Agile HR: Everything You Need to Know

Maurice Conti argued all the way back in 2017 that the world of work is going to change more in the next 20 years than in the past 2,000. 5 years in, his prediction is bearing out. The future of work is fast on its way and HR can’t simply be passive bystanders in these processes, we have to adapt and build the future of work for ourselves.

In fact, long before anyone had heard of Covid, HR was already feeling intense pressure to change everything from performance management to recruiting. The pandemic accelerated that existing need for change, with the years since only adding additional pressure to evolve.

It’s no wonder HR professionals are looking for new ways to improve how they work, with many following their colleagues in sales, marketing, procurement, and more by turning to Agile. Every aspect of business now has to improve its adaptability, responsiveness, and innovation. HR is no different.

But what exactly does Agile look like in an HR context, and what should HR professionals do to get ahead of these trends?

What Is Agile HR?

Agile HR describes a modern approach that enables organizations to be more responsive and innovative in the face of constant change. It enables HR departments to respond to change more quickly, remain flexible during such changes, and generally refocus their efforts on being responsive to the needs of their stakeholders.

On a more granular level, Agile HR also involves creating more dynamic career paths that reflect the flatter structure and dynamic nature of Agile organizations. HR systems and Programs for learning and development are also developed and deployed in an Agile way, with smaller and shorter iterations. 

Agile HR often includes practices labeled Future of Work, HR 4.0, or Disruptive HR as well as concepts like Lean, Systems Thinking, and Design Thinking. The Agile HR Manifesto also takes inspiration from the original Agile Manifesto in its focus on collaboration, transparency, adding value, and prioritizing sustainability. But on a deeper level, Agile HR involves a shift in mindset to embrace the new world of work.

That mindset shift can be broken down into three basic changes. The first is deeper integration with the business functions themselves. To be responsive to its internal stakeholders, HR has to foster deeper connections in order to understand the needs of those stakeholders.

Next, HR needs to embrace experimentation and the risk that comes with it. Traditionally, HR has had long development times driven by the belief that tools and processes need to be perfect before they can be rolled out. But by testing those tools and processes, employing Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) where possible, HR can learn and apply valuable lessons far faster.

Finally, to drive that experimentation HR needs to break out of its traditional annual process review cycles. By checking in on how tools and processes are performing on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, issues can be identified and experimental solutions developed and tested far faster.

The Benefits of Agile HR

Faster Improvement

Traditional HR departments will spend months developing something like a new onboarding process. Once it’s launched, it might be a year before an annual review comes around and it’s time to see how it’s performing. As a result, the pace at which those processes see improvements is glacial, particularly compared to the pace of modern business.

By contrast, an Agile HR department would strive to put forward a smaller test version of that onboarding process as quickly as possible. This enables them to learn lessons about what works and what doesn't. Those lessons are then translated into improvements for a new version which then goes through its own test.

The Agile approach enables HR to make improvements within weeks instead of months or years. The cumulative effect of fitting a decade’s worth of process improvements into less than a year helps Agile HR departments see dramatic improvements relative to their traditional counterparts.

Better Understanding of Its Goals

Improving quickly is great, but those improvements also need to be aimed at the right goals to have a real impact. By working more closely with internal stakeholders and focusing on gathering explicit feedback from them on a regular basis, HR is able to understand what its goals should be and how effectively it’s achieving them.

That information then feeds back into those fast improvement cycles. It’s what tells HR whether a new process is driving the results the organization needs instead of simply achieving the internal KPIs that HR may be focused on.

Improved Flexibility

The iteration and feedback cycles mentioned here also drive another key benefit of Agile HR: better flexibility. HR as a function is able to pivot and change in response to changing stakeholder needs. For example, a sudden economic downturn, regulation, or shift in the competitive landscape may necessitate fast changes in how HR operates.

By iterating on a far shorter basis, HR can react to those kinds of changes quickly. If their initial attempts aren’t successful, they can try another iteration until they come upon a workable solution. This flexibility means that instead of holding the organization back from fast adaptation, HR can help drive it.

More Engaged Employees

Ultimately, when HR is able to quickly and efficiently understand and address the needs of its stakeholders, you get more engaged employees. The training and support HR provides is more relevant and impactful. Employees feel more engaged because their organization is more engaged in supporting them.

How Agile HR Relates to Business Agility

In order for HR to fit into broader business agility, human resources team members need to become systems thinkers, leveraging organizational success through people. 

HR must reflect the organizations it serves. In the past, this meant building career models around the hierarchical structures those organizations were built on. 

However, applications of business agility break down and flatten those traditional structures, which translates to HR’s need to reflect those changes in their operations and what they are able to support. Organizations that aim to achieve business agility without reforming how they approach HR risk failing to provide the talent enablement and growth paths, etc. that those Agile practitioners need to thrive.

Bringing HR into the Agile fold requires broader collaboration between individuals and teams across functions. By getting more involved in cross-functional teams that include other functions, HR can both get a better understanding of the challenges people are facing across the organization and be better placed to provide value outside of their silo.

In practice, we are approaching this by training HR professionals to speak the language of agility. Then there are two aspects they need to be trained in: Agile for HR and HR for Agile. We instruct everyone on the values and principles of Agile from an HR perspective with a focus on how to translate them into the specific solutions they are creating. 

The idea is to ensure the solutions they come up with actually serve the broader business agility goals of the organization.

How to Implement Agile HR

While many organizations choose to implement Agile in HR via smaller pilot teams, on the project, or initiative level, we encourage people to conduct Agile HR transformations at scale.

That said, there are four main phases in the process of achieving full-fledged HR agility.

