How technology helps improve company culture and strategy
Resource management is critical for insights
The role of Human Resources (HR) services in improving or maintaining company culture has never been more important.
Changing or improving company culture so that employees can better deliver on organisational mandates has been a challenge for as long as the concept of “change management” has been around.
Company culture is always changing. Measuring the impact of culture changes that are sometimes unnoticeable to Human Resources is impossible without data. Leadership of an organisation might wake up one day to find that the company they were charged with has completely changed. Blame will fall on the HR practitioners who did not warn or support leadership about this issue. Critically, this is the fault of the leadership themselves.
Management might have thought that the posters on the walls reminding everyone about values and culture would have magically been understood by all employees.
But, people need specifics -and need to feel that they are part of a larger mission. People need to know how and what to prioritise in their daily work lives. By doing this, we instil true meaning to words like “excellence”, “stewardship”, “accountability” etc.
How do these values tie into company strategy? How does management and leadership know when these values are not being met in order to take appropriate action?
Can technology help?
The role of resource management software becomes vitally important. Take for example Envolve software which turns raw data into actionable management information that empowers not only Human Resources but also line managers, managers and leadership. The goal? Creating alignment of strategy across the business from top line objectives to daily projects and tasks.
However, we need to remember that technology is only as good as the input it receives. You may ask: In today’s world where our digital work can be traced, tracked and monitored, why do we put up with substandard work and a lack of results? It’s because of the “junk in, junk out” principle. Translating company strategy, objectives, structure, key milestones, teams and projects is critical to the success of the data-to-dashboard functionality in Envolve.
That’s when the system becomes a disciplined foundation of the organisation’s values, purpose and key success factors as well as each employee’s role.
When traditional HR services fail to deliver results, technology is the answer to augment, improve and backup what is already in place.
Four HR Services that provide good data and outcomes for resource management software
- Company Strategy
The EXCO team and leadership must make resource management software part of their daily, weekly and monthly monitoring and assessment roles. With actionable insights at their disposal they can change and fix problematic areas and ensure that company strategy is on-track for success.
- Team and Individual Responsibilities
Each team needs their own plan and this must be aligned with overall company strategy. It must include objectives, milestones, and tactics. Furthermore, the plan must have an HRsub- plan to achieve the objectives. Roles and responsibilities must be clearly stated.
From the planning to delivering of outcomes, making sure that every team member is aware of their role and timeline is vital to the success of a project, keeping on time and within budget.
- Performance Management
Communication is vitally important. Every individual should have a meeting between their manager or supervisor with human resources to agree on for example, of how the meeting of deadlines relate to values such as excellence, before final values are entered into the system.
These types of interactions must be ongoing from the day of hiring a new employee to ensure that they fit within the company’s values and strategic framework. They resource management system will show them exactly how they fit into their team and their respective role.
Over time the resource management software will also identify strengths and weaknesses of individuals as they participate in projects and complete their tasks. This not only saves the company time and money, but also helps build a stronger team, and can alert managers as to whether the individual needs additional training, or if a more senior role is more fitting.
- Clarity and Transparency
Software is purely outcomes based, keeping work fair and transparent among the workers. The data generated and information produced will underpin fairness and transparency as employees know how they are measured and managed – and why (their role in strategy).
There is no reason for any grey areas when it comes to lack of performance.
Conclusion
Once all team members are confident in their roles, you will have a well-oiled machine.
The answer to making strategy work, is the building of systems that embed understanding and connectivity of company strategy to all employees in the business. This is the very essence of “alignment”. It’s a concept not too difficult to understand. However, in practice it is elusive. Without this type of alignment it is impossible to monitor or measure any gains or reductions in a healthy company culture or the engagement of its employees.
