How CHROs manage new external factors

The HR department and HR leaders have historically been seen as a support function for an organisation, however over the past several years there has been greater demand for the department to provide bespoke support for employees.

Robin Boomer, executive advisor from Gartner’s HR practice told Digital Nation Australia, “As organisations become more complex, there's more opportunities to leverage technology.

“There is a recognition that employees have specific needs and concerns they expect the organisation to provide in order to elevate their performance and do the best job possible.”

The chief HR officer’s (CHRO) role is becoming more complex as external threats and trends emerge.

“The CHRO gets pulled into stakeholder management and public response to those external threats or concerns that that people might have. Now in a hybrid environment, which many organisations have, or most organisations have, they're having to think differently about culture and cohesion,” he said.

“How we hold the organisation together and strategically go forward, while still allowing for flexibility and people's identities to shine through and bring them their whole selves to work.”

But at the same time, Boomer said organisations have to make sure that there's a shared consensus about what CHROs are here to achieve.

“With the current talent landscape, the role of workforce planning is becoming more complex, where we might have to be managing multiple scenarios and understanding external risks at a much deeper level in order to provide multiple different scenarios and the paths we might go down and identify the triggers,” he explained.

“What are the things that will let us know whether we should be pursuing and retaining the best employees? That we have a strategy or have healthy churn and attract new talent? Or really invest in building up the skills and capabilities inside the organisation?” he added.