Search for HR transformation and you’ll find so many hits and so little concrete information. Mostly, you’ll find consulting firms not defining it, but rather making a case that you need it [Brilliant sales tactic!]

HR Transformation is the change required to ensure HR’s effectiveness in this digital age. The outcome is that we are successfully executing on our objectives as an HR function even though digitalization has changed everything in both the organization we support, as well as the operation of our own function. 

Because digitalization is the central theme, many HR organizations think that it’s the point of the change. After all, it conjures up images of cool chatbots, oh-so-easy-data-driven decisions, and automated recruiting. 

But cool, new concepts are not the point of it. The point of transformation is to drive effectiveness and value. If HR's value is primarily managing talent - and our core structure for doing so hasn't changed since Mr. Ulrich published Human Resources Champions circa 1996, how can we be effective when our businesses are more digital and our workforce is influenced so completely by social trends?

Now, I'm not going to tell you that performance reviews need to be 86'ed and self-organizing Agile teams will figure it all out without any help from HR as you may have heard. But I am saying that what we've always done is getting more and more wasteful as it adds less and less value. The first thing to consider is that we need to be digital if we have any hope of being effective. And digital HR is details HR. Your processes have to be nice and tight in order to be digital, which means you need to consider the tactical and how it aligns with the strategic. These things cannot be separate if you want to be effective.

Want to be more effective? Here's where you can start:

1. Start with one HR service and make it comprehensive and awesome - like performance management.

2. Decide on a person who owns this service for the organization. They should be trusted to make decisions regarding this service, so choose well. They have to be experienced, accountable, and focused on adding value.

3. Create a team that supports all the processes and tech driving the service. This probably exists in less formality today - but make it clear in no uncertain terms that this is a team.

4. Every decision regarding this service needs to run through the new owner and the team that supports it - no matter where it is in the world or for what business unit.

5. Trust the team to know the latest research, coolest thinking, high-tech tools and available automation. Let them prioritize what needs to be done by the value it brings. Hold the service leader accountable for making good decisions about prioritization.

6. If the service isn't meeting the needs of your entire workforce, encourage the use of methodologies like Design Thinking to spur effective and innovative changes to the process. But it also has to be translated into a system to enable your workforce. Period. So get PROCESS minded.

7. Hold this team accountable to a team standard of operational excellence. And measure the objectives in order to optimize the process and your workforce.

Do this and we no longer have to have conversations about being digital or innovative. We just will be!

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