Novus Leadership Institute

Helping you succeed despite relentless change

Mike Russell

HR is under (another) attack

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“Chief Remote Work Officer” is confounding, beyond the trend to name a new C-something for every new situation.


Remote work today is about how people are enabled across the business to do their best work in remote/virtual settings. That should be the province of HR, the business-wide “people” function and guiding force in workforce changes.

I can see hiring (or contracting) project managers and knowledge specialists to accelerate HR efforts. But a separate C-level officer? It only serves to gut HR’s business role and value. It will also add confusion to who does what.

Also, hiring someone from the outside, new to the business culture, to shape the business culture for the future is playing with fire. You may get culture change, but maybe not the change you had hoped and in line with your business legacy, values, and vision.

If your response is something like “HR can’t innovate” or “HR can’t handle major workforce changes” or whatever … doesn’t that indicate a problem with HR even without the remote work issue?

We are in an era of relentless change. If current HR leaders can’t help the business continually adapt, then work on THAT problem. Don’t add another C-level leader to treat the symptom.

 

By Mike Russell, from a LinkedIn post commenting on this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-chief-remote-working-officers-are-now-navigating-organizations-into-a/

HR is under attack

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Prelude

Like it or not, this is a time of crisis for many businesses.=

Crisis is a time when Human Resources (HR, the People function, or whatever it is called in your business) can be a key leader in helping the business move forward and out of the crisis. A crisis often calls for change – including people and how they are organized – and for people to have hope. HR – the function that is about people – should be leading the way.

Sadly, this is less the case than one would think. And the opposite is often true, with the HR function, especially training and development, being the first to take cuts.

In my last post, I offered that this is because HR rarely can show ROI or other financial relevancy. In a financial crunch, only those functions that can show – or assist – with tangible financial benefits are considered relevant at leadership table deliberations.

HR may be under attack, but there are ways out. This white paper discusses how to achieve positive ROI for one of the HR functions, learning and development, during a crisis … or anytime for that matter.

[Read more…] about HR is under attack

The death and rebirth of “training”

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I’ve been thinking about this comment from a World Economic Forum report (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/):

“The vast majority of business leaders (94%) now expect employees to pick up new skills on the job – a sharp rise from 65% in 2018.”

Depending on how you read the statement, “on the job” could imply in the negative sense:

  • Businesses will no longer provide formal training and development away from the job.
  • Employees will still be expected to achieve mastery in the new skills.
  • “Someone” will have to provide the on-the-job training and development, and that’s probably not factored into plans and expectations, making it low or no priority for “someone.”

Likely result: little OJT with any meaningful results.

The economic climate has caused many to cut back training and development “expenses.” The core problem is “expenses” … spending on traditional training and development that has no tangible return on investment (ROI). Most businesses must focus on the tangible now. No room for anything else.

There is an answer. There is a way to achieve both positive ROI today and develop skills that keep the business running tomorrow.

More on that in a future post …

Top 10 essential skills for 2025 … and now

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Continuing the theme of looking forward and creating new, better “normals” …

This report (https://lnkd.in/gWWYHgW) lists the top 10 essential skills for 2025 according to World Economic Forum. The report also notes that some skills will take “only” 1-2 months (e.g., 30-60 days) of work in online training to attain some level of mastery.

You can work on these now to stay ahead of the market!

The “catch” is that to really become proficient, the skills must be applied with feedback to improve and make lasting new behavior, not just be “trained.”

Traditional training just doesn’t work for real behavior change … here’s a summary of why: https://www.mikerussell.com/2017/01/16/what-everyone-ought-to-know-about-training/

How well do your training and development programs provide real behavior change for the future?

A personal business example of innovating forward

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In a prior post I urged you to create a new “normal” instead of waiting for the old “normal.” The article includes 6 starter questions and 16 assessment factors to help you identify opportunities.

In this post, I’ll give you a personal business example following the advice.

One of our flagship people development programs produces positive ROI, unlike traditional training. Due to most clients’ technology capabilities, we needed to deliver either with everyone remote or everyone in person in the same place. Clients historically chose in person, which drove program structure and timing.

The pandemic moved many to remote work. That allowed the program to be all remote or a hybrid. And that in turn allowed us to make changes that dramatically improve learning – and positive behavior change – in less time.

Could we have waited until things returned to normal? Yes. We chose instead to invest (major program changes cost time and $) in the improvement … and we are delighted with the result.

In this case, the pandemic broke the “remote” ice and enabled a change for the better.

What have you been wishing you could change for the better?

 

In case you missed it, here is the link to the original post with the 6 starter questions and 16 assessment factors:

https://www.mikerussell.com/2020/04/21/innovate-forward-instead-of-reverting-backward/

STILL waiting (or hoping) to get back to “normal”?

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Still waiting (or hoping) to get back to “normal”? Innovate forward instead of reverting backward!

Don’t let the pandemic, social upheavals, elections, etc. derail you … leverage the momentum of change with these 6 starter questions and 16 assessment factors – relevant in any crisis – to help you identify top opportunities:

https://www.mikerussell.com/2020/04/21/innovate-forward-instead-of-reverting-backward/