Successful e Business - Talent, Balance and Results

Cliff Osborne kicked off the e-business issue and debate at the recent HRINZ conference with about thirty HR professionals (mostly from medium to large NZ organisations) and listened to some of the subsequent e-business presentations from local and overseas presenters. His objective in this article is to share his reflections with a wider audience. Please e-mail your views and reflections to him at c.osborne@creativetraining.co.nz

The e Business debate actually cuts across all three themes of the conference - Talent, Balance and Results.

Talent: Having people whom can “translate” the needs of the organisation and derive realistic e-Business implications for the NZ context.

Balance: Striking the right balance according to the needs of the organisation.

Results: Ensuring the e-business initiative succeeds and delivers the results through good change management.

Each of these themes is now covered in more detail:

Talent

Successful e-Business requires the project management team to have both people and technology empathies and feelings. It is dangerous to have an imbalance - technologists driving the agenda or people people driving the agenda. The key is to have a project leader with competencies in both. Successful e-Business implementation requires translators who can empathise with both people and technology and who can impartially advise the organisation on the role of technology in achieving people performance. We agreed that these people are indeed a rare commodity and really are an important cog in the talent war. Our line managers if need to be reminded that – “in a high tech world we need high tech people skills”.

Balance

A scenario was shared at the HRINZ conference that HR service delivery would be radically different from today’s picture. Today’s HR approach being largely paper based, would be slow and expensive to administer on any kind of large scale. HR needs to be more strategic, added value and more transactionally efficient. By identifying the right e Business HR delivery option, HR can re-balance its role, releasing more energy for internal customer service and strategic development. It may even be possible to deliver more, with less as Diagram 1 illustrates.

To achieve this requires a re-assessment of how HR delivers its services, especially the low added value service. But HR needs to be careful. For example we were reminded during the conference that people do not see payroll as low added value, and will not be impressed if HR has been addressing strategic issues at the expense of transactional activities!

Diagram 1

e Business needs to be considered in light of the prevailing and desired organisational culture. Don’t let technology determine the culture. Rather let the desired culture determine the role and extent of e Business. HR managers need a good stethoscope that can give reliable reports

about the organisation’s desired cultural health from three views:

What we have now; Where can I fit best (from an individual perspective); and What we (the organisation wants) want Armed with this information, HR can better plan, making sure everybody becomes a stakeholder in an e Business friendly business culture (Diagram 2).

Diagram 2

Results

HR needs to up skill in strategy and e Business development HR needs to up skill in strategy and e Business development. Without this upskilling HR will not maximise its role in making e-Business successful. Fear will dominate creativity. At the very least HR must be competent in two key aspects of strategy:

.Developing its own HR strategy to meets the strategic goals of the organisation.

.HR people must have excellent e Business change management skills, able to transfer this knowledge to the line managers.

No matter what e-Business solution is eventually decided upon (thin, fat or narrow portal!) at the end of the day one thing is true - it will need to be implemented without jeopardising the day to day running of the organisation. HR can influence and in some cases determine e Business results by:

Defining strategy and terms of reference for e Business

Giving training support in change management

Finding the “translator” and e Business change management individuals

Communicating the people benefits of e Business

If HR is make the transition to “e Business savvy” it will need to adopt a new competency model as outlined in diagram 3. This new competency model implies that HR will need to:

.Actively learn and practice strategy development

.Gain technical expertise in e Business (overcome the “technology fear”)

.Initiate e Business opportunities in the business (particularly on own turf)

.Develop good relationships with line managers and IT to influence e Business success

.Develop realistic measures of people performance impact through e-business

.Training others to be change adept

Diagram 3

HR has a significant role in making e Business succeed HR has a significant role in making e Business succeed. What it may currently lack on the technical side is more than compensated by HR’s competence on the behavioural side by understanding the dynamics of organisational change and how best to ensure technology and people work in harmony.