11.05.2023

Crossing HR Borders - Can we simplify certain HR processes?

'Don't think outside the box, think outside your industry.' For a lot of HR problems today, a different domain has already solved that challenge. It can be very inspiring to cross some borders to gain new insights. And we're not talking about just crossing country borders, but also the borders of your discipline, industry or other unexpected resources. These insights can lead to specific solutions of the challenges that you're facing today.

Explore these examples in this monthly 'Crossing HR Borders' series.

Research from Deloitte has concluded that a massive number of employees worldwide are overwhelmed at work due to increasing complexity in their daily tasks.
The study found that a lot of this complexity is needless, with many redundant processes and procedures contributing to the issue.

Streamlining performance reviews through less formalized 'check-in' processes, using specific HR management software and avoiding unnecessary communication can be already of great help to simplify HR processes.

The opportunity for business and HR leaders is to find ways to make information easier to find, simplify processes and systems, keep teams small, and make sure leaders provide focus. The result will likely be improved employee satisfaction, teamwork, and productivity.

Let's have a look in this newsletter at some creative approaches when it comes to simplified HR processes.

• The Creative Bureaucracy Festival celebrates outstanding innovation in the public sector and its contribution to a better, more sustainable, and more just world.
The festival brings together creative bureaucrats and their allies at all levels, aiming to build a movement with international partners who support the idea of positively transforming our public institutions – and help to make it happen.
This requires organizational structures and cultures that are open-minded and solution-oriented – moving from ‘no, because’ to ‘yes, if’, cutting out needless rules and simplifying the process.

>>> Can you list 3 unnecessary rules in your company or HR approach?

• Jan Dirk van der Burg most well-known work is the book of photographs Olifantenpaadjes/Desire Lines (2011), both an optimistic indictment of an abuse of the landscape and an ode to the shortest way to get from A to B.
These Desire Lanes are tangible proof that people do not allow themselves to be straitjacketed in public space and that they only have one goal: to find the shortest way without noticing splendidly laid pavements, traffic-safety barriers and idyllically organized pedestrian areas.

In Finnish cities they are taking into account the same approach: visitors to city parks are being watched, while leaving their mark in the freshly fallen snow in winter. Architects then make grateful use of that input for the design of new walkways.

>>> Observe employees and followed procedures and see where you can create shortcuts.

• "[...] just behave like the sort of person you want as your co-worker. Treat everyone like you want to be treated. Tesla must be the kind of company where people look forward to coming to work in the morning. Life is too short for anything else."

This is Tesla's conclusion at the end of their Anti-Handbook Handbook, which is everything but a traditional employee handbook filled with policies and rules.
At least, that's the image the company wants to show the world.

According to Corporate Rebels however, the message it conveys, is as old-fashioned as the outdated car industry Tesla is trying to beat.
Seems to be rather hard to come up with a real creative and successful Ant-Handbook Handbook?!

>>> How would your anti-handbook handbook look like, if you were about to creating one?

• The Venice Dashboard consists of several "widgets" that encapsulate and visualize relevant real-time events in Venice, of interest to citizens, city officials and visitors alike. Each widget aggregates data available from a multiplicity of public web sites and summarizes the information in easy-to-digest capsules arrayed on the screen in tiles of varying dimensions.

Such a dashboard can be of great help in for HR as well: as human resources is slowly but surely evolving into a data-driven function, filled with numerous HR KPIs, the purpose is to go from simple reporting to smarter use of analytics, enabling companies and managers to track and predict employees’ performance, make better-informed talent decisions, and have the opportunity to operate advanced workforce planning with the help of modern HR analytics software.

Turning to a professional online dashboard, HR professionals can keep a close eye on employee performance, recruiting, and talent management processes.

>>> How would your digital dashboard for all HR parameters look like?

'Crossing HR Borders' is the result of a co-creation between Marc Heleven - Innovation researcher and Cyriel Kortleven - Global speaker on the Change Mindset.

These articles were first published in the Flemish HR Magazine ZigZag.
More info: www.cyrielkortleven.com