Change is the only constant and agile HR appears to be the next evolutionary stage of human resources in an organization. The word agile invokes a lot of synonyms—lithe or limber, for those more inclined to literature, or quick and light-footed for those more focused on conveying its meaning. All these words work well to define how the agile HR approach is leading the change to fast, immediate action and results.
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There are agile HR examples of top companies adopting agile mechanisms in their work styles. IBM is one of the leaders in agile adoption and has multiple articles that encourage the early inclusion of agile HR project planning and enterprise agility at all levels of the business. GE also celebrated the creation of its agile work environments while also working to adopt the principles of agile HR. Let’s explore the concept in more detail.
What is Agile HR?
Agile HR can be defined by its principles of responsiveness that encourage restructuring of work to facilitate immediate feedback, planning, and action. It encourages immediate, internal interaction and a change-centric approach to work across projects and teams. Originally designed for software development, Agile has gained traction in various business functions, including HR, due to its adaptive and iterative approach to work. The Agile Manifesto written by a collection of 17 bright minds in 2001, gave rise to a collection of values to guide software development in an agile, adaptive manner.
With rapidly changing conditions from the COVID-19 pandemic to the explosion of AI, companies need to learn to be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances quickly. This applies to the adoption of agile HR practices and their contribution to people management as well, if they want to assist their company in improving their response time.
Popular Terms in the Agile HR Approach
To better understand the agile HR approach, familiarizing yourself with key terms can be helpful. There are a variety of terms and practices that Agile HR recommends.
Scrum
This agile HR term refers to a management structure that defines teamwork and collaboration within an organization. Similar to a team huddle before a rugby match or any other sport, it requires everyone to come together and define each role and goal for the overall team. It encourages individual responsibility while also addressing the importance of the team being prepared for every stage of the work process. Let’s look at the key components of this methodology.
Roles
A scrum team has three main roles for the members who will play a part in the team.
- Product Owner: Represents the stakeholders, defines the product backlog (features, enhancements, and fixes), and prioritizes items. They decide what needs to be done with the products, what features can be prioritized, and communicate the business and market interests to the rest of the team.
- Scrum Masters: Facilitates the Scrum process, ensures adherence to Scrum principles, and helps the team overcome challenges. They are responsible for keeping the team on track towards goals while also introducing technology and leading communication. These leaders concentrate on the delivery goals.
- Development Team: Cross-functional and self-organizing individuals responsible for delivering the product incrementally. They include members from different departments with every skill set necessary to reach the goal, however, the teams remain small to encourage direct communication between them.
Artifacts
These scrum teams use specific artifacts or project guidelines to structure their work around it. These artifacts define the work as well as the end goal, to help teams adopt the agile HR work style.
- Product Backlog: It lists all the priorities of a project in smaller, more manageable chunks. From features to fixes, it outlines and defines the task at hand so each player on the scrum team can self-organize and approach their work. Instead of a static goal, the product backlog is flexible and due to the immediate update to all team members, they are allowed to shape their work accordingly.
- Sprint Backlog: The subset of the product backlog selected for a specific sprint, along with a plan for delivering the selected items. It narrows down the tasks and goals for this particular period of the delivery plan.
- Increment: It sums up all the product backlog items completed during a sprint. The product increment catalogs all the completed work and works as a measure of progress.
Sprints
The agile HR approach focuses energies on short-term plans rather than annual ones that lose steam very quickly. Sprints refer to a quick cycle of generating product increments that can be adjusted at a much faster pace than traditional projects. Usually, a scrum team is assigned a 2-4 week period to begin performing and delivering results. This also allows fixes from previous sprints to be speedily incorporated into future ones.
- Time-Boxed Period: Sprints have a fixed and predefined duration. This allows teams to work toward limited, prioritized goals and creates a sense of urgency for that duration.
- Sprint Planning: Before launching a sprint, a sprint planning meeting helps the team collaboratively plan for the tasks and role divisions for the sprint.
- Sprint Review: Conducted at the end of the sprint to present the completed work to stakeholders for their feedback.
- Sprint Retrospective: Once a sprint is completed, the team has a chance to reflect on the experience and plan for changes and improvements.
Kanban
In agile HR practices, kanban refers to a management and planning tool that allows a team to plan out their next steps and visualize the work of the team. Often referred to as an agile task board, it represents all the necessary sprint information in one location. These can take physical or digital forms. BusinessMap outlines the structure of a kanban board and mentions four components: Cards, Columns, Swimlanes, and WIP limits.
- Cards: Visual representation of tasks with brief details of who it pertains to, deadlines involved, etc.
- Columns: Represents the different stages of the workflow.
- Swimlanes: Horizontal lines that separate the different sections of the activity plan, for example, different teams.
- Work-in-Progress limits: The board sets limits for the tasks at each stage of the work process.
Agile HR Examples
The agile HR approaches can be adapted to all HR responsibilities. By listing out the work involved, HR teams can play a role in all other company-wide projects to contribute to the resource and people management angles of the planned sprints and tasks. Otherwise, HR tasks like recruitment, onboarding, administrative procedures, development initiatives, performance management review processes, etc. can all adopt these agile practices. Let’s look at some agile HR examples.
Agile HR Example: Recruitment
The traditional recruitment process can often become long-drawn-out with either limited results or rushed hiring of applicants. There are a few ways to use the agile HR structure to develop the process more efficiently.
- Role planning: This can involve clear role division of those who will develop job descriptions, circulate the descriptions, monitor the inflow of applicants, conduct the different rounds of interviews, etc.
- Sprint planning: Setting up all the details, putting the roles out clearly, meeting to discuss progress, setting deadlines, etc. can help put everyone on the same page and plan for the process.
- Quick screening: With defined roles, those in charge of screening can have their guidelines ready and should be able to conduct quick initial assessments.
- Iterative interviews: The interviews can also replace traditional lengthy interviews and can instead have defined tasks that can assess their abilities better.
- Continuous feedback: In this agile HR example, the team will be able to assess the results of a two-week sprint and review what they would like to change about the next sprint, whether that’s the candidate pipeline or their hiring processes.
- Quick offers and onboarding: A separate product backlog can also include the onboarding process where teams can have a quick and efficient way to settle new recruits into the system.
Agile HR Example: Employee Feedback and Engagement Sprints
Gathering employee feedback is a major responsibility of the HR team and so is employee engagement. Agile HR can help streamline these processes as well.
- Sprint planning: Define specific engagement objectives, such as improving communication, recognizing achievements, or addressing specific concerns. Set a short deadline, such as two weeks, and establish a mechanism for feedback gathering.
- Feedback gathering: Spend the first week collecting feedback from employees on the identified engagement objectives. Use tools like surveys and group discussions and segregate the data as necessary.
- Agile Feedback review: Assimilate and asses the data during the mid-point, and engage cross-functional teams if possible, to review the feedback.
- Action planning: Spend the second week in discussion with various stakeholders to understand possible solutions to the feedback. Divide implementation responsibilities.
- Communication and implementation: The last day of the sprint can focus on communicating the plan to employees and setting the solutions into motion.
- Sprint Review and Retrospective: Evaluate the outcomes of the sprint and identify improvements for future cycles.
These agile HR examples are just a few instances of how you can implement these principles in your company. HR teams have a diverse set of responsibilities and the agile HR approach can help them simplify their work while also giving the company the boost it needs in order to maintain a fully-functioning workforce that works at full capacity.