Part 1.

New powers,

new responsibilities

Over the past few decades, you could look at the corporate literature for virtually any large organisation and find words to the effect that “our people are our greatest asset”.

It’s an admirable sentiment. But it’s perhaps only in the last few years that it’s become demonstrably true, and it’s in HR that this shift is most keenly felt. Talent planning; wellbeing; diversity and inclusion; engagement: these tools are being embraced by senior leaders who recognise their vital role in delivering growth and success. As work evolves - as technology and data open up new possibilities, or as societal changes cause us to reevaluate our relationship with our work - HR finds itself in the role of both gatekeeper and enabler: exploring the possibilities of tools which can boost productivity or engagement, but also acting as a guide and mentor in how to apply these tools and be conscious of their human impact.

It’s broadly accepted that employers have a responsibility for the physical and mental wellbeing of their people, and that this responsibility ties directly into business performance. HR leaders, meanwhile, can call on a dizzying array of tools and processes to help them manage this change. Many of these are underpinned by AI technologies or are informed by technology trained on machine learning systems. But how much do they really help? And do HR’s new responsibilities add meaningfully to growth; to revenue; to people’s working lives?

The impact of HR evolution.

Unsurprisingly, almost all of our respondents agreed that their remit has changed over the last few years as automation and self-service technology lifts some of the administrative burden (the only “no” answer was working towards this, but still felt that it was a work in progress).

Given the historical reputation of the HR and people function as rooted in compliance, this is clearly a huge step forward in terms of showing HR’s value to the wider organisation. Data is more accessible and more detailed, offering better insights into how HR can support employees.

Some businesses have chosen to structure their teams so that they have key resources available to work on strategic projects, while others manage the more transactional aspects. Self-service tools, for the organisations who embrace them, can potentially free up a huge amount of time as employees access information and make basic requests without needing an HR contact to guide them.

Although this might sound like HR is finally walking in the sunlit uplands of strategic influence and creative thinking, there were plenty of caveats. Perhaps chief among them is the sense that the “easier” issues can be addressed through technology or processes, but the more complex ones remain solvable only by considered thought and good collaboration.
Technology makes it easy to provide essential policy information in a just-in-time, self-service way, but is less good at having an in-depth conversation about someone’s career path.

This links neatly into the perception that HR just has more to do now. When our interviewees were asked to name their key priorities for the year ahead (of which more later), the responses covered virtually the entire spectrum of business performance. Growth, retention, wellbeing, DEI, rewards and benefits, and productivity all featured prominently.

Moving onto the specifics of this higher-value and more strategic offering, talent management (be it recruitment, retention, or upskilling) formed a recurring theme.

Throughout virtually every conversation we had, there was a focus on ensuring that the people within the business had the right blend of skills and knowledge, and that recruitment was clearly aimed at “future-proofing” their organisations’ needs.

Some focussed on retention of their best people as the crucial ingredient. Some talked about an upcoming generational shift: the prospect of losing long-serving employees with thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and expertise, and the concomitant challenge of recruitment, training, and development to fill that gap.

When we set this against the backdrop of the UK’s well-documented skills shortage, it’s something everyone should be considering. It’s a problem in hospitality, retail, the public sector, and increasingly in badly needed digital skills, green skills, and manufacturing.^[1]

^[1] Source: The UK skills gap and what’s gone wrong, October 2023, Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales. https://www.icaew.com/technical/economy/resilience-and-renewal/the-uks-skills-gap-and-whats-gone-wrong