 Thank you for joining us today and welcome to this event. Today we're going to talk about Agile HR and our guest today is Arne Dahlberg, who is a consultant. And I will start to hand over for you to present yourself, Arne. Okay, hello. My name is Arne Dahlberg, and I serve now as an Agile consultant before, which I've been doing now for what is it now, two and a half years. Before I was in various companies, but my main experience within HR is from Coca-Cola, which also see a few of you participants. Hi, Coke team. And I did my service there for 16 years, so I have a few experience there for. Well, HR, you know, all the different things that can happen within people within an organization. How I came across Agile people was that I realized that this about Agile is quite fun, but I didn't know anything about it. And that sort of frustrated me because I realized that there's a lot of things that are good or happening within the organizations and I was not aware what is it. So that's how I started to get in contact with Agile people and I did what is it now for different trainings within Agile people. Agile HR, Agile leadership, Agile fundamentals, people development. And I'm not mentioning it because of the certificates, which is sometimes good to have if you want to move out in different organizations. But it's also good and I'm not hired by Agile people so you can get the experience from someone other community. But what I mean is it's always good to give it in depth because you really, it is a philosophy, it's not only tools and methods, it's about philosophy. And you need to invest a little bit of time, that's what I did at least. Yeah, just a few mentioned on the company's auto compass about stainless steel. Well, you know, ISS about cleaning and service facility, continentalist tires, multi-vindie electronics. And last, Berja Ben Bonadam, our private companies within the private sector. And then right now I have an assignment with the Swedish maritime administration in Swedish sköparsverket that covers boats and ships. And in the maritime environment. So enough about me. Over to you, Ingella. Yes. Do I show the right screen now? Now there's a be you on me on the screen, but I think we need to go to the next slide. So a lot of companies want to change. Because change is happening more rapidly than ever before. And I think that we felt when when Corona came or the pandemic that it did not only change slowly, but it was really a huge change in society and it's escalating all the time. And in other people, we believe that the companies that will be the most successful are the ones that are able to move and learn faster than their competition. And it's really about in the end becoming learning organization. It's to understand your customers. It is to understand your employees and it is also to understand other stakeholders. And doing this, adapting the agile mindset and the methods. Yes, we become flexible and closer and quicker. But another answer to that is also around what I discovered and I guess you all discovered that you as a person, but also your team members, your employees. People are quite people want so different things they want to do mountain climbing the other one day and the next day they can do the work. Just one I can share one of the stories from from one of the companies I'm helping. We were so proud because we had an incentive program with money coming in and we said proudly that it comes off the three years of employment. And I look at the employee in the eyes and I just can see three years. I'm not sure I'm going to live off the three years. So the perspective. At least for for for for some more traditional companies we need to understand that it's things are going fast and three years is it's a lifetime. And it's really to adapt and understand the mindset and not implementing just agile work methods. So what does this mean for HR. We all know that we want to be in HR our main focus is many times to be an attractive employer and to be an attractive employer. We need to have engaged and motivated employees. And people want to be seen for who they are and be treated accordingly not to be seen as an individual. And one view of that is is sometimes HR. We try to transform the initiatives to sort of a package that that fits all. And that's really hard nowadays because people don't want to see us just one brick in the in the whole wall. They want to see Sarah, Mohammed or Lisa or wherever. And it's really the individual much more than just a brick in the in the hole. So to be this attractive employer today you really need to have a great employee experience based on the individual needs. So today you cannot say this is a good career development for your employees because if they have other interests they might want to switch to another profession or doing something totally different. And you need to understand what they want to do and how to do it. And this is about co-creating the employee experience. And this is tricky, especially for the ones of you and us that also experience in the large organization where there are a lot of stakeholders might have an interest in the view of the organization or the picture. But we really need to go in there and realize that people don't they don't really listen to the more official channels they listen to the real ones. So and this we did at Coca Cola the very successful I would say before we knew that this was agile and mindset that was go let them please talk let them please be share their stories on events or Christmas parties. We had like heroes of the other day that they shared their story because it's far more genuine than any company product. So if your HR department are working quite traditional. It's a lot of change that you need to do and it's not that you're going to stop do everything that you have done before but is doing less of these traditional HR skills. So like we used to do develop policies we used to establish working rules and standards, but today we need to be more we need to be able to support flexibility. HR is sometimes seen like they block everything so we need to work with speed and we need to collaborate much more with the rest of the organization. And to understand the needs so we don't. We cannot continue to have this parent view and tell our employee what is good for them or for our managers you need to learn this. It needs to be the other way around. And one way to view this that I learned and I have started to learn is, yeah, you see all the different things on the slide here, but start digging in what you have in front of you. Start with the with the with the with the work that you already are doing and have another thought. Again is. Yes, some of you have done the training so you know what I'm talking about it's the philosophy what kind of. Can we move this in a more agile way can I involve people in doing this work. Why should I put that out on a new recruitment maybe the team can do that. And co created. Can we do something new around it. It's often if you're even even