HR Disrupted

Lucy Adams

Description

The new and updated edition of the classic work on Disruptive HR.

 The way we work is changing fast, and traditional HR is no longer fit for purpose.

Equipping our organizations to meet today’s demands requires something very different. This book provides HR professionals with:

• a compelling case for changing HR
• practical people solutions for a disrupted world
•  strategies to make the changes they need
• ways to equip HR with the right capabilities and mindset

Table of Contents

Introduction to the second edition

Part 1: What's Wrong with HR?                                                                                                   

Chapter 1: HR is Dead (Long Live HR)                                                                             

Chapter 2: How I Got Here                                                                                             

Part 2: The Way HR Should Be: The EACH Model                                                                       

Chapter3: Employees as Adults                                                                                       

Chapter 4: Employees as Consumers                                                                             

Chapter 5: Employees as Human Beings                                                                         

Part 3: Reinventing HR                                                                                                                 

Chapter 6: Recruitment                                                                                                   

Chapter 7: Induction                                                                                                       

Chapter 8: Employment Rules and Policies                                                                     

Chapter 9: Managing Performance                                                                                 

Chapter 10: Reward                                                                                                         

Chapter 11: Training and Development                                                                         

Chapter 12: Talent Management                                                                                   

Chapter 13: Leadership Development                                                                             

Chapter 14: Employee Engagement and Communications                                             

Part 4: Making It Happen                                                                                                             

Chapter 15: Turning Old HR into New HR                                                                       

Chapter 16: The HR Team of the Future

Sujets

• Gestion d'équipe
• Human Resources
• People Management
• Personne

Informations

• Publié par: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781788602105
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2021
© Lucy Adams, 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN
9781788602112
(print)

9781788602105
(epub)

