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Tag: HR Practices

  • 5 Ways HR Can Drive Success In Today’s Turbulent Times | Entrepreneur

    5 Ways HR Can Drive Success In Today’s Turbulent Times | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    We live in an era in which the role of human resources is often challenged: media reports routinely fawn over the ability of artificial intelligence to replicate many “traditional” HR tasks, the move to remote work (and the switch back) has many HR teams struggling to find their place to support shifting workplace cultures, limited people budgets have required increasingly difficult choices and the weakened economy have left many HR teams with skeleton crews, many of which report they are stressed out – and burned out.

    Against this backdrop, now is an excellent time to take stock of the future of human resources. In this age of turbulence and transformation, how and where can HR teams focus on making the most significant impact on their organization?

    1. Build Employee Commitment – From Day One

    HR is traditionally the first point of contact for newly hired employees, but the experience can often be underwhelming. The tasks associated with onboarding are often mundane and standardized.

    In the last few years, many companies have focused on maximizing engagement and excitement by sending or providing employees with company merchandise, notes from their CEOs, or even decorations for their home office. These steps help make an employee feel welcome but don’t drive real commitment.

    Outside of the C suite, HR is the department best positioned to help new employees understand why their company exists and how it contributes to society while building commitment around the kind of corporate culture and initiatives the organization is driving. It takes more than words on a screen to communicate whether employees have bought into a company’s broader purpose.

    Focus on ways to help every employee understand their role in bringing the company’s purpose to life, showing employees why the work they do will matter every day in the lives of others, ask them to think about how they can help further the mission of your organization and to find ways to improve in that goal constantly. You will jump-start commitment and maximize effort from day one.

    Related: Watch Out for These 5 Artificial Intelligence Problems in HR

    2. Relentlessly drive focus to drive results

    In a constantly shifting world, priorities seem to change quickly. Most employees report they are overwhelmed and don’t have the basic time to think — or work — on their given tasks. HR is in a prime position to help organizations drive focus.

    • Job Clarity: ensure every employee clearly understands their role and what is expected of them. Go beyond job descriptions and onboard talent by providing a more robust understanding of their role and how it fits into the broader picture of their respective departments and the company.
    • Goal setting: setting clear, stretch goals that are difficult but achievable can disproportionately drive long-term performance. Set organizational goals using simple communication tools like the “one-page strategy” concept articulated by One Page Solutions. Then, cascade these goals to every employee. Calibrate goals to ensure you don’t have unintended conflicts, train managers on prioritizing and focus your people on what matters most.
    • A culture of feedback: the best, high-achieving cultures are comfortable giving regular feedback up, down and across the organization to help everyone improve. Train employees on the art and science of feedback: how to make observations first, then assessments, describe impacts and provide ideas to make improvements.

    3. Pair people with technology and champion the possibilities

    Generative AI will absolutely transform how work gets done. Embrace it for the benefit of your team, their workload and all employees who will appreciate the responsiveness. Imagine an AI script that walks an employee through a series of choices to pick the most appropriate medical, dental and vision plans during Open Enrollment. Not only does this save time, but it could also be customized based on their specific situation, life events for them or their family, and more. Consider standardized assessments, training tasks and even videos as potential areas to explore with AI.

    Related: The Benefits and Drawbacks of AI Integration in HR Departments

    4. Create global talent plans

    Work-from-home and remote jobs are likely here to stay, despite the current shift and ask from many leaders coming back into the office regularly. That only underscores the need for corporate leaders, HR included, to go the extra mile to make human connections with remote employees ― and to understand the cost-benefit analysis of remote work.

    HR teams can help coordinate strategies to add more rigor to the remote work decision process: Which jobs need to be done in the office? Which are better outsourced to lower-cost locations? What locations best fit the work your company needs?

    HR can help identify lower-cost talent hubs as potential sources for remote work, effectively maximizing an organization’s productivity while minimizing expenses. HR should assess if there are clusters of talent that are cheaper and easier to recruit from, but also whether the savings from employing a remote strategy is worth the trade-offs such as in-person oversight, team camaraderie and cohesive workplace culture.

    Related: Top 5 HR Challenges You Must Overcome When Expanding Globally

    5. Instill a diverse culture to create more ideas

    A more diverse team is also a more innovative team. In times of financial stress, pressure can build to push diversity, equity and inclusion practices to the back burner. But an important function of HR teams will always be their ability to apply data to safeguard against implicit bias when hiring and recruiting employees. In the long run, this can be a competitive business advantage.

    As organizations start to employ talent more globally, it’s increasingly important to consider ethnic diversity, understand different cultures and learn how best to work with people from unfamiliar backgrounds.

