To discuss organisational success, the first step is to define what success means for each organisation. Every business is established for a unique purpose, some are profit-driven, others operate as non-profit entities, and some, like government institutions, exist solely to provide services to the public.
Positioning organisations for success involves identifying the essence and purpose of their existence, as well as the strategic goals they have set for themselves, particularly for the year 2025. HR professionals play a crucial role in this process. They must understand these objectives and craft HR strategies and processes that align with the organisation’s goals.
By doing so, HR professionals can help drive productivity and enable the organisation to achieve its desired outcomes. Ultimately, positioning an organisation for success means defining its unique vision of success and implementing effective people management strategies to turn that vision into reality.
Discussions to brainstorm on what could be termed as success for the year and mapping out strategies
Before the start of a new year, organisations typically come together for a strategic planning session. Depending on the organisation’s structure and culture, this session may be referred to as a strategy review or a strategy retreat. In some cases, the top management team isolates themselves from distractions in a focused environment to reflect, brainstorm, and strategise.
During these sessions, they review the organisation’s performance over the current year, assessing how well they achieved their objectives. They also analyse the industry ecosystem, market environment, and any external factors influencing their operations. By leveraging data, insights, and analysis, they forecast future trends and identify opportunities or challenges for the coming year.
The goal is to align the organisation’s processes, procedures, and plans with the predicted business environment to maintain or improve performance. These discussions involve sharing ideas, drawing insights from data, and collaboratively creating actionable plans to achieve the organisation’s objectives and sustain a competitive edge in the industry.
HR professionals’ response to the increasing adoption of AI, automation, and digital tools in the workplace
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a game-changer, revolutionising how businesses make data-driven decisions with precision and improved insights. For HR professionals, it’s essential to recognise that AI is here to stay and will only enhance HR processes and procedures, ultimately driving efficiency and effectiveness across all approaches.
From talent acquisition and analysis to talent development, capacity building, succession planning, performance management, and every aspect of the HR value chain, automation and data-driven strategies become even more powerful with the adoption of AI.
AI essentially involves understanding natural language programming and leveraging data to extract information from multiple sources, delivering actionable insights for effective business decision-making. For HR professionals, embracing AI is critical to improving recruitment, talent management, and global workforce management processes.
AI also streamlines onboarding, allowing HR teams to engage with talent from identification to integration seamlessly. For example, AI can sift through thousands of applications in seconds using keyword-based searches, identifying candidates with the right competencies and skills for specific job roles. This transformative capability ensures more efficient hiring processes and improved outcomes.
Skills and competencies for HR professionals to stay relevant and impactful in 2025
- Business Acumen & Commercial Awareness: HR professionals must possess strong business acumen and commercial awareness. It’s essential to understand how the business generates revenue, the factors that could lead to financial loss, and what drives profitability for stakeholders, including investors, employees, employers, regulatory agencies, and the government. Commercial awareness is, therefore, critical competency for HR professionals.
- Effective Communication: Both written and oral, is another key skill, with an emphasis on active listening. Active listening is a vital aspect of communication that HR professionals must master to foster meaningful engagement.
- Data Analytics: Data analytics is also a fundamental competency. HR professionals must be skilled in understanding, analyzing, and interpreting data to drive informed decision-making. The era of relying on instincts, trial and error, or sentiment-based approaches is outdated. HR must rely on data and financial insights to speak the language of business effectively.
- Adaptability & Flexibility: These are non-negotiable in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. To navigate this environment successfully, HR professionals need agility to respond to rapid changes and complexities with confidence.
- Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking: These lie at the core of HR’s role. HR professionals are employed to address challenges by gathering and analysing facts, thinking critically, and providing actionable solutions. Additionally, HR serves as a coach to business leaders, guiding them on effective people management. As a result, coaching is now a highly valued skill for HR practitioners.
- Leadership & Employee Well-Being Advocacy: Leadership, critical thinking, and advocacy for employee well-being are equally essential. In modern workplaces, employees are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work. HR professionals must, therefore, become well-being evangelists, championing the physical, mental, and emotional health of employees.
- Technology Proficiency: HR professionals must embrace technology, becoming tech-savvy to stay relevant and effective in a world increasingly driven by digital tools and solutions.
The need for HR professionals to dive into data analytics
for HR professionals, data is the new oil. And when we say data, every unit of measure is data. HR is responsible for creating the right people experience in the experience in the organization. This then suffices that we must understand the critical attributes of every human element that are being brought into the workplace to ensure that productivity is driven. So, data must be leveraged from age to sex to nationality to skills level to competency levels to race. All of these are data points that HR must be able to pull together to gain actionable insights that are required for decision making. How do you determine the skills that are required for you to be able to deliver on the objective of the organisation. How do you determine the number of employees that are required to be in the finance department or the production or procurement line or sales team. How do you determine the required skills and competencies for those that you want to put on your marketing team. How do you determine the number of products that your organisation must put out there to be profitable. How do you determine the needs of the consumers out there. All of these are data points and that is why for HR professionals, you must gain knowledge and understanding in mining data. How do you generate the data? How do you mine the data? and how do you process that data to be able to generate information that is required for adequate manpower planning for the organization. Therefore, it is very important that HR professionals must have a very strong understanding of data and there are a whole lot of opportunities for learning data analytics online. Data analytics skills are very critical for any HR professional to be successful going into the future.
For HR professionals, data is the new oil, and every unit of measurement represents valuable data. HR is responsible for creating optimal people experience within the organisation. To achieve this, it’s essential to understand the critical attributes of every individual brought into the workplace to drive productivity.
Data must be leveraged across various dimensions, including age, gender, nationality, skills, competencies, and even race. These data points collectively provide actionable insights necessary for informed decision-making.
Determining Organisational Needs
- How do you identify the skills required to achieve organisational objectives?
- How do you decide the optimal number of employees for departments like finance, production, procurement, or sales?
- How do you define the skills and competencies needed for your marketing team?
- How do you estimate the number of products your organisation must deliver to remain profitable?
- How do you assess the needs of your customers?
All of these are data points. This underscores the need for HR professionals to gain expertise in data management. The process involves:
- Generating data: Identifying and collecting relevant information.
- Mining data: extracting meaningful patterns and insights.
- Processing data: transforming raw data into actionable information for effective workforce planning.
Given its importance, HR professionals must develop a strong understanding of data analytics. There are numerous opportunities to learn these skills online, and data analytics will be a critical competency for any HR professional looking to succeed in the future.
“This thought leadership piece is culled from the CIPM radio programme, ‘The Office.’ The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the Guests and do not represent the views of CIPM.”
