One of the biggest insights I gained while coaching organizations to adopt a learning culture and embrace agility is how crucial it is to include Human Resources (HR)*. HR can make or break agility.
In today’s article, I will discuss 6 reasons why HR is crucial for the success of Agile organizations as a caretaker of company culture.
1. Attracting the people who fit the culture
HR is responsible for recruitment. In that role, they can ensure the company culture is part of the process. It shouldn’t only be about the abilities of the candidates. It is just important to understand if a candidate subscribes to the Agile way of working and a culture of learning.
Candidates need to embrace collaborating with others in a cross-functional team. They need to understand that working on a product for months on end without any feedback from users and other stakeholders is wasteful. They need to be okay with finding out their experiment failed and learn from that.
A candidate can be very smart and have all the technical requirements. But if there’s no cultural fit, they may not be the best person for the job. When HR doesn’t have an eye on the cultural fit, they are set up for failure.
2. Ensuring onboarding includes the culture
Once a person joins the company, they should receive guidance in the onboarding. This is where HR helps the new joiners understand what they can expect from the company. This includes what people can expect from the company and what the company expects from them.
This includes Agile training, especially focusing on what Agile means within the organization. Elements could be how the organization:
works with outcome-focused goals, allowing teams to find their best way to reach the goals.
fosters collaboration. This includes highlighting the importance of specific events that foster collaboration, like for instance the Scrum Sprint Review.
expects people to communicate openly, as it is important to have all the information on the table to make decisions. Even when the information is negative. After all, you learn most from unexpected results.
wishes to make decisions based on facts, not on anyone’s opinions.
wants to have decision power at the team level as much as possible.
wants to remove impediments.
Another element of the onboarding could be an orientation program, showing how the Agile culture is being embraced.
3. Communicating the organization's culture
HR should not only inform the new joiners, but they should also continuously communicate the organization's culture. It is important to communicate and embody the Agile way of working all the time. This has two elements:
HR regularly communicates the company culture in all kinds of ways, like via email, newsletter, training and town halls.
HR has collaborative sessions to enhance where people are actively engaged to increase their understanding of desired elements of the Agile culture.
I have witnessed how companies created a culture handbook to then never revisit it. This never worked. It only works when the Agile culture is everywhere in communication, be it directly -discussing it- or indirectly - living it through communication.
4. Agile Performance Management
Performance management often is a thorn in the side of companies that strive to embrace agility. When performance evaluation systems aren’t set up to acknowledge the desired behaviour expected from Agile teams, people will be incentivized to show unwanted behaviour.
It may be obvious that performance management needs to be aligned with the desired company culture. But from what I have witnessed, this often isn’t so.
While this is a topic which deserves an entire book, I wish to highlight 3 key elements here:
The individual’s objectives should be aligned with the team's objectives. If this isn’t the case, people will work on reaching their objectives over the team's objectives, as this is what will influence their performance appraisal.
The objectives should be aligned with the company culture.
The objectives for managers should focus on leadership. This includes fostering self-management of the team and the importance of regular feedback.
5. Align Training and Development with Agile culture
HR can ensure that training and development opportunities exist that foster the Agile culture of the company. As an example, HR could offer Agile leadership, Agile Product Management and Agile Product Creation development programs. These could consist of specific pieces of training and communities of practice.
To build the training and development programs, HR needs to collaborate with professionals within the organization who can verify the merits of the content and also collaborate on creating it.
The pitfall for HR is to use standard pieces of training on the Internet without verifying if it actually aligns with the companies’ ideas. Standard material can be very useful, but left unchecked it can also confuse and potentially be harmful for the organization. After all, when people receive training that does not align with the company's practices, they may unintentionally work against the company's goals.
6. Be Agile and foster employee engagement
It is one thing to enable an Agile Culture. It is another step to embrace Agility as HR. Imagine how impactful it can be to regularly have reflection moments with your stakeholders, the employees, to verify how valuable their work is.
Every organization is unique. This means that every HR needs to find the best way to serve their organization. They could work on all the topics I mentioned in previous bullets in collaboration with the employees. These are great opportunities to:
show you eat your own dog food. HR not only promotes agility but works in an Agile way too.
optimize the outcomes of HR with the needs of the organization.
have collaboration and frequent feedback to foster the company culture and sense of belonging.
End note
HR is vital to foster the company culture. As their prime objective is to maximize the potential of the people for the company, they are key to helping employees be effective.
Many HR departments are not involved in the Agile endeavours of the company. In fact, the Agile way of working is often limited to software development. I discussed at length how bad these Agile bubbles are. The product doesn’t begin and end with the software.
If we accept the fact that everyone in the company has a role to play in creating the complete product experience, it becomes apparent that an Agile culture involves everyone. And that makes the role of HR vital.
*note that I dislike the name Human Resources. Calling a human a resource is dehumanizing in my book. I prefer Talent Management or People operations or People Management.
I wholeheartedly agree with the final note! I love the idea of Talent Management actively championing Agile principles and opening up all current procedures to that mindset. This could be transformative, especially if teams are empowered to hire the best talent for their needs and promote regular self-selection to adapt teams to the real business needs. This would foster adaptability and resilience within the company to navigate constant change.
All HR processes are harmful if the underlying assumptions are in line with theory X instead of theory Y. If you believe people are lazy and motivated extrinsically, you can say "agile" 20,000 times but you will not achieve agility.