    Jesse Meschuk

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  • 4 Ways M&A Can Transform Your Company | Entrepreneur

    4 Ways M&A Can Transform Your Company | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Not all mergers and acquisitions (M&A) end well. In fact, 70-90% fail, primarily because of an inability to identify appropriate fits for acquisition or the best ways to integrate them.

    Maybe this is why we hear such horror stories: A corporate takeover where people from the acquired company wait for the other shoe to drop. I understand that perspective. One company takes over another and holds its employees’ livelihoods in its hands — their careers, culture and security— with a high risk of failure.

    But I also know how being acquired by another company can result in amazing outcomes for professional growth. I am a living example of that.

    Over the last couple of years, my company acquired a series of companies in different regions to accelerate our growth, each with its client portfolio, industry expertise and merger timelines. Integrations have many moving parts but are rich with learning opportunities for the next integration. My experience on both sides of M&A has taught me that each company must deeply understand the other company’s values, culture and decision hierarchy. Just as important are the people who are part of the integration team. Those “in the kitchen” need to be open to building trust as soon as possible to ensure the integration goes as smoothly as possible.

    Related: Why Prioritizing Company Culture Is the Key to a Successful Acquisition

    1. Align values

    I joined CI&T six years ago when they acquired my company. I was the HR Director for a small ad agency with many clients in financial services. We had been courted over the years by companies interested in acquiring us, but they were not the right fit as they were more interested in our client relationships than our people. Our CEO believed in putting our people first, and it was important to him that I be close to those conversations.

    When we met CI&T, they were intriguing — even though they were headquartered in a different country. They instantly blew us away with their realness, honesty and transparency. We felt their values in every interaction and could tell that joining them would improve us.

    Related: Are You a Leader Loyal to Your Values? Here’s How to Align Your Leadership Style With Your Values

    2. Transparent communication

    Communication is how we keep everyone aligned and involved. We have a meeting every Wednesday with each acquired company led by the integration leader from “their side” to provide updates on progress on various fronts — such as the integration timeline, brand, benefits, new swag, etc. On “our side,” we give shoutouts to people who have been instrumental “in the kitchen.”

    Even if the news is the same as the week before, we affirm things are on track, and if things are delayed, we explain the dependencies. If we are waiting on something, we simply say so. We aim to ensure people are in the know every step of the way. Total transparency is key.

    Related: This Unique Leadership Model Will Transform Your Business and Ensure Success

    3. Understand culture

    Understanding a company’s values takes more than a motto — we need to understand the lived behaviors that reinforce the values that make up the culture daily. How do they hire, reward and recognize people? How do they make decisions? What programs or rituals reinforce them? Where are they on a Friday afternoon? If they say they promote from within, what’s their average tenure? How do they celebrate people and milestones? What’s the banter on their internal chat channels? What are their D&I metrics? Who’s on their leadership team? What is their T&D budget?

    In most M&A due diligence, many processes overlook corporate culture. It’s understandable: Culture isn’t seen on paper, and CEOs of acquired companies may not describe it objectively. Let’s face it — they are not the ones to ask. But not understanding the other company’s culture makes it easy to get wrong. Like dating the wrong person — those little things we ignore early on turn into bigger deals in time. Before too long, we can’t get past what we used to overlook.

    Not to say both cultures need to be identical for M&A success, but we should understand the differences and how to address them intentionally. For example, At CI&T, our culture is a learning environment, which means we bring many people to our meetings on a day-to-day basis so they can listen and learn. It’s not unusual for a meeting to have over ten people, but only half actively contributing.

    At first, this confused one of our acquired companies. Their hiring philosophy was to hire only experts and bring the necessary people to meetings. When we explained our culture, we decided together which meetings would have more bandwidth for our approach. Yes, we discussed and agreed together on how to integrate their approach with ours. Flexibility to change is a good sign of a smooth transition.

    Related: 7 Deadly Sins of Merger and Acquisition Negotiations

    4. Bring in the right people

    Understanding a company’s values and cultural differences from the beginning makes it easier to put together the right communications plan and approach an integration. Including the right people must be more than an afterthought. They should be an integral part of the M&A process.

    HR often has a better touch on the pulse of an acquired company’s people and can provide a more realistic and objective picture of its values and culture. Ideally, the HR leaders from both sides are willing to “get real” real quick.

    Perhaps many M&A efforts fail because understanding deeper aspects of a company, like values and culture, requires the right people involved — not business people, not salespeople, but “people” people. Even on the acquiring end, HR has a role to play in upfront discussions — even more for me as an acquired employee who has found success in my new role. I can assure new acquisitions, “Hey, you can trust these people.” I’ll be honest that the process won’t be easy, but these are good people and working through those challenges together makes us all the better.

    Victoria Maitland

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