Initially, HR management was seen largely as a support function, with major focus on hiring and managing the exit of an employee. As businesses evolved, so did the role of HR.

Today, HR is a business partner and a key function in building an organisation. In addition to taking care of on-boarding and exit formalities, HR is also tasked with the responsibilities of attracting and retaining talent, as well as nurturing employee growth within the organization. There is a paradigm shift from the old practices that are fast becoming redundant. Particularly in the QSR space, newer and more convenient procedures that aid an organization’s goals are displacing some old HR concepts. Here’s a list of HR practices that are fast becoming extinct or are in the process of being so:

1. Recruitment on the basis of quantity

The QSR space is burgeoning and as more players enter this space, the demand for competent and quality professionals keeps growing. Companies begin to struggle with a high attrition rate, even after bulk recruitments. Hence, a lot of focus is being given to employee training and development, counsel and guidance facilities as well as other HR initiatives aimed at keeping employees satisfied and committed to the organization.

In the present scenario, it is considered ideal that an organization create an internal talent pool to tap for ideas, new initiatives or responsibilities through training. This empowers employees to participate in growth opportunities within the organization. At McDonald’s, we prioritise existing employees for non-specialised openings across operations. Our current Vice President of Business Operations across McDonald’s restaurants in West & South India, Ranjit Paliath, is a fine example. He had joined the McDonald’s family in March 1995 as Trainee Manager at its first restaurant in Bandra.

2. Centralization of leadership

The Retail and QSR segment is a major employer of youth, including first time job seekers. It is important for HR professionals to groom talent – taking on young people and developing them into leaders through training programmes and relevant work experience. The rising employee turnover rate is making it essential to develop programs that allow for employee growth within the organization and train them to assume senior leadership positions in order to create smooth transitioning of functions.

3. One-way Communication Channel

Today, it is critical for organizations to have a two-way communication channel with its employees. This exercise not only provides a transparent platform for both the parties but also educates employees on the organisational goals while keeping the organization informed about an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. An HR professional must understand an employee’s perspective and customize talent management exercise on the basis of organization objectives as well as employee needs and expectation.

There is a paradigm shift from the old practices that are fast becoming redundant. Newer and more convenient procedures that aid an organization’s goals are displacing some old HR concepts

4. Excessive dependence on Face-to-Face meetings & Briefings

The trend of daily meetings has reduced as employees tend to be stuck in longer meetings leading to non-productivity. New concepts like e-learning and online communication facilitates flexibility and is a refreshing approach to exchange ideas and even training, compared to face-to-face modules. McDonald’s was the first QSR in the industry to take e-learning to the work floor.

Archaic practices have given way to new techniques that have helped organizations align their business goals with HR practices. HR professionals must never allow processes to become the culture of an organization. They must always strive to create an environment that is accepting and open to employee advice and opinion.

5. Intense focus on operations & processes

An HR professional must understand that processes are supposed to help organizations grow and improve efficacy for new hires and existing employees among other things. These processes must not be a hurdle to an employee’s growth but must be an enabler.

Today, employees think beyond monetary compensation and the HR needs to be mindful of the fact that an employee performs better if the work environment encourages a healthy work-life balance. It is important to have an understanding of work pressures and requirements in the organization and design competent training programs to optimise talent and make work enjoyable. Technology goes a long way in ensuring that processes are smooth and hassle free.
At McDonald’s, we have introduced GATE, a software that standardizes the talent life-cycle management, assessment, performance reviews, succession plans and mobility management. Recently, we also introduced ADEPT-15, a personality assessment tool that helps us analyse an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. To make it more employee friendly, the system is available in local languages so that no information is lost in translation.

The way forward

Archaic practices have given way to new techniques that have helped organizations align their business goals with HR practices. HR professionals must never allow processes to become the culture of an organization. They must always strive to create an environment that is accepting and open to employee advice and opinion. It is critical for talent leaders in organisations to keep pace with employee expectations and needs, creating a workforce that exudes productivity and performance. And an environment that not only facilitates learning but also makes work fun, flexible and creates sustainable futures for both the employees and the organisation.

Over the past years, HR had a mandate of maintaining firm control over the workforce; provide low-cost, convenient administrative HR services; and promote fairness through equal treatment of employees. In the future, the mandate will be to understand and serve employees with highly appropriate offerings that improve their commitment, enthusiasm, preservation and performance.

In a milieu, where our lives are ruled by myriad digital screens — mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, cinema — each telling us how to communicate, shop and behave; and where our business processes are getting more automated, we might just be forgiven to think if we even need people in our organisations any more. At the same time, the need for human ingenuity and intelligence to design the final outcomes on these interaction mechanisms as well as the need for emotional connect in an increasingly impersonal environment around us cannot be more emphasised.

