• Take a long hard look at some of your current HR processes and the impact they have eg: How motivated are people after their PM review? How do leaders respond when you ask them to fill in the 9 box grid?  What are the top HR processes that get in the way of your people doing their best work?  If you’re able to respond to their feedback, there could be some quick wins and some cost savings too!
• Make sure you’re not providing data unnecessarily. Sometimes, managers can ask for ‘more data’ to cover up their negative emotional reaction to the changes. It’s not so much ‘how can I prove it to them?’ but ‘why should they WANT to change’? Once we truly understand what is stopping them from changing – be it fear, lack of interest or time pressures, we can work to persuade them. We can use a couple of interesting, stand-out pieces of data that might make them sit up and be curious. We can use insights and qualitative data more often to help create a story that engages them on a more emotional level. We can craft the messaging for each type of resistance to reassure them and build their confidence, to tap into what matters to them. It’s all about persuasion not finding proof.

Improving your consultancy and coaching skills

Effective consultancy and coaching go beyond reciting from a policy. It’s essential to focus on creating an environment where you can influence behaviour change, develop skills, and devise practical solutions aligned with business objectives. Use your coaching skills to empower stakeholders, enabling them to address their people issues confidently and engage in human conversations with their teams. As a consultant, prioritise listening and getting to the root cause of issues to identify opportunities for improvement. This approach ensures more customised and impactful HR support.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Want to build your influence and credibility? We’ve got a short video on three ways to do just that.
• If our default position is ‘Let me tell you the process’ we’re putting ourselves back into that compliance/police role and your leaders are never going to learn for themselves. The next time a leader comes to you for advice (or the right answer!) try and hold your nerve and say ‘What do you think?’ or ‘I trust you to use your judgement – tell me what you were thinking of doing?’
• We don’t need to all go out and get psychology degrees, but understanding human behaviour makes us better at our jobs, and we can learn so much from experts such as Daniel H. Pink the author of several bestselling books about human behaviour or David Rock who is famous for his SCARF Model which talks about a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others.
• As we know, every single conversation that a leader has with their people will have a huge impact on how it makes them feel. So, your role is to help your leaders understand themselves better – their strengths and the impact they have.  There are lots of resources available (many are free), but our favourite go-to is Marcus Buckingham, Standout Strengths or Myers Briggs and don’t forget to encourage them to ask their team for regular feedback. Give them a couple of nudge questions they can use in their one to one check-ins such as ‘Is there anything I could do differently?’ or our favourite ‘If you were being managed by YOU, what would you do differently?’

• We know being in HR can be all consuming, but promise yourself to find 30 mins in your day to learn something new – it could be asking someone from another team for a coffee chat, listening to a podcast or watching a webinar – anything that gives you a broader perspective of life outside of HR.
• Support less confident leaders through a scaffolding approach, offering them initial support and gradually stepping back.  This could be setting up a mock meeting where leaders practice making pay decisions. During this session, your role is to challenge their choices, facilitate their thought processes, the decisions they make, why they made them, what they need to think about etc.
• Run sessions with a group of leaders about their team (ask the more positive/open leaders to come along if this is your first time).  It could be a ‘talking talent’ session to replace the 9 box grid – no process, no forms, just an hour to talk about their team, and together come up with ideas for movement, development etc. There are lots of training materials on our Club to support your leaders to have great meetings with and about their teams.
• Set up ‘coaching clinics’ where leaders can come to you for a set time each week to talk through their people challenges. You’ll find that, over time, they will also start helping each other with solutions to people problems, so it’s not always coming from HR.

Agile and product design

You may not have thought about it before, but we are product designers in HR!

That means that anything we create for our leaders and employees is based on user-centred design and is data-driven – ideally co-created with our people – and ideally around helping them do things for themselves rather than being done to. By using agile product design methods like sprint planning, early adopters, and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), we can become more agile, responsive, and better aligned with the changing needs of our organisation and our employees.

Here are some ways you can develop:

• Allow yourself some time to do a bit of research on the latest HR AI and tech products – feedback, spot rewards, onboarding, hiring, learning etc.
• Take up to three of your key HR services. What might you do differently if you were designing them as products instead? Start with your employee persona and think about what they need and want from it. How can you offer different ‘products’ to meet their different needs? How would you ensure it is reflected in your external brand promise to customers? How would you brand and promote it? How would you test it out with some early adopters first?

• Run a hackathon as a great way to solve your HR challenges and help you learn a new skill. They’re a great way of getting a fresh injection of ideas and shaping the wants and needs of your people. Pick a theme or identify a current challenge e.g. “How can we get great performance without a performance management process?”
• Do you feel that everything you do takes too long?  If you want to be more agile have a look at our short video on 7 steps to go faster.