People-centric HR transformation unlocks the employee experience 

Out of this mindset emerges a trinity of HR business partners, centers of excellence and shared services. This predominant approach streamlined and outsourced HR services, but it didn’t achieve the intended cost benefit expectations and it also fractured the employee experience. It wasn’t effective then, and it’s now more antiquated than ever.

In today’s work environment — and to be agile and ready to adapt to the future of work — organizations need to refocus their HR transformation on interactions — guided by a TIM before designing the HR operating model. This approach puts employees front and center for the HR function.

It’s time for HR to shape the future of work by providing relevant advice and services that directly align with and support your organization’s business and people strategies. The right HR transformation drives the organizational strategy and people priorities, and it contributes to true business value. Our TIM approach grants the HR function greater responsibility than ever before, elevating the function to become a strategic advisor to business leaders.

With a TIM, HR can transform itself around employee experiences and evolve to a true people-centered function. TIM places a premium on delivering relevant services and exceptional interactions that yield measurable employee satisfaction, engagement and commitment.

While Mercer’s TIM is based on a fundamental philosophy and common design archetypes, it is customized for every organization based on its needs, culture, and people dependency.

A key component for any TIM-driven HR transformation is digitalization, a sometimes unappreciated but critical way to support the business and enhance the employee experience. People expect simple, user-friendly digital experiences at work, just as they do in their personal lives. Our TIM takes this into account and balances the digital and human experience to invest resources where they will count the most.

By emphasizing the employee experience, building on end user’s needs (including the C-suite’s), HR’s future-ready design can benefit the entire organization, introduce a better way of working and boost talent attraction, retention, and engagement – ultimately generating greater trust in the organization and higher productivity.

The first column refers to the customers of HR including candidates, the external workforce, employees, people leaders, and top management. The second column describe the opportunities to introduce digital tools effectively and in an engaging way (e.g. people operations platforms as a self-service). In the third column, personal support comes into the equation. These include people operations, advisory and administration, leadership partners, and people strategy advisors. In the final column, we typically see two main categories: HR customer-facing communities for talent acquisition and talent development, and enterprise-serving communities including project portfolio management, compensation and benefits, Diversity, equity and inclusion, and HR analytics.

Further, HR can organize itself with an agile HR pool to cover constant innovation by bringing in the right expertise.

This full TIM is supported by a solid digital foundation, typically an HRIS platform.

The TIM reimagines the HR function. It evaluates HR roles, processes and technology against the workforce’s needs and wants. It increases agility by reducing silos and pooling resources from across the function that can be tapped for a variety of projects. It establishes a clear, streamlined, effective roadmap to delivering services in a way that is proven to delight employees, achieve business results and ensure that HR interacts with people in ways that matter.

After reorganizing around a TIM, HR can free up about 30% of its administrative load, giving professionals more time to serve the organization in an elevated role. Today’s HR leaders are taking a seat at the table with the C-suite, helping create a modern people strategy that supports both the workforce and the business — with HR in more digitally advanced organizations four times more likely to be seen as a significant contributor to strategic business planning. HR business partners evolve – unburdened by unnecessary administrative duties, they are free to take on more meaningful work, making a difference in impactful roles such as strategic advisor, data-driven problem solver, influential storyteller, trusted coach and independent voice.

Over the past few decades, the predominant HR model was designed around the perspective and perceptions of the HR organization, and its primary purpose was to address leaders’ laser focus on business efficiency and cost savings. Out of this philosophy economies of scale won over the employee experience.

In today’s work environment — and to be agile and ready to adapt to the future of work — organizations need to refocus their HR transformation on interactions — developing a Target Interaction Model (TIM) approach before designing the target operating model (TOM). Our TIM approach uses a multidimensional and people-centric HR transformation philosophy and methodology that grants the HR function greater responsibility than ever before, placing it at the table with the C-suite to create the organization’s people strategy.