.
First, we will look at "What will HR's changing role be as Digital Transformation takes place, what will be expected of it, and how should we read this role?"
Second, we will briefly address "How will HR complete its own Digitalization Journey, and what should it pay attention to? What will come to the fore in this process?"
We have actually given some clues to the answer to our first question before. We underlined that what really matters is evolving "Digital Transformation" into "Digital Culture". Of course, we also share the premise that this is not an easy task. So why is the "Culture" part so critical? Let's take a closer look.
You may have implemented a huge "Digital Transformation" project across your company. You may have taken advantage of everything technology has to offer and built the best, fastest, most fit-for-purpose and most digital systems and applications. But if you can't explain them and their benefits well to your employees, if you can't get them to adapt to and use them as quickly as possible, and most importantly, if you can't involve them in the whole process and make them share the same excitement, then some of all the effort, time and money spent has been wasted. We are talking about how much you make all your employees part of the story and how actively you involve them in all these processes. You can take your digital story only so far with technology and financial resources. Beyond a certain point, you have to hand the story over to your employees and read the story they will write. If you can't do that, your "Digital Transformation Journey" will never evolve into a "Digital Culture Journey".
This is exactly where HR's role begins. In this new era, HR will be responsible for communicating, spreading and driving the adoption of both its own digital applications and all the other digital applications within the company that align with the company's top-level digital vision and strategy. In addition to HR's existing responsibilities, its role in Change Leadership will become far more important in getting the Digital Culture journey accepted within the company. In companies with DO (Digital Office) structures, responsibility for these topics will of course be shared and carried out in coordination between the two organizations, but we can say very clearly that HR's responsibility will be somewhat greater on matters that directly affect employees.
Another very important role for HR on the Digital Culture journey is its responsibility for defining and implementing digital competencies. While we aim to digitalize our business processes to a large extent, the competencies needed to do this can't remain stuck in the past, can they? To put its importance into perspective, it would probably not be far off to say that within a few years most competency assessments in companies will be based on digital competencies. You can start working on competency sets specific to your company and your sector under main focus areas such as Digital Literacy, Digital Content Creation and Digital Learning. On the other hand, defining digital competencies alone will not be enough. HR will also carry a great deal of responsibility for helping employees acquire these competencies in the short term and developing existing ones. There is great value in preparing for all this now. An article covering digital competencies in more detail is definitely on the way. Stay tuned.
Now to our 2nd question: "How will HR complete its own Digitalization Journey, and what should it pay attention to? What will come to the fore in this process?"
First of all, when it comes to becoming a digital HR function, we don't see this process merely as "moving all HR processes to digital platforms and managing them this way to run HR more effectively and efficiently on certain dimensions (time, cost, human resources, etc.)". In our view, this is certainly a very important and necessary aspect, but it should not be the only thing that comes to mind when someone asks "What Is Digital HR?"
This work requires, above all, moving step by step through some very important stages. We are talking about a long and difficult journey. As we explained above, the whole story comes down to creating and sustaining a "Digital Culture" in your organization that fits your own corporate culture and values. Because we can't turn something into a "Culture" without living it. And we can't achieve sustainable success in something we haven't turned into culture. This is certainly not easy; it is a matter of process and time. But companies that set out with this perspective and define their real goal as "fully living and sustaining a Digital Culture" move faster and more efficiently through every stage of the process.
As always, the first stage of digitalization in HR is awareness. Just like individuals, companies need to determine honestly and realistically which stage of the "Digitalization" story they are at today. Otherwise, it is hardly possible to carry out this journey in a healthy way. In our view, this is the first and most important step ☺
At Digital Institute, we of course have a methodology we use to determine where companies stand on Digitalization. While we can't really share it here, we can say that, as with everything, the foundation of this work starts with determining first where you are and then where you want to go. It is also worth mentioning that alignment between the direction HR wants to take in digital and the direction the company wants to take is extremely important for HR's work to be workable and accepted within the company, and it is a point that should not be overlooked.
While taking on Change Leadership in this transformation process, there are 1-2 more important "digital" details HR needs to keep in mind. These concepts will be critically important in the coming period for HR organizations that will have to balance many things at once, and they will also be the key determinants of HR's digitalization journey.
They are the concepts of the Digital Workforce and the Digital Workplace.
- Digital Workforce: You have surely heard of RPA. It stands for "Robotic Process Automation". The aim of RPA is to hand routine work over from human labor to a digital workforce, both reducing the margin of error and making work faster and more efficient. According to the McKinsey Global Institute (A Future That Works: Automation, Employment and Productivity) report, Artificial Intelligence will do the work of 800 million workers worldwide by 2030. At the same time, the aim is to redirect the freed-up traditional workforce to more value-adding work and generate extra gains there as well. In fact, I would like to put "changing" in front of these 2 concepts instead of "digital". I want to look at them from both perspectives: as both a Digital workforce and a Changing workforce. Yes, everything and everyone is becoming more and more digital. But besides digitalization, everything is also changing in other ways. Within just 1-2 years, Generations X, Y and Z will all be in working life at the same time, and from that point on we will truly be talking about a "Changing Workforce". As HR, we will try to manage 3 different generations with very different needs and expectations at the same time, help them work together productively, and turn them into "Happy employees". It sounds easy when written like this, but only time will show how hard it really is. But if we think of it this way, for example: robots will do everything we call "routine", and with the time we gain, we will work on solving an X+Y+Z equation. Perhaps our real job, "touching people's lives", will become even more important and doing HR will become more enjoyable? What do you think? ☺
- Digital Workplace: What does a digital workplace mean? I don't know yet either. We'll see. I imagine offices with touch screens everywhere, for instance ☺ The definition of a Digital Workplace goes like this: workplaces focused on comfort, health and happiness, where new ways of working and communicating (Slack, Workplace by Facebook, Microsoft Teams, etc.) are used so employees can be more engaged and productive, and whose interior design is architecturally different from traditional offices. But as the name says, it is still a "workplace". So what if we said "Changing" instead of Digital? The Changing Workplace. Let's be honest. Whatever adjective comes before it, I no longer want to work in a place called a "workplace", and I don't anyway. As long as you want to work, anywhere is an office, anywhere is a workplace ☺ What about you? Or the Generation Z employees who will arrive in a few years? Will they want it? Or will they say "set me free, I can do my job from anywhere"? ☺ Believe me, models in which we can work anytime, from anywhere (and I don't mean one day of flexible working a week), quickly access every system that makes our work easier remotely, and that are in every sense "more flexible", "freer" and "let us set our own priorities" are very close. And all my fellow HR professionals, we need to be ready for this in every sense: intellectually, technically and, I think, a little ethically too. The time has come ☺
As a final word:
HR is changing, my friends. Because the world is changing. Over the past 10-15 years HR completed its journey from support function to strategic HR. But now it has reached a new crossroads. Ahead of it lies a road to becoming Digital HR. In my view, in addition to its existing responsibilities, there are 2 important responsibilities expected of it here: "to first embrace change, then lead it" and "to build the Organization of the Future". I believe HR will succeed to the extent that it can do these 2 very important things.
There are many more HR topics I'd like to touch on, but let's stop here for now. Perhaps a sequel will follow.
Until we meet again in the next article.