9781788602099
(mobi)
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the author.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Contents
Introduction to the second edition
Part I What’s wrong with HR?
Chapter 1 HR is dead (long live HR)
Chapter 2 How I got here
Part II The way HR should be: The EACH model
Chapter 3 Employees as adults
Chapter 4 Employees as consumers
Chapter 5 Employees as human beings
Part III Reinventing HR
Chapter 6 Recruitment
Chapter 7 Induction
Chapter 8 Employment rules and policies
Chapter 9 Managing performance
Chapter 10 Reward
Chapter 11 Training and development
Chapter 12 Talent management
Chapter 13 Leadership development
Chapter 14 Employee engagement and communications
Part IV Making it happen
Chapter 15 Turning old HR into new HR
Chapter 16 The HR team of the future
About the author
Notes
Introduction to the second edition
The first edition of HR Disrupted was published five years ago. It was written to express my personal dissatisfaction with the way I felt HR was delivered by me during my career as an HR director, and countless other HR professionals. It was written as a call to action, to make HR more relevant for the disrupted world we all faced in the years after the Global Financial Crisis with its digital disruption, the relentless pace of change and the new expectations of work.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it would fare. There are millions of books on changing business practices and thousands of HR textbooks. But it sold and continues to sell really well. More important to me, though, were the emails I received from HR professionals all over the world saying that they shared my frustrations and were excited about what I had written. That the book gave them hope and a renewed energy to make the changes they had long believed were necessary.
When my publisher suggested it was a good time for an update, I was initially very unenthusiastic. I really enjoy writing new material and ideas for our regular Disruptive HR blog and for our Disruptive HR Club (disruptivehr.club) members and am not particularly good at revising and editing stuff I’ve written in the past.
And then 2020 happened. And it seemed a good time to revisit the book.
Recently we have been hearing about things ‘getting back to normal’. And whilst being able to travel, to not wear a mask in public and to hug my friends is really appealing, why in HR would we want to simply go back to normal? For all the sadness of the current crisis, it gives HR an amazing opportunity to do things better. To create a better normal. That’s what this book tries to do. To create a better normal for HR.
Much of what was written five years ago still holds true; we are more disrupted than ever, HR still isn’t keeping up, and there are definitely different and better ways to do it. But whilst HR remains pretty traditional, it is beginning to change, and I have seen some amazing HR innovations in the last five years. Moreover, the case for change has now gone from being a smart idea to a total no-brainer. So, the second edition has got new, more recent examples of how to do HR differently. But more importantly, it’s about trying to reach out again, to shout even louder than the first time. It’s time to do something different.
Part I
What’s wrong with HR?
Human resources, HR, personnel – whatever you call the team looking after people in your organization, it’s broken. This sounds extreme, but it’s not a view I’ve come to lightly. My doubts about the way we HR professionals have been doing our jobs first arose around seven years ago while I was HR director at the BBC. In the five years that I have been running my company Disruptive HR, my conviction has strengthened. Then in 2020, of course, everything was turned upside-down. But the facts remain the same. HR is not fit for purpose.
This isn’t to say I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for those who work in HR – it’s not as if we have an easy life. We’re being asked to deliver more for less, achieve greater productivity, and magic up more innovation. There doesn’t seem to be a senior executive in existence who hasn’t read about getting rid of appraisals and isn’t asking what we’re going to do about them; it seems to be getting harder, not easier, to make people work cross-functionally; and those pesky millennials won’t stop demanding more flexibility. Then, just when we thought our HR budgets might increase for the first time in years, the financial director’s begging bowl has reappeared. The problem is, despite the fact that all HR professionals face these same challenges regardless of their sector, the HR function isn’t rising to them. So, what can we do about it?
In this book I’ll be talking you through what’s wrong with HR and how we need to turn conventional wisdom on its head. We must re-imagine our relationships with our employees, becoming slicker, faster, and more creative in our work with them. And to do this we must stop playing the company policeman and learn to be the ‘people experts’ in a radically new way.
I’ll be talking to you as a fellow HR professional, although my thoughts are also relevant for anyone in a leadership position who sees people as the key to his or her company’s success. Some of my ideas you may passionately agree with. Others you’ll find surprising, even shocking, and a few you might downright dislike. That’s all fine. I just want to provoke you into new ways of thinking about this amazing profession of HR, which I still love with all my heart.
I’ve also got some free resources which will help you tailor this book to your own needs, enabling you to see where you stand on these issues right now and to decide what changes to make for the future. Just head on over to http://disruptivehr.com/each-hr-diagnostic/ and take a look.
One thing’s for sure: HR can’t carry on in the same old way or it will be irrelevant before we know it. On the other hand, if we can transform the way we practise HR, we’ll be turning our organizations into the winners of the 21st century. There’s no time to lose, so let’s get started with the reinvention of HR.
1
HR is dead (long live HR)
Almost any introduction to a book about business disruption risks sounding clichéd and tired, so let’s just get into it. The business world we now live in is so different, so fast-moving, so disrupted, and so changed from the way it was, that the traditional methods of managing people are just not cutting it anymore. And I’m not just referring to the COVID crisis. They haven’t been for some time.
This means everyone who’s in the business of leading people has to find new ways of dealing with, or even creating, complex and rapid change. You need higher levels of creativity and productivity than ever before, which means the old style of relationship you have with your employees is no longer relevant. In your time in HR you’ll certainly have experienced many changes in the way you work: saving money, driving up creativity, restructuring, and attracting new and different people are all on your agenda. But have you found ways to translate this into action? In my talks and workshops with HR managers and leaders I find this is the main challenge, and overcoming it starts with fully appreciating what it is you’re dealing with in the first place.
So what does HR have on its plate today, and how is it different from before? I’m going to describe this by using my most recent experience as a proper HR director – at the BBC. While you may not have worked in broadcasting or the media you’ll still be familiar with the BBC and the challenges it’s facing. In addition, the BBC certainly isn’t unique; it’s a microcosm of the disrupted world in which all organizations live. Whatever business you’re in, you’ll have your own version of the ups and downs we faced.
There are seven main areas of change which HR needs to address. Let’s understand what they are first, before we work out what to do about them.
1. Technology is transforming our businesses
I’m sure the way you watch television, listen to radio, and consume media generally has changed dramatically in recent years. When I was a kid, if I wanted to watch my favourite programme I had a choice between BBC1, BBC2, ITV, and then (oh, the excitement!) newcomer Channel 4, and I’d have to make sure I was sitting in front of the box at the allotted time in order to catch it. Fast-forward to today and all that has changed. My daughter recently came back from her around-the-world backpacking trip, and one of the first things she said to me (apart from ‘Hello’) was, ‘Have I got Netflix in my bedroom? I want to binge-watch the second series of Vampire Diaries all weekend.’ I had to restrain myself from telling her how lucky she was.
Today we ‘time-shift’ our viewing. Did you know 40% of drama programmes are now watched at a time when they weren’t originally scheduled? When a new series comes out, my husband and I will install ourselves in front of it in one go – why wait an entire week for the next episode? Not only that, we ‘dual-screen’