SIMPLIFICATION

What's the real financial cost of complexity in your HR function? Legacy processes, duplication and red tape, never ending roadmaps and the forever growing book of work. In HR, complexity doesn’t just create inefficiencies - it reduces our impact. Complexity drives huge waste into our functions, slowing down performance and killing results - holding our organisations back.

Simplification isn’t a project. It’s a skillset and a mindset - a way of thinking and working. And it's your secret superpower - the organisational game changer that nobody is talking about. Simplification removes waste, unlocks better employee experiences, elevates performance and delivers the best business outcomes.

​​​

These six strategies will help you simplify your HR solutions, delivering efficiencies, excellent employee experiences and exceptional business outcomes.

​

 

1.Focus on what's adding value

​

As HR functions everything we do must add value. Successful transformation is as much about removing what you don’t need as creating what you do need. Take a fresh look across your landscape, assess all your HR solutions and your book of work. Anything not adding value for your people, business or customers has got to go.

​​

​

2. Play on the same team

​

Employee experiences often cut across HR teams and different functions. Remember we all work for the same organisation with the same business strategy and goals - play on the same team. Bring together teams cross functionally to work as one, blending rich functional expertise with diversity of experience and thought. This helps create the best possible solutions, effective employee experiences and exceptional business outcomes.

​

​

3.Stop starting and start finishing

​

As HR functions we have a full agenda - we want to do it all to deliver for our people and organisations. But as we keep adding new projects and initiatives, it’s easy to make the mistake of not removing anything and our book of work becomes enormous. It's critical to remember that we can do anything - but we can’t do everything. One simple approach that makes a significant difference is to stop starting, and start finishing. Understand what your people, business and customers are telling you, what your data is telling you about their pain points, and the value you can add by resolving them. Prioritise these items, align resources accordingly and work in collaboration until they’re complete, then move on.

​​

​

4.Challenge everything

​

We carry so much legacy complexity within our individual organisations. It's easy to find ourselves weighed down with processes, ways of working, rules and limiting beliefs which have been in place for years because we believe they need to be there. If we take a fresh look at our solutions, often we find it’s perception versus reality built up over time and there is a better way.

​

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Analyse every element of your HR architecture - your policies, processes and technology solutions to determine what is truly required. Decide what stays, or goes.

​

​

5.Be data driven

​

If we're not taking a data driven approach we're guessing, doing what we think we need to do, or perhaps what we've always done. Data makes the invisible - visible, and helps us connect the dots. Use your data, insights and the voice of your people to understand their reality against your perception, and use the findings to shape your path to success.

​

​

6.Never stop

​

Simplification is never done. This isn’t a project you can put down and mark as complete - if you do, over time you'll find yourself right back where you started as items you've carefully stripped out, and new elements get added back in. Create a culture of continuous improvement with teams empowered to constructively challenge, to be constantly on the look out for opportunities to streamline and improve. Measure your success continually against the data and refine your HR solutions as your organisation, and the world around you evolves.

​​

 

Are you ready to harness the power of simplification?