Unlocking business resilience through a successful HR management strategy

While change in today’s day and age has always been increasingly rapid, recent challenges have accelerated this even more. The pandemic has changed the way businesses and consumers are behaving. This combined with the already fast-pace developments of new digital technologies, means that businesses are constantly needing to change, reevaluate their strategy and refresh their business model.

“All these changes have businesses revisiting how they manage their people; the nature of work has changed – many organizations are allowing their staff to work from home,” says Charoen Phosamritlert, Chief Executive Officer, KPMG in Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. “Needs of employees have also changed as they focus more on employee wellbeing and happiness. Therefore, efficiently navigating and successfully managing these changes as well as developing and retaining talents are key to successful people management in the era of the next normal.”

“There are a lot of challenges to HR management that businesses need to consider,” says Tidarat Chimluang, Advisory Partner, KPMG in Thailand. “First, businesses need to identify the objectives of HR management to align with the organization’s vision, mission and strategy for the next normal. Secondly, there needs to be a clear designation of roles and responsibilities as well as the qualifications of employees. It is also important to identify the HR Value Proposition or what is the main goal of the HR team, whether it’s employee development or increase employee engagement. Finally, organizations must revisit their HR Operating Model, which is the way they manage their HR strategy, including policy, mechanics, processes or using new digital technologies to manage their human resources.”

To increase business resiliency, a strong HR management strategy is needed. As part of building a robust HR strategy, businesses should consider these 4Rs:

1. Resilience: It is the ability to quickly react to change. Organizations need to design their business – whether through their organization structure or employee levels – to be agile, have a suitable span of organizational control, as well as promote collaboration among teams to create new innovations and to be able to efficiently and quickly answer clients’ needs and enhance agility.

2. Reshape: Reshaping the way human resources is managed, including hiring and workforce management. This is done under the concept of 4Bs.

a. Buy: Recruit and find new talented employees and skills into the organization.

b. Build: Enhancing the ability of employees and unleash their current capabilities in response to the changing needs of the organization.

c. Borrow: Apply outsourcing model and hire temporary employees to enhance organizational capabilities.

d. Bot: Use digital technology to support, enhance and manage the organization to become more efficient.

3. Reskill and Upskill: It is important that organizations increase their capabilities and their employees’ capabilities to support new goals, vision, mission and strategy. There are many aspects that employees need to improve on, such as digital technology, customer-centricity, design-thinking and ESG. All of this will allow employees to help their organization grow sustainably.

4. Retain: Whether in terms of recruiting talented employees or reskilling and upskilling current employees, if organizations cannot retain these employees, it will all be for nothing. Therefore, talent management to retain high performing employees is very important. Organizations need to be able to balance their employees’ happiness with good performance.

“After a company considers these aspects in HR management, it needs to build a roadmap for implementation,” continues Tidarat. “The roadmap will consider the HR Value Proposition in terms of the related operating model, defining gaps and closing the gaps. These all need to be aligned and be suitable for short-term and long-term strategies.”