HR and IT are both essential functions yet can be viewed as overheads. The leadership of both functions know that they need to make the service they deliver to their business as reliable and value-creating as possible. However, as a result of being subjected to the outsourcing market for longer than their HR colleagues, CIOs have often had to look more rigorously at how they organise and manage their functions.
CIOs know that unless they get their own houses in order, and the basics are taken care of, they will not be allowed to do more interesting and value-creating work. For this reason, well-run IT departments operate a range of controlling processes. Three administrative control practices that HR directors can learn from CIOs, whether or not they are considering outsourcing, are outlined below:
1. Maintain an HR architecture
Many organisations invest in great strategic HR talent and have global processes that empower research, design, and building of world-class HR programmes. They do a fabulous job, yet somehow the benefit of the whole is less than what the parts suggest it should be. Strategic HR people know how important it is to integrate performance, goals, reward, recognition, and learning, rather than to develop HR programmes in silos. However, the process interfaces are rarely defined and managed as tightly as they should be.
Good CIOs wouldn’t let this happen. They have system interfaces carefully defined, and non strategic technologies are sought out and removed. There are compromises as IT need to have the flexibility to remain relevant to the business, but the flexibility is within the context of a strategic IT architecture. HR needs something similar, a strategic glue to tie HR programmes together. This glue needs to contain the fundamental HR building blocks, on which each HR programme can be based. These might include:
- an overall map of the company’s HR processes and a description of each component and interface;
- a consistent career-development model or career-level framework;
- a skills-building foundation - competencies or skill tracks.
2. Operate a problem-management process
What happens when things go wrong in your HR organisation? For example, someone’s payroll tax is calculated incorrectly or someone uses last year’s performance ratings to calculate bonus estimates? Would you even know?
CIOs generally know when things go wrong. They also know that the most important thing is not whether there is a problem, but how it is managed once it occurs and how it is prevented from becoming a recurring issue.
A well-managed HR environment should be no different, especially one that operates in a shared-service or outsourced environment. Key elements that should be present include:
- problem management
- problem escalation
- problem resolution
- root-cause analysis
- preventative action.
3. Establish a project approval and control process
How many ongoing projects does your organisation have today that require HR input? Do you have a consolidated list of the projects that you completed last year, and what value did they add? How much of your budget was consumed with unplanned project work? If the company announced a new project tomorrow, requiring significant HR involvement, what would you do?
Through having project approval and control processes in place, IT functions tend to know the answers to these questions. Sometimes, the need for project work to be approved before it is done and before it is signed off, frustrates the business, but it’s a trade-off that most CIOs are prepared to make.
HR organisations can borrow these disciplines. They should have a project-control process that governs:
- initiating projects, including allocating budget and resources
- checking that requested changes do not conflict with each other
- combining changes into releases that can be managed together
- prioritising between competing projects
- monitoring progress
- testing changes before and after they become live
- signing off the changes
- checking that projects finish, completely, including decommissioning redundant capability.
Making these three things work requires discipline and rigour, and probably a small investment in a focused service management team. The outcome of being able to demonstrate controls and value added, and prevention of issues occurring and stealing management time, should go a long way to making this worth the investment for most HR directors.
