Human Resources Strategies: Balancing Stability and Agility in Times of Digitization PDF
Preview Human Resources Strategies: Balancing Stability and Agility in Times of Digitization
Future of Business and Finance Armin Trost Human Resources Strategies Balancing Stability and Agility in Times of Digitization Future of Business and Finance TheFutureofBusinessandFinancebookseriesfeaturesprofessionalworksaimedat defining,describingandchartingthefuturetrendsinthesefields.Thefocusismainly onstrategicdirections,technologicaladvances,andchallengesandsolutionswhich willaffectthewaywedobusinesstomorrow.Wealsoencouragebookswhichfocus on the future of sustainability and governance. Mainly written by practitioners, consultants and academic thinkers, the books are intended to spark and inform furtherdiscussionsanddevelopments. Moreinformationaboutthisseriesathttp://www.springer.com/series/16360 Armin Trost Human Resources Strategies Balancing Stability and Agility in Times of Digitization ArminTrost FurtwangenUniversity Villingen-Schwenningen,Germany ISSN2662-2467 ISSN2662-2475 (electronic) FutureofBusinessandFinance ISBN978-3-030-30591-8 ISBN978-3-030-30592-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30592-5 OriginalGermaneditionpublishedbySpringer-VerlagGmbHDeutschland,Wiesbaden,Germany,2018 #SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthe materialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation, broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionorinformation storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland To my dear parents Edith and Ernst Trost Preface WhenIstarted studyingpsychologyabout30years ago,mygoal wastobecomea familytherapist.AtthattimeIhadalready2yearsbehindmeinwhichIhadlearned toworkintensivelywithpeopleinasmallpsychiatricclinic.Thatwasawonderful, instructive time. At some point during my studies, I turned to industrial and organizational psychology and ended up where many of myfellow students ended up:inthetraininganddevelopmentdepartmentofalargecorporation.Mycareerasa HR professional took its course. I implemented performance appraisal systems without ever having to ask myself what performance, on the part of the people concerned,actuallymeansinconcreteterms.Iconductedemployeesurveyswithout havingtotakeapersonalinterestinanemployee’sexperience.Iintroducedapplicant tracking systems without meeting an applicant personally. In contrast to my work in a psychiatric environment,it became clear to me atsome point that HR in large corporations means above all setting up processes, instruments, systems, and pro- grams and keeping them running. All this has very little to do with working with people. Basically,that isfine. One quickly learns andacceptsthat one shouldnotbe an HR professional or HR manager if one likes working with people. However, over the years my inner dislike, which somehow became silently apparent from the beginning, became ever clearer. It is not the systems themselves that turned out to bemoreandmoreunbearableforme,buttheattitudewithwhichthesesystemswere developed and kept alive. You will find descriptions of these systems in most common textbooks about human resources management—the annual performance appraisal, change management, competence management, talent management, etc. AndIhavetoadmitthatduringmystudiesIhatedbooksonpersonnelmanagement. Thereisnothingcreepierthanaclassictextbookonhumanresourcesmanagement. To this day, hardly anything has changed, neither inmy reaction, nor inthe books themselves. What is described in all these books, and mostly lived in practice, has something patronizing, not infrequently even something contemptuous of people. Theemployee,thehumanresource,isnottreatedasasubjectherebutasanobject. It is measured, judged, developed (“upskilled”), promoted, transferred, terminated, rewarded, retained, etc. You do something with the human resource. “You” is the superordinate,corporatesystem,representedbythehumanresourcesdepartmentas the executive body. All this is done under the premise of putting the employee at vii viii Preface the centre. What an illusion. The operator of a laying battery also puts his 10,000 chickensatthecentre. Then I, of all people, became a professor of human resources management. Looking back, this was the ideal time. Companies slowly woke up and began to rethink.Inthebeginning,therewasashortageofskilledworkers,andsuddenlywe hadtolearntovalueapplicantsandcandidates,tobeinterestedintheirpreferences, and to apply to them and not vice versa. My first book appeared: Employer Branding. How can we convince as an employer? Then followed the book Talent RelationshipManagement.Afterwritingotherbooks,Istartedtoworkonaparticu- larly incapacitating HR instrument, namely the annual performance appraisal. The book The End of Performance Appraisal appeared and nothing pleased me more thanthegreatirritation,coupledwithbroad,positiveresonance,thatitbrought.I’ve been really lucky over the past few years because a gradual awakening in the HR communityhasbecomemoreandmorevisible.NewgenerationsofHRpeopletook