What do HR people think about agility?
I had the privilege to collaborate with HR people in several engagements and it always struck me that HR can do so much for agility, that agility can do so much for HR, and that yet, in my perception, HR people are seldom involved at the right level in agile initiatives.
“HR can do so much for agility. Agility can do so much for HR. And yet HR is seldom involved at the right level.”
I recently received interesting feedbacks while running a webinar “demystifying agility for HR” with the Quebec order of HR professionals, during which we polled participants on four simple survey questions, which I believe provide a good peek at some key perceptions that HR people have toward agility.
Why agility matters to HR?
This result is a striking contrast to what people involved more in delivery of products or projects, would likely answer. For example, in State of Agile 2019, in which the bulk of the respondents presumably consists of IT people, 74% of respondents selected the answer “accelerate software delivery,” which corresponds to the first choice in this poll.
At a time when many still perceive agility as little more than a software delivery method, HR’s reasons for agility are refreshing because they emphasize business and cultural agility more than IT and methods.
“HR’s reasons for agility are refreshing because they emphasize business and cultural agility more than IT and methods.”
Simuilarly, the results show that HR people understand more and more that agile is a means for adaptability and talent attraction/engagement, both of which are topping the list of potentially existential challenges that fall on the shoulders of HR.
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What is the involvement of HR in agile initiatives?
As I witnessed and suspected, HR is mostly involved in agile initiatives to answer ad hoc, punctual questions such as: “how can I hire a Scrum Master?”, “can you define a Product Owner function?” or “what agile training and certifications can we send people to?”
Conversely, HR is seldom involved in the deeper discussions such as the reason for agility, the proactive development of agile skills or how to adapt performance evaluations to encourage agility, to name a few. The lack of HR participation in agile initiatives is very damaging, because developing agility impacts HR responsibilities such as recruiting, job definition, organisational design, competency development and reward system. And vice versa.
What type of agile approach do HR people see in their organizations?
Looking at the results, it seems that HR people who show an interest for agility are not just facing local team agile adoption but larger scale and deeper agility adoption sur as DevOps, business/IT/operations teams, and even value chain agility.
What also emerges from this poll is that the form agility takes in a particular context goes beyond the typical 5 cases presented in the poll.
Related content: From Functions to Roles, a 9-minute voice-over-slides video illustrating the shift from functions to roles that HR can help achieve in order to improve agility.
What are the top challenges that HR people perceive regarding their organization becoming more agile?
Leadership style tops the challenges, which is consistent with the results from the Business Agility Report 2019.
Lack of resources to develop agility is also a common challenge. My interpretation is that many organizations are already undergoing multiple transformations such as digital, IT or culture, as well as facing urgent issues. It highlights the importance of positioning agility as a way to achieve other transformations and solve critical issues that the organization is facing today, rather than a stand-alone, on-top-and-above-everything initiative.
Note the poll covered only 15 webinar participants, therefore these results are a peek into HR perception of agility rather than statistically relevant. These results are consistent with several observations I made with my clients.
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