Agility in HR

Scrum, an eternal topic in software development... But wasn't "The New New Product Development Game" actually about hardware? And rumor has it that agile frameworks are now also being used in processes outside of product development, such as in sales and marketing or in human resources (HR)... But how did this come about?

People who develop organizations follow the trends in this area

Of course; not everyone who works in marketing today necessarily uses facebook, twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in parallel; nevertheless, the affinity here is, let's say, 'somewhat higher'. The situation is similar with modern working methods in the field of human resources and organizational development. Topics such as "New Work" or agility emerge relatively early on and are followed with interest. There is also a very practical reason for this:

HR operates in the slipstream of agile product development

While agile methods are being introduced in product development, the principle of empowerment and self-organization poses new challenges for human resources:

How does it work with the boss who is authorized to give instructions today? Should it be the Scrum Master? Or the product owner? Or someone outside the team? How will the vacation policy work? What does that do to our beautiful career models in the company? And how do we deal with bonuses now? - For many questions that arise in the course of self-organization, HR is the first department outside of product development to come into contact with the newly discovered agility.

There is also a challenge from product development for HR:

Increasing competitive pressure

In order to be attractive to particularly good applicants, it is sometimes no longer enough to offer flexible working hours or a free fruit basket. Companies are therefore rethinking parts of their application process in order to make a special impression at first glance in the large number of jobs advertised.

Some companies like Google or a British secret service are inspired to come up with particularly creative solutions in order to find the most suitable applicants: Potential employees are presented with creative and tricky challenges - a practical way to give both sides a picture of what they can expect from each other.

How can agility work in HR?

As in product development, this is a question of purpose and therefore cannot be answered in general terms. What can work are targeted experiments from which experience can be gained and lessons learned. Here are a few examples:

• At Solutions Hamburg, participants will be working on the Design Thinking Workshops hypothesize how parts of the application process can be rethought. They generate ideas, develop prototypes and get feedback from trade fair participants.
• We use agile techniques for job advertisements:
  To avoid repeating half the job advertisement in the cover letter, we write user stories in our current job advertisements. By briefly describing who we are looking for and what goals we want to achieve together with potential new colleagues, we invite applicants to tell us what they bring to the table without having half of the keywords we are looking for thrown at them as personal qualifications when they open a cover letter. On the contrary: the type of dialog that arises here reveals quite a lot about the respective other party beyond the level of information.
• Colleagues from a cross-functional team, consisting of HR and team members from the agile area looking for candidates, pull applicants from the backlog and guide the application through the entire Kanban process. HR remains responsible for the process - this is where the coordination takes place and where the threads come together.

Of course, these experiments are primarily about further developing one's own work. However, it is at least as important that the people who develop the organizations also experience the synergies of agile working methods for themselves.

Well then - let's go! All new! Everything agile!

Well; let's leave the church in the village! A radical change in working methods and culture has never been the best idea. And the idea of receiving an employment law document such as a written warning from a cross-functional team with authority to issue instructions seems pretty weird. To get a feel for agile working methods, it is useful to understand the methodologies and gain experience yourself: start experimenting!