PRESS RELEASE: Proactive HR Departments Help Drive Companies Forward

Presenters attending the third HR Networking Series’ (HRNS) event this year — entitled “How HR Positively Impacts Your Organisation” — established that the more proactive the human resources department of a company is, the better employees will feel and the better the firm can perform in their highly-competitive markets. The event is the 16th organised by Salariesinmalta.com, held at The Xara Lodge of Rabat.

Nowadays human resources departments often act like administrators rather than as drivers of change within the business. This can easily be accompanied by less respect toward the department as compared to other branches, such as technology, finance and sales, to mention a few.

Nevertheless, companies appear to perform more outstandingly to their peers where the human resources operations are leading the way forward; moving from the backroom to the boardroom and having a real impact on the change agenda. Some HR functions have crafted their space within the boardroom. It is time perceptions changed.

Nowadays, change is critical. A company’s competitive advantage depends on the speed of and ability to adapting to change. In today’s markets, with globalisation and technological innovation ongoing, we must respond to new opportunities and threats faster than the competition to survive and prosper. This is the way, Ines Silva, Chief Officer Human Resources at Mapfre Middlesea, started her Masterclass Session focusing on change management. Therefore, she underlined that streamlined communication in the company and bringing people on board with the change can make a significant difference in how the organisation as a whole makes a change.

Change management is important because its principles will help one to create and implement a new vision, strategy and initiatives. Ms Silva says that continuous change in a company is more beneficial as episodic changes. While in the case of the latter, change is infrequent, discontinuous and intentional, in the case of the former change is constant, evolving and cumulative.

In order to understand organisational change, one must first understand organisational inertia, Ms Silva pointed out. “Change is not an on-off phenomenon nor its effectiveness contingent on the degree to which it is planned. The trajectory of change is more often spiral or open-ended than linear. A concern with changing rather than change means greater appreciation that change is never off,” the Mapfre professional said.

For supporting change reaching its maximum potential, a company must invest in institutional entrepreneurship, boosting leaders and employees to adopt new behavioural changes.

For Mapfre, the two key behavioural traits for leaders are respect and communication. Leaders must listen actively and acknowledge the vision and proposals of their teams. At the same time, leaders must trust their people, acknowledge the good work and give feedback on a daily basis. Leaders must also keep their teams informed and help their teams focus on what is important.

Teams must establish a truly collaborative environment where they can share relevant information, interact and cooperate with each other and get involved in all the processes. Innovative thinking for turning good into great on a continuous basis is also very important. Additionally, agility to make decisions quickly and efficiently can be a real game-changer.

She concluded her session by saying that human resources must look at the future, being able to understand how to create value to the business from outside to inside and to measure progress through the analytics. Nevertheless, at present one of the main challenges is to learn how to deal with emotions, how to provide care giving and how to enhance well-being as the context is much tougher than before. Human resources absolutely has to deliver the greatest experience to employees with heart and soul, she underscored.

Jenny Arnell, Group Human Resources Manager at Catena Media, emphasised the importance of having a strategy for HR and data analytics in a company. She shared how her company realised that they had a big amount of data stored unsystematically, and therefore they were not able to turn this data to their advantage. So Catena Media took the time to identify, organise, understand and use it.

Annika Galea, Director of Human Resources at Hilton Malta, presented her personal experience of how the HR function at Hilton has progressed over the years and transformed itself into more of a change agent and strategic partner. She highlighted how team members mimic the treatment they are given with the guests and it is no longer a choice for companies to embrace their talent strategy.

Ms Galea’s presentation shared a realistic view of the struggles that HR professionals face in today’s employment market and how she and the team at Hilton try to overcome these struggles.

She mentioned that the key for success for any HR team that wants to be taken seriously is knowing the business intrinsically and being a part of what is happening operationally. In addition HR professionals need to get out of their box and take decisions for the benefit of the company, sometimes at the expense of their own views and most importantly be accountable for decisions.

Ms Galea is currently working with her team on ensuring that each part of each HR process adds true business value and mentioned that the core reason for existence for any HR team is to provide to the business good quality talent, which is kept on board happy, engaged and able to Thrive.

Salariesinmalta.com will organise its next HRNS event on 27th September 2019, entitled “Understanding Multicultural Working Environments”. As the Maltese labour market has been on a substantial increase in the recent years fuelled by the foreign labour force, challenges and opportunities have been on the rise. HR professionals will elaborate on how a multicultural environment’s potential can be leveraged to deliver the best results where employees hold different beliefs, values and backgrounds.

To reserve your place email: analise@salariesinmalta.com or call on 2122 8772.