2019 CHRO Agenda: Closing Critical HR Capabilities Gap – The Hackett Group

2019 CHRO

The Hackett Group’s 2019 CHRO Agenda Study results showed that HR organizations are progressing in enhancing some of the key capabilities but there are still large gaps to fill. Innovative technologies are being used to assist with this, however, most organizations are not up for a quick start. Most of them estimated to achieve digital transformation in two to three years’ time.

Some key takeaways from this study include:

  • There is a major change in the ranking of financial goals of respondents, as they ranked margin improvement as the top objective and revenue growth as the second. On the other hand, access to critical talent and cybersecurity were rated as the greatest risks for organizations.
  • Although cost reduction is still an ongoing priority, improving customer-centricity was ranked as the number one enterprise initiative due to concerns about increasing competition.
  • Despite the rising expectation from HR leaders, the organizational focus on cost will still be recognized with operating budgets for HR are 0.2% less than last year and a headcount decrease of 0.4%.
  • The top 5 HR-related improvement priorities for organizations include: developing executives who are able to lead in an unpredictable business environment; enabling the execution of successful business strategy; encouraging organizational digital transformation; supporting customer-centricity; identifying critical skills shortages.
  • It is revealed from the data that digital transformation has progressed at a slower pace than expected and as a result, organization haven’t been able to benefit from this. Although 43% of organizations have experienced significant effects on their responsibilities and skills requirements, one-third or less have seen major changes in their accomplishment of organizational objectives or the performance of their service delivery.
  • HR organizations have the highest level of core digital platform technologies adoption compared to other business services. More than 50% of respondents are currently using cloud-based business tools, mobile computing and social media/collaboration. More than one-third of surveyed organizations are using advanced analytics and data visualization technologies,  and this number is anticipated to increase to 50% or more within the next one or two years.

The Hackett Group is a strategic consultancy firm with a focus on intellectual property that provides digital transformation including robotic process automation and the deployment of enterprise cloud applications for global organizations.

Full Study here.