One of the most noticeable effects of Covid is that the HR function has undergone a remarkable acceleration in the digitization of processes and talent support. New solutions have emerged: HRIS tools enhancing "employee experience," real-time employee surveys measuring team morale, tools facilitating the remote onboarding of new employees, the list goes on... This is good news for organizations facing the challenges of new ways of working in the post-Covid era and for many employees increasingly seeking a better personal balance.
However, despite unearthing new perspectives, the emergence of "all-digital" in talent development also creates new areas of concern. What about the daily listening to employees, the ability to share and embody the company's purpose, its history, and ambitions, to allocate qualitative time for talents - or those considering joining? Paradoxically, these fundamentals of human relationships have never been more critical.
In the current environment, the resurgence of "proximity relationships" is even more favored. Today, regular promotions, the opportunity to build a career within the company, enticing proposals for expatriation and remuneration are no longer the only rules of the game. Leaders are always ready to engage and exceed expectations in collective projects, provided they find meaning and impact, which involves closer, more regular, authentic interactions with their top management. In a highly competitive talent market, cultivating this deep connection will be even more crucial for retaining, developing and attracting talent.
Anyway, companies have no choice. The increasingly proactive ESG regulation obliges them to build more sustainable talent development strategies. In this regard, 2024 is a pivotal year with the implementation of the CSRD directive ("Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive"), which will compel companies to integrate more criteria related to human capital into their strategy. Beyond KPIs, the human factor is central and becomes a differentiating and competitive element.
In this context, the CHROs see their involvement evolve. It is their responsibility, along with their teams, to maintain this close and continuous connection with the company's leaders and create the conditions for regular discussions with key executives of the company.
Making remote working more human
Since 2020, the sense of belonging to the company has been weakened among populations eligible to remote working. A portion of the company’s innate social life has shifted to digital channels, but some situations have become less frequent, particularly after attempting to hastily preserve the identity of companies during lockdowns via Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Fortuitous encounter in front of the company headquarters or an impromptu one-on-one lunch in the cafeteria is less likely to happen in 2024 than in 2019. Tania Wingfield, Group CHRO of Borgwarner, freely raises a warning in the face of this new challenge: "How do we protect a company culture in the world of remote work and hybrid work?". Tania acknowledges organizing more frequent conversations with her leaders, both individually and in small groups, than before. Regular conversation appears to be an old-fashioned yet fantastically effective tool for supporting company culture.
Thierry Parmentier, Group CHRO of French chemical player Arkema, also emphasizes the necessity of conducting performance evaluations during in-person meetings rather than opting for remote exchanges. He believes that these are the moments that should now be more qualitative and warns against limited interactions in the era of remote work, where sometimes "we no longer see the catastrophe coming," such as depression, illness, exhaustion, and other challenges.
Addressing the Quest for Meaning
The observation is well-known: the relationship between the company and the leader has transcended purely transactional dimensions. This trend existed before 2020 but was significantly strengthened by the Covid crisis. Gonzalo Cajade, EVP & Chief People Officer of automotive supplier BBB Industries, acknowledges that he faced unexpected desires for career changes after the pandemic. He believes that the pandemic has triggered in some individuals a sense of fragility of human life and has disrupted traditional career paths.
Similarly, Thierry Parmentier and Tania Wingfield admit to having dealt with requests for early retirement from some executives, who are grappling with existential questions in the post-Covid era. These questions undermine the retention levers historically used by the company (salary, career development, expatriation). The company must now deal with executives driven by a quest for meaning.
Francesco Tutino, CHRO of Iveco, underscores the expansion of the Human Resources function, whose scope now goes beyond recruitment, monitoring, individual development, succession planning and structuring an HR team. The CHRO must contribute to making "it worthwhile to work in the company" and willing to explain both its mission and history.
The communication skills of the CHRO are therefore fundamental to address this new reality. Feliciano Gonzalez, CHRO of Holcim, emphasizes the increased need to be able to "tell the story" of the company, as the rules for retaining and attracting executives have undergone profound changes. Feliciano points out that "The managers who will survive are those who can communicate clearly and motivate teams", admitting he now places higher emphasis on this characteristic when evaluating his executive teams.
Assuming an Advisory Role
VUCA? Recently revived by geopolitical events, the acronym VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity - has become popular to characterize our era. Uncertainty is multidimensional and compels the CHRO to rethink the rules of team engagement. The electric vehicle revolution provides a glaring example, given the disruptions it represents for many industries: how to best engage an executive in such a revolution when so many geopolitical and technological uncertainties still impact its value chain?
Francesco Tutino is positive about the widespread use of employee satisfaction surveys. However, what is the risk? These surveys are instrumental to get a solid base of data and KPIs, but the survey alone does not represent the solution to enhance team engagement. "Continuous employees listening" strategies have indeed proliferated since the pandemic and satisfaction surveys have been widely utilized. However, Francesco believes that regular conversation is the only reliable tool to measure and increase team engagement in an era of perpetual crisis.
The multiple crises are even transforming the role of the CHRO. The advisory and supportive role of the CHRO towards the CEO is not new, but according to Julien Veyrier, HRD and General Secretary of Carrefour Spain, the CHRO should adopt the same stance towards broader populations beyond the CEO. The willingness of some leaders to confide has indeed grown; professional and personal issues are more easily shared, given the stronger intertwining of professional and personal life.
More than ever, the CHRO is the sought-after attentive ear, as the HR function appears to many since the Covid crisis as a kind of referee in crisis management. Julien Veyrier believes that the period recalls the very essence of the HR profession: "articulating personal issues with the company's strategy." Armand Sohet, CHRO of Dutch chemical company Akzonobel, confirms the increased impact of the HR function in the post-Covid era and the trend towards wanting more personalized support from HR: 'There is a search for a personalized and human connection”. Armand would however caution against the unconditional belief 'that we are going to do HR with chatbots.'"
The observation is straightforward: there is a growing need for qualitative, human interactions capable of overcoming the general acceleration caused by the digital revolution. It is the responsibility of the CHRO to ensure the continuity of these relationships and to bring them to life in the daily management of the company. According to Linda Knoll, CHRO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) until 2021, "the CHRO will have to understand leadership in a much more complex world." As we have mentioned, complexity is multidimensional and has also emerged from new ways of working enabled by the digital revolution. Xavier Savigny, CHRO of Saur (global water services provider), believes that "the manager's profession is the one that has changed the most and is the most challenging"; it requires the ability to simultaneously manage teams working in remote, at the company's headquarters or in hybrid mode. The complexity of the world will require a revision of leadership models and generate new managerial behaviors. It would be utopian to imagine addressing them solely through a frenzied investment in new HR tools. A reallocation of the CHRO's time will be favored, thanks to the time freed up by the digitization of certain tasks. Long-term perspective, listening, empathy, support and closeness will be essential to decipher new managerial behaviors. The CHRO will be in the front row, going back to the fundamentals of the profession.