Report identifies how the function can get ahead of fast-moving events
HR professionals need to develop new skills to tackle change as it is “even more complex than we might traditionally acknowledge”, a report from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) has said.
In its annual 'Perspectives on HR' report, the institute urges the function to think about replacing more established ways of managing change with “evolving fluid approaches”.
In the collection of eight research articles, experts suggests that tools such as coaching and innovation can be used alongside new approaches to change itself to create a more positive outcome.
In the piece of research ‘Organisational change: finding your way as you journey into the unknown’, Sharon Varney, IES principal associate, explained why good project skills and excellent people skills are no longer adequate.
“In a stable context, those might be enough, but on changing terrain, we need something more,” she said. “What change leaders urgently need are great processing skills – skills of sense making and learning – so they can make informed responses to the dynamic patterning of live change to influence the patterns that they and others are co-creating.”
She called on HR to engage in ‘double-loop learning’, which is “learning before responding, rather than reacting more automatically, in a single loop of learning”. This would help HR and leaders respond to, and to influence, changing conditions.
In the research piece, ‘Beyond competence: shifting perspectives of capability’, Penny Tamkin, IES associate director, highlights the pitfalls of classifying people in a way that restricts their future effectiveness.
“Using competencies to drive key HR processes has some clear disadvantages,” she said.
“Competency-based recruitment tends to strongly favour those who can show they have done the job before rather than giving a chance to someone who might make the most contribution."
She also warned against an over reliance on assessing people for generic, transferable skills because they are “context dependent they are not actually transferable or they are so general they lose relevance to the workplace”.
She said that organisations are recognising the limitations of existing competence and capability approaches, which is evidenced in a shift towards behaviours, values or capabilities based approaches.
“There is a lot that is attractive here, as futures become more uncertain preparing people for specific roles and tasks is too limiting. We need innovation, competitiveness and productivity improvements and in a more complex world, these would seem to cry out for holistic rather than atomised conceptions of abilities.”
Commenting on the full collection of research in the report, Tamkin added: “In a world of change, people management practice is often chasing events, thrown onto the back foot of change and trying to respond to its impact and to diminish its negative effects.
“These articles fully acknowledge the difficulty of trying to second guess what change is needed, how it might be responded to or how HR can help and assist organisations in adapting to change.
“What we do know, and highlight, is that change is even more complex than we might traditionally acknowledge and we need new skills to help us cope with it.”