Importance of Business HR Diagnostics
Why Organizations in the UAE and GCC Must Protect Their Core HR Fundamentals in a Competitive Market
Every organisation has its priorities, and they strive hard to achieve them. Similar to us individuals, who lose focus on our well being when chasing professional goals, Organizations often end up ignoring their business fundamentals when chasing their business goals – such as the suitability of their organization structure, if it is effective in driving their strategy or the dipping of their people engagement levels or the effectiveness of their necessary internal HR processes to vitalize their organizations.
How Losing Focus on People Processes Weakens Long-Term Competitiveness
The lack of attention to these business fundamentals results in a slow deterioration of the very fabric and strengths of an organisation. Over time, this leads to the loss of competitiveness of the organisation. It is therefore very important that organisations remain vigilant of their core internal process, especially their Human Resources and their associated people processes, which often is a key source of competitive advantage. An organisation needs to keep course-correcting, reinforcing the winning aspects, and, where needed, re-inventing itself by optimally managing and leveraging its talent pool, people processes and systems.
Why Periodic HR Diagnostics Should Be a Leadership Priority for Modern Enterprises in the UAE/GCC
The HR Leadership of the organisation must be mindful that the risk of losing focus on strategic HR matters amidst the humdrum of day-to-day operational activities and business priorities is real and persistent. A busy business HR team risks losing focus on strategic HR matters, especially those that are not glaringly visible but are often fundamental to the success of organisations.
As such, organisations should consider earmarking periodic HR Diagnostics as a calendar-based major event that must be undertaken with high focus and not as a routine day-to-day assignment to be managed as a tick-box item.
The Cost of Neglecting HR Diagnostics: Lessons for High-Growth Markets
The failure of organisations to carry out timely self-diagnostics is comparable to individuals who, in their busyness, do not undertake periodic health check-ups. Such an individual cannot expect to discover a brewing health issue until it manifests as a disease, sometimes only in the final stage of the malady, when it’s too late to cure or to regain full vitality. Similarly, for organisations, not carry out in-depth HR diagnostics periodically, the symptoms often present right at the end as unexpected failures impacting the business, its bottom line, making them lose momentum, and loss of associated opportunities.
Now that we have elaborated on the importance of timely and thorough diagnostics of an organisation’s HR systems and processes, let us touch upon the next important question: How should one diagnose an organisation’s internal people processes
Once again, taking the analogy of one’s health, one cannot expect friends and family to advise us on our underlying health issues, especially when such issues have not even manifested. We need to consult a Subject Matter Expert (SME), namely a doctor, who, in turn, needs to have the right tools and equipment to carry out certain diagnostics to obtain relevant data points and make sense of the data in its totality, to advise us of our state of health and appropriate approaches to address any areas of concern. Similarly, for a thorough and meaningful Business HR Diagnostic, one needs to engage Subject Matter Experts, who have the right tools and techniques, with which they can diagnose the underlying issues accurately. There are specialised HR Consulting firms that carry out such in-depth diagnostics in the UAE.
HR Diagnostics Should be Conducted Every 24-30 Months for Sustainable Growth
For continued and timely revitalisation of business, this important exercise of HR Diagnostics should be carried out once every 24-30 months, ideally by a specialist outside firm for the following reasons :
- Objectivity: Internal teams, even if part of another department, cannot be expected to provide an objective view of internal processes and systems, as the internal dynamics, reporting lines and socio-political set up is bound to shade their assessment.
- Fresh Perspective and rich inventory of ideas and practical solutions: It is often a challenge to have specialised SMEs in-house, who have ongoing exposure to the latest know-how in the field of human resources and therefore who could bring a newer perspective on the subject. Specialised firms have this as their core competency. They are also able to evaluate the client organisation with clear cross-referencing to other firms in the industry and best practices.
- Focused Accountability: For any third-party specialist firm engaged on a paid assignment like this, it is their only key ‘result’ area, so a well-focused execution of this task is a reasonable expectation. On the other hand, expecting the already busy operational HR team to carry out an in-depth internal ‘audit’ of their own processes is unreasonable.
- Cost-Effective: Engaging a specialist firm for this type of once-in-a-few-years exercise saves the organisation its resources and, most importantly, avoids irreversible damages and opportunity losses that can result from a shallow and ineffective HR Audit.
