Introduction to Agile HR
Agile HR is a misfit term rather, according to my understanding Agile HR is a concept or phenomena of orienting the HR (Human Resource) to think and work as per the agile project management methodology. It can be described as designing and planning of the HR services to support the organization by implementing the best of agile practices. This concept helps to align people to support the agile cycles and agile way of working like the scrum agile practices, Kanban agile practices, scrum waterfall agile practices, etc. Agile HR helps to create new benchmarks in providing business solutions and to create a workforce that works according to the agile principles of project management. Under the Agile HR concept, human resources uses Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Six Sigma practices to develop customer services and uses the agile practices for incremental development of the project and the organization. Agile HR practices can be used in different industries like software development, finance & accounting, etc. Aim of this is to create a team of focused, responsive and efficient workers for an agile organization. It aims to create a productive agile workforce to deliver best in class services.
An organization is also called The Entrepreneurial organization which is basically defined as the organization that responds quickly based on the customer needs and demands. An agile organization response time is quick as per the market changes. These organizations tend to create a healthy competition and focus on the customers rather than the uniform offerings. The organizations use the catalyst approach of leadership without compromising the cohesion of the whole system. The HR and organization together foster an open communication system as communication is a crucial factor while implementing the agile practices of project management. The organizations promote continuous learning from the trials and testing during the implementation.
Agile HR practices promote faster and successful project implementation. It orients the organizational approach towards customer needs and creates cost-effective software solutions. When the agile practices are applied to the field of human resource, collaboration and innovation are increased and the focus shifts to customer need rather than the standardized offerings.
Key Differences
There are few key differences between the outmoded HR practices and the Agile HR practices, some of them are listed below:
| Comparison of Objective | Agile HR | Traditional HR |
| Learning Approach | Promotes continuous learning from the experiments and provides myriads of learning opportunities. | Provides remedial learning by bounding the employee to a specific performance level. |
| Talent Acquisition | Promotes brand investment and inculcates acquiring talents from different talent channels using every inch of modern technology. Thus they are prepared for any resource hiring in advance. | Follows the same old talent acquisition process. The search of the candidate begins when jobs are available. |
| Transparency | Promotes transparency by providing ownership to the employee for their development and making. Employees are active members in the process. | The traditional HR processes are least transparent as they stick to the old and lengthy process of talent acquisition and HR is the owner. |
| Implementation Approach | Specific teams are selected and chosen to work on different projects and regular feedbacks are accumulated to determine the quality of service and to decide whether more team members are required for the particular project or not. | Large-scale systems are cautiously researched, resourced, and installed. |
Agile HR Strategies
Below mentioned are some of the Agile HR Strategies:
- Focusing on creating coaches and mentors instead of managers by training different level leaders of the company. Agile HR creates experts and not managers.
- They concentrate on strong and focussed values to keep the team members on the same tangent.
- Implementation of high-performance self-motivated teams who are focussed on their targets and towards achieving their goals.
- Maintaining transparency among different functions of the organization so that the goals and policies are clear to everyone and to identify the levels of employees based on their expertise.
- Focus on a continuous learning approach from their experiments.
- Encourages feedback collection for continuous process improvement.
- Believes in employee and brand investment and tends to implement a strong employment brand.
It promotes agile working and helps in a successful organization. The employees are empowered to work with flexibility and the minimum number of constraints. They use different tools and available technology to optimize the team’s performance and to deliver the best results. It helps to improve customer satisfaction, productivity and to reduce the cost by using the project management methodology. The working is a powerful tool to improve sustainability and to remove all the obstacles that tend to reduce the efficiency of the agile workers and the organization. The working tends to design a flexible work environment so the working individuals can balance their personal and professional life resulting in a much more focussed approach towards their responsibilities. It supports maximum flexibility and minimum constraints to drive long term organizational success. By implementing the practices, the working benefit both the organization and the employees in numerous ways. The benefits are earned from continued trials and varying work practices, by adapting the available technology to maximize efficiency and productivity resulting in the new and improved worked environment.
Few of the organizational and employee benefits are listed below:
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Key Features of Agile HR
- The efforts of HR create a workforce and together they create an adaptive and flexible work environment. They provide the right work and the right tools to the right and eligible employees to maximize productivity. Thus they provide freedom and flexibility to work by providing different work stations to the employees.
- The constraints and limitations are reduced and hence the employees find a productive method to complete the assignments and projects assigned to them. They promote the easy collaboration of people.
- Working environments utilize most of the technical tools available in the market. Updated communication boards, collaboration tools, and project management resources help to keep all the team members on the same page, without engaging unnecessary meetings, discussions, reports and emails.
- The Agile HR applies the agile methodologies to reinforce the organization by exploring the new possibilities of talent acquisition and supports adaptability and productivity.
- Transparency is a key factor in the talent acquisition process which helps to gain the manager’s and employee’s trust.
- It is gaining recognition as a means of helping the organization stay current and aligned with the realities of today’s talent requirements.
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