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In January 2019 I decided to focus on writing about modern HR and people practices. My aim was to dig into companies and leaders who embrace a more contemporary approach to human resources. What are they doing that’s different? How has the leadership profile changed? Is it making a difference?
I interviewed more than 30 people leaders around the world for the series and podcast, which I called 21st Century HR. These were some of the key shifts that differentiate today’s HR from legacy approaches, and what they mean in 2020:
Inclusion over diversity
HR has long been focused on the idea of diversity, but these efforts were often transactional at best. At worst, they were driven by compliance and largely centered around hiring. “We need X of Y demographic in our recruiting pipeline.” This approach missed the mark and minimized progress.
Modern people teams are more focused on inclusion. They understand the bias embedded in terms such as “culture fit” and strive to embed inclusive thinking and practices throughout their people programs—recruiting, pay equity, promotions, training, development. They’ve moved their approach from transactional programs to embedded practices.
Decentralize and empower over command and control
Legacy-oriented HR fixated on getting the proverbial seat at the table. To gain perceived power, they created command and control structures where HR was the conduit through which approvals flowed. Promotions. Bonuses. Policies. In many cases, this came from a place of insecurity. While it created authority, it wasn’t without a cost. Resentment swelled at the complex machinations that slowed decisions and frustrated employees.
Modern HR leaders (and teams) are more secure in the impact they have on the business. They see their role as creating frameworks and enablement programs that allow leaders to lead and employees to thrive. They don’t feel a need to insert themselves into every program and initiative for the sake of power and authority.
Agile reviews over annual reviews
The annual review cycle has long been seen as HR dogma. It’s a relic of the past with no clear correlation to employee performance. It’s based on a construct of long-term employment that no longer exists for many employees. Most companies treat reviews as little more than a “check the box” administrative endeavor, feeding the bureaucratic legacy perception of HR.
Modern people teams don’t run programs for the sake of programs. Their programs need to be anchored in impact to the business. They also understand that a culture of feedback and clarity drives engagement and retention. These HR teams are reimagining performance management and adopting more agile approaches. The frequency varies—quarterly, monthly, even weekly—but the impact is increased clarity and communication.
Analytics and insights over metrics and reporting
HR has always had data. But it’s the way teams interpret and extract insights from that data that separates legacy and modern HR teams.
People analytics is a foundational capability of modern HR. Sixty-nine percent of large organizations now have dedicated people analytics teams. Leading CHRO’s (chief human resources officers) and chief people officers build agile people strategies based on qualitative and quantitive data. Data is essential to their operations.
Policy for the many over policy against the few
Legacy HR approaches are often rooted in compliance. They look at the worst-case scenario of employee behavior and apply the remedy to all employees to safeguard the business.
Modern HR leaders aren’t shirking their compliance responsibilities, but their default assumption is that they’ve hired adults with reasonable judgment who can make good choices. “If it’s not illegal or stupid, it’s our job to say ‘yes,’” a chief people officer told me on the podcast recently. This mentality illustrates the shift in thinking on HR’s role in supporting the business. If an employee does something wrong, they address that individually.
Open source over black box
One of the single biggest shifts that’s fueling next-generation HR practices is the shift to open-source practices. Legacy HR viewed their processes as secret ingredients under lock and key. This proprietary approach stifled innovation.
Modern HR teams embrace open-source approaches. You’ll often find HR leaders speaking or writing about their work, sharing case studies on their operation (including their failures), and sharing openly in networks such as PeopleTech Partners.
There’s a range of free resources from Google re:Work to HR Open Source full of templates, tools, frameworks, and resources on modern HR practices. This open access to practices and resources is accelerating the shift to modern HR and fueling the next generation of HR leaders.
Business acumen over HR acumen
Employment law? Table stakes. Succession planning? A given. Talent mapping? Fundamental. HR has always had HR acumen. In today’s complex business world, that’s not enough.
Look across HR leadership in sector-leading companies and you’ll HR leaders from a range of nontraditional career paths. Why? The complexity of business today requires an HR leader to possess an intimate grasp of the business, industry, market, and more.
The chief people officer is one of the toughest jobs in the c-suite. They’re expected to understand the financials like a CFO. Grasp product-market fit like a CMO. Gauge the revenue pipeline like a CRO. Be the right hand to the CEO. All while synthesizing that understanding to develop programs and systems that optimize your most volatile resource: your people. It’s a difficult job even with business acumen—and it’s impossible without it.
‘Why isn’t HR here?’ over ‘Why is HR here?’
The key takeaway from these discussions? HR is a spectrum. While the majority of the field is somewhere in the middle, the leading edge of HR is having a transformational impact on business. Though still a subset of the broader HR population, modern people teams are indispensable success enablers for the business. Their impact on the business is magnitudes above their legacy predecessors.
