The Next Big Challenges for HR – 6 Key Tips from Dove Nest Group

A recent report from “People Management” – ‘The Challenges and Opportunities facing HR in 2017’ – shows the change in emphasis HR professionals are facing compared with previous years.  Whilst the Apprentice Levy may currently be at the forefront of many people’s minds this is only a small part of far larger and more complex challenges.  The top four challenges identified within this report are:

• Employee Engagement at 42%
• Change Management at 39%
• Retention at 34%
• Performance Management at 30%

Here at Dove Nest Group we have long recognised the fact that, in fact these four are all part of the same system and that if you try and address just one of these the resulting knock-on effects will dramatically affect the other areas.  For example if the people aspects of Change Management are neglected (by just concentrating on the process) then Engagement will fall, Performance will go down and people will leave, thus affecting Retention.

The thermostat that sits within the centre of this system is Leadership, this can be dialled up or down as necessary depending upon the situation and context.  Leadership within such an environment contains two essential ingredients, neither of which is mutually exclusive – Emotional Intelligence and Systems Thinking.

Our top tips to help you develop these two areas are:

• Be self-aware. The better you know yourself the more accurate your perceptions of what is happening around you and what, within yourself may affect these perceptions
• Know your place in the system. Irrespective of your position in an organisation you are but a small cog within the far greater system; recognise where you are, what is around you and what happens where whenever you react or do something
• See things from other people’s perspectives.  The ability to “step into someone else’s shoes” and see a situation through their eyes is vital to getting a full understanding of the situation.
• Recognise connections between people, events and processes. Start to think in terms of systems, whenever faced with a decision ask yourself “What else would be affected by this?”
• Be open to feedback. We said that Emotional Intelligence and Systems Thinking are not mutually exclusive and one of the main crossover areas is the way that you build feedback loops into a system. Ensure that you have as many as possible.
• Keep working on both!

If you’d like to find out more about solutions to these challenges, call or email us to arrange a free consultation enquiries@dovenest.co.uk