Phase 1: Access the training and coaching you need to understand Agile

First, HR professionals need to understand Agile ways of working and its terminology. For example, consider the term potential. Traditionally, potential refers to a candidate’s or an employee’s potential to follow a predefined career trajectory. However, in this new world of work, it is about the potential to thrive in an uncertain, fast-changing, Agile environment. Those are two very different definitions.

Without a common language and shared understanding, Agile teams and HR professionals simply can’t communicate or collaborate effectively.

This learning journey also involves Agile leaders (consultants, or whoever is leading Agile transformation in your organization) working with HR to understand their challenges, perspective, and language. You can’t simply implement Agile in HR the same way you would in another function like marketing, so this back and forth is critical in the customization of a tailored path towards agility for this function.

It’s important to balance these types of learning. HR can often rely too heavily on formal learning like trainings and courses while neglecting the value of coaching and practical application. One way to strike this balance is to follow the 70-20-10 rule. The goal is to dedicate 10% of your training time to formal learning, 20% to assisted learning like coaching, and the remaining 70% to applying those learnings.

Put another way, HR can’t treat Agile as a kind of “fire and forget” concept that you can gain from a single training session. It takes time to really develop a proper Agile mindset and understand how to apply its principles to the work HR does.

Phase 2: Evaluate

The next step is to take all of that mutual understanding and use it to evaluate what HR needs to accomplish and how this can be done through an Agile lens. 

I like to use the Comparative HR Agility Assessment to get a holistic view of the potential of HR agility around culture, talent, engagement, and flow, as well as the organizational and HR foundation.

At the same time, this is when you should be deciding precisely how you will implement Agile for the HR function. That might mean selecting key Agile tools like a visualization board as well as selecting the right Agile framework for your needs.

Phase 3: Launch

At this point, it’s time to dive into the Agile HR transformation itself. We tend to approach this by starting with exploration sessions to determine the why behind the transformation and how to best approach it. 

Then launch the core transformation team over the course of a series of workshops aimed at laying the foundations for a successful Agile HR transformation in an engaging and impactful way. This crucial time combines training and team building for the new Agile HR team while also geared towards delivering their first results using this new way of working.

Phase 4: Sustaining and Improving

Once your Agile HR transformation is on the way, you’re not done! In fact, Agile transformation is a process that’s never fully “complete” because Agile teams must constantly evolve and improve to function. Continuous improvement is a core part of Agile and Agile HR is no exception to this vital Agile value. You’ll want to constantly look for ways to hone your processes, finding new ways to adapt and improve. 

Common Agile HR Challenges

While there are many ways to approach Agile HR transformations, we’ve found some common challenges that everyone considering such a transformation needs to be aware of before they jump in.

Underestimating the complexity of HR

Don’t think that implementing Agile in HR simply means switching HR teams over to Scrum. Considering all the ways HR interacts with and drives a complex organization, it’s important to approach a transformation without any illusions about the complexity. This is also why there’s no one-size-fits-all model or approach to an Agile HR transformation.

Forgetting Who the “Customer” Is

For Agile HR, the ultimate customer is not senior leadership or the actual customers of the organization: it’s the employees. An Agile HR transformation needs to be anchored in the culture and identity of the organization, beginning with the employees themselves.

Working with Non-Agile Departments

While having Agile HR teams work with many different departments has its benefits, it can also be frustrating because many of those departments may not be Agile themselves. AgileSherpas’ latest State of Agile Marketing Report shows how Agile marketers vastly prefer to work with other Agile teams, and the same goes for Agile HR.

Pushing Changes Outside of Traditional Cycles

Then there’s the reality that everything in HR happens in cycles. Traditionally, you might acquire something like a new performance management system once every 10-15 years. 

But with the current shift towards Agile, HR must push changes through at a much higher rate. And there is no question that we need to align HR to agile ways of working. We are not getting the best ROI on our Agile transformation if we don't.

The challenge is that the HR landscape is complex and highly interconnected. Changing one part of the system will immediately impact other parts. For example, removing hierarchical structures not only impacts grading systems and title structures but also career paths and compensation systems.

So, switching to HR processes and tools that enable agility across the organization is like doing an open-heart surgery while the patient is wide awake. It takes patience and careful thought. In many cases, we must put the different puzzle pieces in place before dismantling established practices.

Focusing on Mindset over Frameworks

HR professionals occasionally focus too much on the mindset of Agile. They may think they don’t need to do Scrum, Kanban, etc. but rather just apply an Agile mindset to whatever they’re doing. The problem arises from the fact that we’re generally not aware of all our underlying beliefs and assumptions, and how they impact how we think and approach problems. Therefore, focusing only on an Agile mindset will inhibit a successful execution.

A change in mindset and behavior requires a change in environment as well. We need the right supporting systems, processes, and tools in place to enable agility.

Agile HR FAQs

How Can You Overcome Skepticism Amongst Colleagues within HR?

While many organizations will pilot Agility in one team to work through potential issues and show Agile can be successful, that’s tougher to do in HR. That said, you can still use Agile HR whitepapers and case studies to show colleagues what it looks like in practice and how it can benefit your organization.  

Agile HR coaches and consultants can also help. Their deep experience guiding teams through the implementation processes can be useful to answer tough questions HR professionals and leaders in your organizations may have.

Where Can You Find Long-Term Resources about Agile HR?

For that, we recommend joining an Agile HR community or professional organization.

The Future of Agile HR

One thing is clear: the future of HR is Agile and the enabler of Agile is HR. Businesses need agility and if we don’t address the people's side of that need we’re never going to achieve that ultimate business agility. HR is in a position to help organizations scale the changes required for Agile success through people.