Insights from HR Strategy Summit

The HR Strategy Summit (NSW) was a great opportunity for HR leaders to share experiences and ideas. The Next Step team enjoyed hosting a round-table on the day and have shared their key takeaways from the event below.

Creating clarity

• Consolidate and simplify your tech stack. Aim for seamless integration, greater automation and deep personalisation. This is currently a stretch for many. 
• Data is important, but it’s what you do with it, that really counts. Invest in analytics and transform numbers into meaningful insights.
• We value what’s measured, but do we measure what’s valuable? Set KPIs around what holds genuine importance to your people.
• Make sure your foundational HR services work seamlessly (particularly payroll) and stand the test of time.
• AI is becoming more prevalent, but even the big players have a long way to go on this front.

Developing managers 

• Invest in middle management to help them build, coach and care for their teams. 
• Teams no longer work for managers; managers now work for teams. 
• Aim to build capacity, not capability and create leaders who can transform, inspire and create a strong collective.
• Set clear criteria for who your leaders are and what you want to deliver. Organisations like Commonwealth Bank Australia are distinguishing between ‘leaders of people’ and ‘leaders of work’.

Empowering teams

• Don’t need new skills, but need to shift mindset to empower teams. 
• Behaviours follow mindset, not skillset.
• Connect every single person/position-description within the organisation, back to it’s central purpose.
• Safety Culture’s immersive customer-themed meeting rooms are a strong reminder of the real-world impact of the business. 

Ways of working

• The new world of work continues to create workplace tensions. 
• Strong demand for flexibility needs to be finely balanced with opportunities for quality connection. 
• Remain flexible about what flexibility means. Personalise where possible and remember that being treated fairly, doesn’t necessarily mean being treated the same. Find pockets of flexibility that fit with business requirements.
• When trialling new forms of flexibility allow. Unilever undertook an in-depth 2-year study in partnership with UTS to determine the success of a 4-day work week.

Employee experience

• Whilst talent shortages persist, economic headwinds mean the focus is starting to shift towards energising, engaging and retaining existing workforce.
• Employee experience is an essential part of the recruitment process. Focus on this through every touchpoint of the recruitment and onbaording process.
• During the recruitment process, look for people who provide ‘culture add’, not just ‘culture fit’. 
• Ensure you are as obsessed about your employee experience as you are about your customer experience. 

The road ahead

• HR needs to have one eye on the telescope and one eye on the microscope.
• Many organisations are struggling with the imperative to cut costs, whilst still delivering results/growth. The consensus is that many will have to learn how to do more with less.
• Overall mood is improving, yet we are still 10 points below pre-pandemic levels. While many are no longer in distress, the vast majority of us are operating in stress.
• The velocity of change means that it’s an incredibly challenging (but also very rewarding) time to be a leader. Use this opportunity to add value and make an impact.
• A deep understanding of people, operations and strong business acumen will help you to build credibility at all levels of the business.
• Spend time aligning your strategy, planning and implementation. Centre it all around core business priorities and values. Sounds simple, but this is often where things start going wrong. 

How we can help?

Would you like help building your team, developing your own capability or being connected to new career opportunities? Get in touch and one of our team will be pleased to help.