EJ Marin is the Director of Solutions Engineering at Nakisa. His role is to see customer challenges from different angles, identify patterns, and engineer solutions for the HR function for HR professionals. He chats with Tom Fox about the changing face of HR in this week’s show.

Organizational Design and Transformation

Tom asks EJ to define organizational design. EJ shares the traditional definition of organizational design, and contrasts this with his take on what it means. “Right now,” he remarks, “organizational design is more about agility [and] resilience, due to COVID and everything that’s happening… Now it’s all about adapting to the next normal: not to the new normal, but to the next things that are coming… It’s all about analyzing the organization and making sure that at the end of the day you’re adapting to the situation as fast as possible.” 

Skills and capabilities that were optional before COVID, EJ points out, are essential to a company’s survival today. “Transformation needs to become a routine,” he argues. “You need to create these capabilities in your organization so you can easily reply, respond and adapt to the new challenges that we have in the marketplace today.” Tom asks if traditional HR departments are set up for that kind of adaptation. They have to adapt quickly, he responds. Their survival depends on being agile. 

EJ outlines the steps of organizational design. They include assessing the organization, creating objectives, collaboration and making changes to the core HR systems. Nakisa helps to streamline the entire process using technology. EJ also explains the importance of HR data quality. “HR data is alive… [but] it’s very easy to get out of sync,” he tells Tom.

Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion is a business asset. Companies that achieve it do better financially and in other areas. EJ shares three steps to help businesses go through a major transformation, such as a merger and acquisition, and keep this valuable asset. 

Resources

Nakisa.com

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