Only 9% of HR functions are both highly efficient and highly aligned to their organisation’s needs, according to a survey of more than 200 HR leaders.
Post-pandemic, the scope of the HR function has drastically expanded. A February 2023 Gartner survey of 217 HR leaders found that 55% were getting more requests on a wider variety of topics, and 80% claimed their function was facing different challenges to those they faced pre-pandemic.
“Unfortunately, today’s new world of work has not only burdened HR with new demands but increased obstacles to effectiveness,” said Piers Hudson, senior director in the Gartner HR practice.
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Almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents reported that burnout among HR staff was more challenging than pre-pandemic. More than half of the HR leaders surveyed reported increased difficulty in retaining and recruiting HR employees.
“To address these types of new demands and obstacles, most HR leaders look to restructure their function or change their internal ways of working,” said Hudson. “Unfortunately, those approaches are only marginally increasing functional excellence because they fail to recognise a shift in the role of HR in organisations.”
HR’s legacy has been in areas such as employment policies, and administration where HR was largely the “owner and operator” of their tasks, the report concluded. The new demands on HR are more conflicting, interdependent and novel with no clear owners nor single right answers. To succeed in today’s environment, “HR needed to continue owning its legacy tasks while becoming a ‘convener and catalyser’ in the organisation”, the authors stated.
As a convener, HR was best positioned to bring stakeholders together and orchestrate a framework for that group to make decisions and find solutions. HR can then catalyse these stakeholders to ideate and determine new ways of working in today’s environment.
Gartner’s study found that leading HR organisations were focusing on three improvement areas to boost their functional excellence:
- Participatory prioritisation – half of HR leaders reported they were receiving more requests for support, and 45% said it was more difficult now to handle conflicting demands. Gartner said: Participatory prioritisation went “beyond internal coordination, putting into place formal mechanisms to involve non-HR stakeholders and empower HR staff, while focusing on flexible reprioritisation to anticipate business demand spikes to ensure priorities are not derailed.”
- Business-enabling digitalisation – technology is increasingly integral to how HR functions deliver and is a key part of its “convene and catalyse” role.
Despite investing in skills development, 55% of HR leaders reported they had more issues stemming from gaps in HR employee capabilities than before the pandemic. Leading HR functions are growing internal skills while simultaneously incorporating non-HR knowledge into the function.
“HR needs to allow a more permeable movement of talent into and out of the function, yet only one-quarter of HR leaders say their staffing model allows them to bring non-HR people into HR roles,” noted Hudson. “This type of collaboration with the wider organisation will help HR address the novel workforce issues they are now facing.”
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