USA 
United Kingdom
This article is the second in a three-part series. If you missed it, catch up on part one, a study of the evolving role of HR, before reading on.
At ofi, we do not have a standalone HR strategy, but rather key people focus areas that align with our business strategy and ambition to transform into a leading supplier of naturally good food and beverage ingredients and solutions.
In continuing on this journey, our current structure is made up of 66% business partners. This enhances the alignment of HR initiatives with business goals, ensuring that people practices and processes are directly contributing to the organization's strategic objectives and serving as a catalyst for delivery.
However, it is important to recognize that it is not just about quantity but quality and impact. We are on a journey within the HR function ensuring we put emphasis and time into building our own capability.
To borrow a cliché, evolution - not revolution - is the way. Leadership development and agility are two vitally important strategies for modern HR, but I’ll touch on those in a future column. For now, there are four key approaches I’d like to share that help deliver increased impact for the business.
1. Accelerate inclusion (it’s not about target quotas)
A McKinsey study showed that corporations identified as more diverse and inclusive are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors, while People Management research revealed that diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions.
At ofi, we as a leadership team recognize the direct correlation between inclusion, diversity, and equity (we order it this way to highlight that it all starts with inclusion) and business performance. So, we have embarked on a journey to create a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable workplace for all. Like many companies, we have hybrid work solutions in place which are especially helpful for enabling a diverse workforce, and supporting our people to take ownership of the work-life harmonization that is best for them and their extended families.
It is a continual journey and companies need to be committed to the long game to persevere – as success does not come down to a target quota but rather to a shift in mindset that values every employee for their differences
We recently conducted an inclusion and equity audit of our talent acquisition process and are evolving these to attract a more diverse talent pool into our businesses at all levels. This starts at the top. One of our recent initiatives was an inclusive leadership assessment of more than 60 ofi leaders globally. It looked at deepening self-awareness through peer feedback and expert-led individual coaching sessions, understanding one’s style or approach, and what the strengths and pitfalls associated with that can be.
I encourage others to do likewise and to recognize that this work is never done. It is a continual journey and companies need to be committed to the long game to persevere – as success does not come down to a target quota but rather to a shift in mindset that values and embraces every employee for their differences.
2. Shift focus from siloed to collaborative and hyper-coordinated, cross-department working
Harvard University research underscores the value of horizontal teamwork. Employees who can reach outside their direct area of accountability (silo) to find colleagues with complementary expertise learn more, sell more, gain skills faster, and innovate better.
It’s normal for employees, however, to prefer to work in their comfort zone with like minds, and harder to work in a borderless way. When we gravitate to what we already know, how can we get people to take an outside-in perspective, think differently, and be open to the unknown? Leaders, particularly HR leaders, can help people with this transition. That means providing training and support for enabling effective interface work and conducting meetings that invite positive disruption and healthy conflict to drive better outcomes.
With a nod to a colleague of mine - collaboration can fatigue people. It’s normal to resist the friction it can cause. Consider the world’s record-breaking motor racing ‘pit stop’. In 2023 the pit mechanics for team McLaren changed four tires on driver Lando Norris' F1 car in just 1.80 seconds. This was an incredible act of hyper-coordination, especially when you consider it took well over one minute back in the 1950s.
The pit crew was not collaborating, but instead working independently in a highly synchronized fashion, providing them with the ability to respond to change in real-time. So, when working across silos consider how you balance hyper-cordiniation with collaboration, to power new thinking without driving your people to distraction.
3.Developing capabilities such as data-driven HR
HR professionals are increasingly engaging business leaders with people data and insights that can tell a fact-based story that resonates.
They are using actionable data to advise the C-suite on important business decisions. Getting data is one thing but extracting critical insights and then using those to drive action enabling impactful decision-making isn’t always easy - not just for HR teams, but across the board.
We need HR and line managers to get comfortable with using HR data and insights to drive decisions. This is hard as you have to move from an intuitive, gut-feel, 'they are a good person' approach, to data-driven decisions. This approach can appear to be ‘less human’, but the opposite is true. It enables leaders to have an objective perspective based on fact and can remove unconscious bias as well, leading to an equitable approach and people who are fulfilled.
At Mondelēz International, former Chief People Officer (CPO), Paulette Alviti, invested in systems to harness information, being smart with dashboards that make sense of the data, and training her own HR team on how to use it globally and about local markets with highly nuanced local complexities.
4. Technology is your friend – but only alongside people and processes
In a world where you will be hard-pressed not to read a daily article on AI, as HR professionals we must recognize the explosion of human and machine interaction and that it demands close collaboration between HR and information technology.
That said, companies often discuss digital transformation in their strategies without having the right capabilities to integrate them. To win against competitors, organizations need to integrate people, processes, and technology in a way that enables them to be better than the rest of the field. This takes time. McKinsey famously noted that 70% of technology transformation projects fail due to the conflict between people and technology. There are no shortcuts to success. Embedding transformation disciplines requires unwavering commitment from leadership and a willingness to think differently in the way you blend technology with human capital to create value for your business.
Those who emphasize the importance of human skills over a simple race for increased output are likely to earn the loyalty of their workforces and higher performance over the long term
Take PepsiCo, for example. Its CPO, Becky Schmitt, oversees its internal talent marketplace, myDevelopment. It’s an AI-powered platform that matches employees to opportunities, experiences, and connections across the organization based on their interests, skills, and career aspirations. This is all part of the company’s commitment to creating meaningful growth and development opportunities for its people. That’s a smart use of the latest AI-driven technologies: empowering employees to bring their best and enabling the company to find its best people.
When it comes to technology, HR’s focus is on how it can help humans benefit. A March 2024 McKinsey report argues that there’s a rapidly expanding group of employees concerned about the nature of work. Those who emphasize the importance of human skills over a simple race for increased output are likely to earn the loyalty of their workforces and higher performance over the long term.
Ultimately, one of your most important assets is your people and HR must work with leaders to unlock their full potential.
Stay tuned for the final article in this three-part series where I’ll cover how to measure the strategic impact of HR.
