To shift towards a human-centric approach to people management, start with empathy.
By Aisling Teillard, Our Tandem’s CEO.
There’s been some buzz in the HR industry lately around the benefits of a human-centric approach. However, awareness is only the first step. Managers are now left wondering how to initiate a shift towards human-focused HR strategies.
With that in mind, we want to share five practical steps you can take to shift your HR strategy towards a human-centric approach.
1. Reconsider the idea of employee experience
This recent steer towards human-centric HR practices is about getting back to the bare bones of HR: human beings, the people behind your business.
Paying attention to the human side of human resources means replacing terms like “employee experience” with “people experience” because your employees are exactly that: people.
We all have our own individual motivations, struggles, and experiences – if you want to get the most from your employees, it’s important to be in tune with the individuals you’re managing. Understanding their wants, needs and experiences is important.
There are endless benefits to making your people experience a key factor in your performance management strategy. Our Tandem offers the opportunity to achieve a culture of continuous development.
Our platform makes it easy to set different types of goals: personal goals, wellbeing goals and development goals.
This allows you to cover all bases when it comes to managing your people. A strong HR strategy centres on getting the right balance of human-centric and business-focused leadership. Concentrating on improving employee experience can contribute to a healthy balance.
2. Get managers on board
To implement these changes as smoothly as possible, it’s vital that you get everyone on the same page. This will be key to the successful pivot towards a human-centric approach and here’s why:
Many HR professionals are concerned with how they can make sure their managers effectively roll out new practices.
The first course of action is usually to send them on a leadership course. This can unfortunately be a fruitless effort in many cases. Getting managers on board means getting them aligned with new approaches on a more meaningful level.
In addition, it’s important to inform them of the reasons behind these new approaches. Managers must believe in the benefits of introducing new ways of doing things.
They must have a clear and full understanding of this new workplace culture and how it can be accomplished. It is important to develop the managers’ coaching skills, having the ability to find their employees’ potential and bring it to light.
A tool such as Our Tandem acts as the ‘coach in your pocket’ – giving managers helpful discussion points for check-ins, and feedback reminders to guide managers through.
Managers are leaders and are therefore at the forefront of any cultural changes within your business. Managers need the support, tools, and information to enable the successful implementation of these improvements.
3. Empower your employees with improved self-awareness
Helping employees improve their self-awareness can do wonders for their development.
The best approach here is to ensure that your employees are receiving continuous feedback from peers and managers.
They should also be able to efficiently request feedback from their peers and from cross-functional teams. In other words, a 360-feedback system is a solution.
Frequent feedback is valuable in several ways: it gives the employee a heightened sense of self-awareness while providing HR with an abundance of useful data and analytics. This data can give you a better idea of how your people are doing, allowing you to fine-tune your processes to provide a better experience for employees.
Improving feedback processes can enable the employee, giving them a greater sense of satisfaction. Our Tandem makes this method easy by giving your employees access to a 360 feedback survey.
4. Acknowledge the role of empathy in your people management strategy
If you want to shift towards a human-centric approach to people management, start with empathy.
Empathy can be a fundamental factor in designing your strategy. Managing people isn’t just about overseeing work and keeping everything ticking over to a sufficient standard.
It’s also about asking questions, engaging your people in communication, and identifying what motivates them. Start small by checking in, asking your employees how they are, and work from there.
It’s impossible to give your employees the support they need without knowing what issues they’re facing.
Ask your employees directly what you can do for them, to help them thrive. This can be done via employee satisfaction surveys or with a platform such as Our Tandem where communication between managers, HR, and employees is easier than ever.
5. Measure the employee experience
Speaking of data and analytics, understanding the needs and wants of your people is paramount.
As well as this, it is also crucial to measure the employee experience as a whole – rather than just a ‘moment in time’ engagement score delivered by a pulse survey.
Measuring through We now have the opportunity to measure different personal journeys in the organisation, therefore measuring the employee experience on a deeper level.
This kind of information can allow you to shape a workplace culture that drives your people to do their very best work. Our Tandem can help you gather the right information to understand your employees on a human level. Aside from the numbers, you can aim to do the following:
Find out about their wants by asking directly. Engage employees in an open dialogue and let them know that you want to hear what they have to say. Consider their needs by identifying shortcomings in your current approaches. Again, communication is key here. Feedback can help you identify and meet these needs.
Gauge their expectations by openly discussing their goals, their progress, and their experience so far.
A human-focused strategy in a nutshell
There are plenty of small steps you can take to gradually move towards this kind of system, but here’s what we believe defines a human-centric strategy:
- Focus on creating better human experiences for your people.
- Empower and enable your people with a consistent 360 approach to feedback.
- Give them the opportunity to share their views and opinions through meaningful conversations.
- Give you people real opportunities to heighten their self-awareness so that they can begin their journey to development, finding their potential and best self.
Our Tandem is here to help you move forward with humanising your workplace.
Real change begins with the right tools. With Our Tandem, you can engage and empower your employees in a meaningful way.
Deepen trust between managers and your employees. Provide a platform that allows for ongoing feedback, meaningful conversations, and customised goal setting.
Enhance the employee experience and change your workplace culture for the better. Book your free, no-strings-attached demo today and find out what Our Tandem can do for you and your people.