Get ready for a quantum shift

Retail as an industry is at a crossroads today. Existing business models are being challenged as businesses evolve at a much rapid rate than ever before. The new wave of creating business models around shopping on the internet is creating a demand for skills, not known earlier.

As it is, retail demands a baffling variety of skills — ranging from business managers to fashion designers to project managers to customer service associates (It’s enough to befuddle the ordinary HR manager). Add to it, the demands placed by technology experts and analytics champions, which have just gone to further confound an HR professional’s problem. Customers, whether online or in brick-and-mortar stores, are evolving and are demanding more not only in terms of better products and services but also in terms of their shopping experiences. The demands on HR, therefore, are not only in terms of harnessing the right functional skills but also in terms of creating right attitudes and building a customer-centric, performance-focussed, empathetic organisation culture.

However, the truism that ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’ still holds. In these times, HR professionals have a greater need to go back to the basics. There is an increasing need for HR to connect better with business. A CHRO, who is not in sync with his CEO in crystal gazing on what is going to happen to the business in the next few years, simply belongs to the dinosaur age. Sound knowledge of business levers, and the key triggers which could impact the way business is done, is now more essential than earlier. Understanding this would lead to forecasts on the skills and competencies required in the future. An understanding of, and a call on, how technological advances would impact business processes would determine the need and quantum for human interventions. A good HR manager, should therefore, be ready for a substantive shift in the quantum and nature of people in the organisation.

6 must-have HR skills

1. A sound knowledge of business levers, and the key triggers that could impact business
2. An understanding of how technological advances would impact business processes
3. An ability to deal with people from varied and disparate backgrounds
4. Knowledge of the science of sociology and neuroscience in addition to human resources
5. A knack for maintaining an emotional connect with people
6. Awareness of newer and efficient solutions available for handling HR processes

Update your skill sets

It is expected of HR to keep the workforce engaged and aligned with the organisation’s business goals. With people from increasingly varied and disparate backgrounds present in the organisation, and each employee community demanding different ways of motivation, an intelligent HR professional should be well-versed of such a requirement, and means to deliver on them. A cookie-cutter approach having standard operating processes on ‘engagement activities’ will not work now. Like a good marketer, a sound HR professional needs to now segment the workforce.

Increasingly, new performance management and appraisal processes and workplace practices will need to be adopted. Performance appraisal processes and workplace practices that evolved during the manufacturing era are still prevalent today. Instead of vociferously and erroneously backing them, it will serve HR professionals well to appreciate the great way in which the society around has transformed with newer mechanisms of ensuring adherence to business goals. Peer evaluations, social media and community recognitions perhaps are now more potent than plain monetary incentives. They need to reflect on whether some of the rules governing time and attendance need to be questioned in an environment that provides flexibility of working anytime from anywhere.

With rapidly changing technology and an increasingly young workforce, the HR manager is going to be subjected to managing the aspirations of the youth on the one hand, and handling the challenge of reskilling the older generation on the other. That is because even as younger people join an organisation, longer life-span and rising costs are forcing people to continue working for longer than earlier. Increasingly, the HR professional needs to identify the source of these social tensions and be adept at resolving them. Right skilling of the younger people joining the workforce to enhance productivity is also key.

Use technology

We, in HR, will be doing our businesses a great disservice if we do not adopt technology in our processes. Identifying the right talent for the right roles, making the talent productive, and keeping them motivated remain age old problems for HR. However, newer tools are available to us to deliver better on these tasks. From talent sourcing, acquisition and life cycle management to exit management, newer and efficient solutions are available today, and are emerging by the day.

HR managers need new skills to help organisations achieve its business goals

Ignoring the potential of new tools is dangerous because it will lead to a rapid obsolescence of what we, as professionals, bring to the table. Increasing use of analytics and big data, even in HR, is of paramount importance. The behaviour of people in our organisations, if it can be measured and analysed, can throw up key messages on how to keep them happy.
A good HR manager now needs to be more aware of the science of sociology, neuroscience and perhaps anthropology too, and not only be limited to the science of Human Resource Management. The challenge for maintaining an emotional connect with people is greater than ever before. Unless HR professionals raise their empathy quotient manifold, organisations are at a risk of creating an army of mercenary automatons.
Newer challenges bring newer opportunities and a chance to learn things afresh and explore the limits of our own abilities. Today, we are afforded this chance, to renew ourselves and to be better human managers.  Let’s grab this opportunity with both hands.