Reimagining the 'People' people

Reimagining the ‘People’ people

The role of HR is changing…

Previously known as the team who simply hire, fire and deal with people issues, proactive HR teams are moving away from a reputation of the disciplinarians of an organisation, to that of valued strategic business partners.

It couldn’t be more necessary. With businesses stifled by stagnating productivity and a talent tight market, advice from HR professionals is more valuable than ever in driving a high-performance culture across the business.

In addition to having a wealth of knowledge in a vast number of specialisms, there’s one aspect of the HR professional’s role that makes them especially valuable to an organisation - HR knows people. People are an organisation’s biggest asset, so the value a HR team can add by understanding what’s really going on within their organisation is vast.

As experts, they truly understand what drives their workforce and what’s happening on the internal grapevine which in turn, provides the insight and power to reveal what employees need in order to succeed. They must also understand where the business is heading, its challenges and future priorities.

Unfortunately, the strategic value of a HR function is not always recognised. Even when it is, many HR professionals find themselves too consumed by the burden of day-to-day activities to be able to focus on gaining the strategic insight they need.

The ability to bridge the gap between the two is where HR truly reveals its value – rationalising what the business wants and understanding how to enable its workforce to make this happen.

However, marrying the two can be a time-consuming and onerous task. The role of HR is changing so how can these two areas be combined to provide the insight needed to shape the direction of the business?

People data

At a basic level, the data gives useful information into sickness levels, overall performance, diversity, turnover, and much more. The ability to delve into the data, finding trends business areas can give HR professionals useful insight into how their HR processes are working and where their people need support.

The data can also help to direct wider organisation, particularly if there’s an issue that requires urgent attention. This leads to valuable conversations, and ultimately evidence-based decisions that make a true difference to how an organisation works.

The insight gained through people data is invaluable to a business. By tangibly revealing the state of the organisation through employee feedback and people analytics, HR well and truly earns its place at the strategic table.

Becoming extraordinary

Improving productivity while complying with legislation and boosting employee energy through engagement can be achieved by utilising an online employee management system such as Cascade HR. This enables HR teams to automate and simplify many the daily tasks that ordinarily eat up time.

With a self-service solution, employees are responsible for their own personal work-life admin tasks. This frees the HR team to focus on more strategic projects by utilising key employee metrics to identify workforce trends and problem areas - from employee turnover and workforce diversity to the cost of recruitment and absence rates.

Improving productivity frees every HR professional to be extraordinary. From taking insight to the board to help achieve strategic business goals, to magnifying employee engagement leads to a more dedicated, productive workforce and improved business performance. 

Tomorrow’s HR solution

Cascade HR, by IRIS, works with businesses who face a barrage of legislation, administration and want to keep staff happy. Utilising Cascade HR, mundane HR tasks can be removed to free time, talent and energy of HR professionals so they can focus on doing the work they love.

Visit Cascade HR to find out how to increase engagement and streamline your business processes.

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