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The last few minutes of a Together Digital meeting—a networking group for women who work in digital industries—have a unique energy to them. One of the group’s signature routines is an ask-and-give exchange—where a woman shares the main problem she’s facing. One by one, other women throw out ideas for solving her challenge. The experience is exhilarating. And it leaves participants feeling powerful.
That feeling is no doubt part of the reason the group has seen rapid growth. In just two and a half years, it has gained 2,000 members and launched 20 chapters in cities across the country. But it’s not the only group devoted to bringing professional women together. Networking groups and coworking spaces focused on women have become ubiquitous. Women have felt a need for a different kind of professional space, and organizers and entrepreneurs are working to fill it.
Why so many women are seeking women’s networking groups
You don’t have to be in the professional world long to see the link between relationships and opportunities. For any gender, networking is a crucial part of building one’s career and getting your foot in the door. But a study of recent business school graduates by Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences found that where men benefit most from building broad networks, the most successful women have both a broad network and a smaller inner network of women that they’re close with.
What the study shows is that women who focus on making a lot of professional contacts may not necessarily receive the same benefits that men get from doing so. They need to supplement that with closer connections with other women they trust. The study’s authors speculate that these inner networks help not just with finding opportunities, but also by exchanging advice specific to the unique challenges women face.
That speculation matches my experience and that of other women I’ve talked to. Women are drawn to professional groups that center women because they offer something we don’t get in ‘typical’ professional networking spaces.
In rooms of mostly women, vulnerability is possible
For many people, networking usually feels like work. You have to sell an idea of yourself to a room of strangers. In my experience, women-centric networking events tend to have a different vibe—one that’s more about supporting each other than having to play the role of “professional.”
Jenny Magic, president of Women Communicators of Austin (WCA), says that this kind of set up can facilitate “a different kind of safe space.” This is especially important for any woman dealing with issues of sexism and sexual harassment in their jobs. Not only is it intimidating and uncomfortable to share these kinds of experiences in a mixed-gender group—speaking up can also have negative consequences for one’s career. Alaina Shearer, founder of Together Digital, says that the group started for that exact reason. “I wanted to tell my story. And my story is very personal and hard to tell . . . I couldn’t have done that if men were in the room,” she explains.
Having something in common leads to faster connections
People have limited space in the calendar for career development, and making genuine connections with other professionals takes time. With professional groups focused on women, “you can fast-forward to connection because a lot of the challenges are universal to that group,” Magic says.
That also speaks to the appeal of the many professional groups for women that focus on other forms of marginalization. Groups like Future for Us, Black Career Women’s Network, Lesbians Who Tech, We All Grow Latina, and many others help connect women who face a unique set of challenges in the business world beyond those experienced by women in general.
When you come into a room knowing you share a similar set of past experiences and challenges to everyone in it, getting to know each other becomes much easier. As a result, you’re in a better position to help each other navigate tricky territories you know too well.
Giving back is often a central theme in women’s networking
While many standard networking events center on selling yourself (or an idea of yourself), women’s groups put more of an emphasis on how to support others. “Typically, networking events are very unemotional, and you leave almost feeling drained—just ‘I came, and everyone just wanted something from me,’” says Shearer. “It’s very different in our group in that you come, and everybody is there to give and ask.”
Part of the reasoning behind the organization’s emphasis on the ask-and-give is that many women are often reluctant to ask for help and generally find it much easier to support others. By building both of those components into the intentionality of the group, members get more comfortable speaking up about what they need, while also getting more opportunities to help others.
Work-life balance is not just respected but encouraged
For women with kids, childcare duties can make doing any networking harder—unless an event welcomes children. Not all events put on by women’s professional organizations are kid-friendly, but some, notably, are. Some groups, like Heymama, make that a defining feature of the community.
After all, research shows that women still disproportionately shoulder family caregiving duties. Women are 40% more likely than men to say that childcare responsibilities have negatively impacted their professional progress, according to a 2018 survey by think tank Center of American Progress. Groups made up of other women who understand the challenges of raising kids or caring for aging parents while also managing a career are better at accommodating those needs.
Exclusivity isn’t the point
Of course, women-centric groups have attracted their share of criticism. Some point out that it does little to advance women’s professional standing, considering that men still primarily hold most of the power in the business world. Others argue that it reinforces exclusivity.
But having groups focused on women isn’t about excluding those who identify as another gender. Magic, for example, insists on the value of also participating in mixed-gender networking events. WCA welcomes people of all genders into the membership, while making clear its primary focus will be on women.
Says Shearer, “It’s very important that groups that are disenfranchised have time to meet alone to recollect our thoughts, and our energies, to go back out into the world that really does not give us equal standing.”
Kristen Hicks is a copywriter and content marketer living in Austin, Texas
Women can break through traditional social power barriers in many ways. In Part 2 of this series, I share the most structured method for establishing your credibility.
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