Let me circle back around to what HR does, as in Part 1:
- Administration and Benefits
- Compensation and rewards
- Education and training
- Recruitment
- Hiring
Of these, it makes sense to change the compensation and rewards approach, recruitment and hiring if the organization wants to create an agile culture.
It's possible to create a more agile approach to education and training. For example, I have done pilot workshops with a small group or team of people to see if the content and/or delivery mechanism would work for them before they (or I!) committed to more workshops.
If we think about agile approaches as a way to:
- Create small, safe-to-fail experiments
- Obtain feedback
- Work as a cross-functional team (in a team or across the organization)
So we can deliver business value more often, it's much easier to see what parts of HR lend themselves to agile approaches and which parts don't.
Agile approaches are not a cure-all for an organization's culture. Agile HR will not change the culture unless the reward system changes. And, there are parts of HR, such as the Benefits piece where it's not clear an organization can or should create small, safe-to-fail experiments.
Agile HR is not about standups or boards. I have found that kanban boards often help people see who is working on what (and maybe with whom). That kind of transparency can be quite effective.
The experimentation and growth mindsets can also be effective, as well as frequent delivery.
So, I hope you have enjoyed this series. I had no idea it would be this long when I started. (I often say that about my series…) The posts in order:
- Creating Agile HR, Part 1: What HR Does
- Creating Agile HR, Part 2: A Flow for Agile Hiring
- Creating Agile HR, Part 3: Possible Agile Hiring Metrics
- Creating Agile HR, Part 4: Agile Sourcing
- Creating Agile HR, Part 5: Performance Management, the Career Ladder
- Creating Agile HR, Part 6: The Agile Compensation System
- Creating Agile HR, Part 7: Agile Feedback and Coaching
- Creating Agile HR, Part 8: Summary
If you have any questions, please do email or comment.