thehelm,supportedbynewgenerationsofexecutives.ThroughouttheyearsIfound it a wonderful task to throw coals into the blazing fire again and again, critically, provocatively but always constructively, and close to practice. It seemed as if my attitude and the zeitgeist had met, and I was allowed to play an active role in this development. HowverymuchInowwelcomethegrowingdebateonthesubjectofagility.For me, agility is much more than just a buzzword. It symbolizes a long overdue development towards a changing attitude: the employee as a mature human being. Mygreatrolemodel,DouglasMcGregor,isbeingturnedtoagain,andrarelywashis juxtapositionoftheTheoryX—humansarelazybynatureandhavetobekeptona short leash—and the humanistic opposite, of Theory Y, more important and alive thannow.Inthecourseofthisdevelopment,itwasmygreatdreamtofinallywritea comprehensive bookthatwoulddeal with HRfromthepoint ofviewofTheoryX versus Theory Y. What does HR look like in a traditional, hierarchical, and stable enterprise,andhowarethingspresentedinamoreagilecontext?Whatanexciting question!Writingthisbookwasamatterofrealconcerntome.Herewearetalking about much more than just the image of a mature human being. It is ultimately a question of the competitiveness of many proud companies. I share the view that agilityisaprerequisiteforthemajorityofcompaniestosurviveincurrentandfuture markets.Andhumanresourcesmanagementplaysakeyroleinthis. WhenIstartedthisbookin2017,Ihadgreatrespectforthistask.Iwasfilledwith ideas,anattitude,andablurrypictureofwhatIwouldwrite.Intheend,writingthis bookwasalongjourneyintosomethinguncertain.Firstyoustartwritingabook.But thenthebookwritesyou.Thefactthatsuchabookhasastaticcharacter,i.e.oneis forcedtofixthoughtsinblackandwhiteandwithfinality,isdifficultformetobear. Becausethejourneycontinues,andeverythingIwriteinthisbookisjustasnapshot. Agilityalsomeansneverreallyarrivingatafinaldestination. Thisjourneydidnottakeplaceinaquietroom,butinaconstantexchangewith numerousforward-thinking,open-mindedpeopleandcompanieswhowerewilling to contribute constructively to the uncertainty. At this point, we usually thank all those who contributed to the success of this book. I can not even name them all. Preface ix They are the many HR managers, HR professionals, executives, and also students with whom I have spent hours, even days, discussing and struggling for solutions. Theyarethemanyimpulsesintheinfinitenumberofbooks,articles,blogs,andTED talksthathavecontinuouslyirritatedme.Butitisalsomyfamilywhohadtoendure a father and husband for 1 year, who was mentally absent at times. In particular I’d like to thank Iliana Haro, who supported me so wonderfully with this English version of this book. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I look forward to the long journeythatliesaheadofus. Tübingen,Germany ArminTrost July31,2019 Contents 1 HRintheContextofDigitization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 AgilityandStability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.1 FromAttitudetoManagementSystems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 TheFounderandHisorHerPersonalAttitude. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 ACorporateCultureEmergesandRemains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 RulesandStructures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 StrategicManagementSystems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 HierarchicalandAgileDevelopment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 TheHierarchicalHemisphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 TheAgileHemisphere. . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . .. . 13 ConnectedMarketsRequireConnectedOrganizations. . . . . . . . 14 2.2 TypesofHR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Hire&PayandDarwinism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 InstitutionalizationandtheHRAmplitude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 CentralPlanningandControl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 People-CenteredEnablement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 PainfulTransformation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 TheDigitalDehumanizationofHumanResources Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3 BuildinganHRStrategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.1 HRStrategy:AnOverview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 HRStrategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 BuildingBlocksofanHRStrategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 AllRelevantQuestionsataGlance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.2 CorporateStrategyastheBasis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 TheUltimateBusinessPurpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 ThePositioningoftheCompanyintheMarket. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 StrategicChallengesandOpportunities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 ADifferentUnderstandingofLeadershipandOrganization. . . . 33 xi
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