HR TRANSFORMATION     STRATEGIC HR     CHANGE MANAGEMENT    SAP

Singapore - The current economic crisis has been steadily building a strong business case for HR transformation as most companies realign their focus on reducing costs and retaining top talent.

Diane Fanelli, senior vice president of industries and solutions for SAP Asia Pacific Japan, explains HR transformation is happening according to "what companies need to work on right now". While it's obvious why cost savings is essential in the downturn, organisations are also expecting HR to retain top talent successfully. "The top talent in the organisation is going to be the group that takes the organisation out of the economic crisis and able to see the economy rebound."

It also gives HR practitioners an opportunity, although not always a pleasant one, but one area which Fanelli says has to be dealt with is taking low performers out of the business. This means HR needs to "really calibrate" the organisation's talent effectively and make tough decisions if necessary. "HR transformation plays a very big part in this and besides your customers, the most important asset a company has is the people."

However, HR practitioners can expect one big hurdle when transforming HR processes. "Change management is a significant issue for them [HR]," says Fanelli. "In these challenging times, they [employees] don't want to go beyond where they feel comfortable so this is really stretching them to think out of the box to go beyond organisational boundaries."

Once HR transformation takes place, HR practitioners should always measure the new process' ROI in order to show their true business value. For example, in SAP, workforce productivity is measured by asking "How productive are our account executives? Are they able to create the pipeline and close deals?"

Or measuring how effective distance learning or virtual training is, compared to when employees were taking personalised classroom training or attending courses. "In many companies, given the economic situation, many people are not travelling unnecessarily for classes and training," says Fanelli. "So how are you using distance learning or virtual training to really ensure your employees are coming up to speed?

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