Hope you enjoyed the last post about Customer Experience (CX), Everyone Has Customers (Including You!) Since then, I’ve been able to contribute to Bloomfire’s “The CX Trends to Watch in 2020, According to the Experts.” Check it out! Now on to this topic of Human Resources. Whether or not you work in HR (or some iterative version of the name), this one’s for you. Because warts and all, it’s an essential function of the business to maximize the talent in the organization.
That should be everyone’s job. What goes for Human Resources, goes for company leaders especially. Take for instance, employee experience. In my HR Professional magazine article, “What HR (and Everyone Else) Should Know About Employee Experience,” I wrote about 3 important characteristics: relevance, differentiation, and co-creation.
These are things companies try to do with their products and services already, and certainly with multiple functions working together to do it. If only more businesses turned these efforts toward their employees, we would see fewer toxic, burned out workplaces that underperform to their potential and create business risk.
Employee Experience in turn influences and reflects the company’s culture. I talk about the relationship between employee experience and culture in my book, Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work. You can read a book excerpt via TLNT.com.
Employee Experience and Culture is clearly not just Human Resource’s job—leaders must lead and employees are included given how patterns of individual behaviors shape and reflect culture too. Leadership, which includes Culture and Employee Experience (IMHO) can’t be in- or outsourced to HR alone.
Sure, HR has specific roles to play. My article, “It’s More than a Job: The Role of HR in Organizational Culture” is one example. While they may be the educators, facilitators, evangelists, sponsors, and connectors, they can’t “own culture” because no one (or few) people can wield its power. Culture is shared.
While there is always much to do, start with these:
Make HR your job too, in mind and action. Think about the impact on people, what you will do, and how you do it–in that order. Act in ways that reflect your personal values and the values of the company. Like HR, take it upon yourself and encourage others to learn and develop. My article on Learnlight, “The Role of Leadership in Creating a Culture of Learning” provides steps toward unstoppable learning.
Invest in HR. Many Human Resources functions are understaffed, underdeveloped, underfunded, and disempowered. It’s hard to discern the chicken or the egg scenario—is HR weak because their organizations deem them so, or has HR done it’s share to be undeserving? It might vary from company to company. Be that as it may, the industry itself is rightfully ripe for disruption (and is being disrupted as we speak). That necessitates a change in HR’s culture one way or another. I wrote about this in “Shoemaker’s Children No More: Changing HR’s Culture” on HR.com:
… when it comes to deciding whether HR needs a culture change, think about whether the function has met its full potential with energized, engaged, and inspired employees who take the entire organization to a higher level.
Every company needs strong Human Resources expertise. Having the firepower will enable them to deliver huge initiatives for the business, such as digital transformation. I happen to have some Tips for HR when it comes to Change Management and Digital Transformation, also published on Learnlight.
With the budgets related to the cost of doing business, wouldn’t you need your biggest asset—knowledge and talent that only comes through people–to be the best? Talk to leaders who trust their HR partners. They will tell you your investment will pay dividends.