in salary department. And I would say the salary departments are the most best teams to start to do work agile since they know quite well the process. But when we talk about improvement, there are a lot of things we can learn from the industry on continuous improvement, etc, and that we can do. Again, I'm so proud of the service team and payroll team we had to cope that start doing this. Again, before they know knew that they were doing but they had like daily stand-ups in the mornings just to check what is important and what that gave a much more feeling of speed and much more feeling of accountability because we did quite easy 15 minutes every morning. In agile we know it's part of scrum we didn't know that but it worked. Yeah, I think that many working in traditional HR departments they kind of feel that when you work when they have been the most successful is really when they have worked really close to the organization so. They asked you describe it they have been working agile but really having the vocabulary for it. But I think traditionally in HR we have been working with big projects where we have we do everything and then we kind of launch a new performance review process and new recruiting process or whatever. And in agile organization you work small you start to experiment you try and you see that it doesn't always work to have this one size fits all because the needs in one department might be totally different in others so you need to have small steady high performing teams that really understand the organization. And that is a little bit what you described there. So you need to involve your employees. You need to make sure that you can help them to be the best and to be when they are the best they ultimately become these high performers. And one question that you can either well there are several questions here on the on the on the slide. But one experience I had with one team that was actually about to be downsized. Sometimes I think there's sometimes in the head look we often describe companies moving up organizations really grow but there are sometimes quite often people organizations moving down. And and I don't know about you but sometimes HR people tend to get very excited in these kind of sessions and you really need to of course need to change a bit of you there and start to look individuals because there are money involved the careers what they're going to do kids family etc. So what and it's I'm not going to tell how do that successful because it's always every situation is unique but I remember what one team that they were quite skilled serving with navigation screens in the far side of the country and we were about to move that office so and people will not commute so long so so so they will have to leave. However, when we start to ask questions and post questions. What strengths you have, and we really showed what kind of competencies the team had together. I could almost feel that the proudness rise in that room so so agile is not only about growing up agile is really something you can use when when you have a bit tricky situations when companies are moving down. And we have the question you need to ask yourself is your HR practice really focused on people or on processes and we have given a few examples to illustrate that one size does not fit all at all. And here you can see what I discovered here about different people you have in your team or in the organization. Yes, it might say specialist purchaser or educated engineer here, but they're also about a lot of spare time activities that might share. It's really about something else in the life that is important. And if you start to address those kind of feelings in the teamwork in the project. You get a lot of things happening. And then the traditional roles might be that the controller will buy. Sorry if your financial background is controlling is the most joyful and eventful guy at the HR person might be shy and you never know so so don't prejudice. Sorry if I did start to use the individual skills in in the team that you have. And one way to see it is to really map your employee journey. And I think I think a lot of HR departments really have started to look at different groups like you have newly educated you have professionals and you have high skilled expertise. So you know that when you talk to these different target groups you need to have different messages. So I think we HR is quite good when it comes to branding and in the recruitment face. You do understand there are different audiences with different goals and so on but maybe you need to do this further so you need to establish. Look at your different journey steps of your employee. Employee journey so it's attracting recruiting. Onboarding engage develop performing reward and also don't forget how you exit and I think many HR departments they do understand this different steps in the journeys. But you also need to understand what what are the goals and needs of my audience what are the touch point. What what do we do in the organization what are the barriers and what are the enablers and and and when you start to work with this. You get much more or a better understanding of the organization and the different people and the different departments. And again, I'm not going to not meaning to repeat what Ingela saying but again try to see what kind of forums can you can we create what kind of meetings can we create out of this to sit on your own and work out the perfect policy is not really going to work. Of course we should understand that people also have their their other things to do. However, use volunteering put up an ad and say hey I'm going to do a new scheme of performance management can someone want to join. Sometimes we at least in traditional companies are quite scared of doing that but why it could be great ideas coming up from from anybody so so let's go out and try. Yeah, and you don't need to do all steps you can do one step at a time. So, and now we're kind of moving into what we're really going to talk about today we just first wanted to give you a background in agile HR. And the journey of your journey often starts with you attending a training some height and you get new knowledge you get inspirations, you want to go to your office and then you discover that not everyone is on the same table as you or the same page. And then you start thinking. Where do I start. How can I be successful with this and the question then is really how hard can it be. And then you have the answer to that. I don't have the answer to that, but I can at least see what I did and I hopefully England that we can have and also can have a bit of a conversation later on with the full team attending today. So, but I will share a few examples from my world and again, this is my experience and actually I'm going to share a bit of something that didn't really work well, at least when I listen to some kind of these kind of seminars, everything is so perfect and shiny and everybody knows no, it's not so I don't, but I will also share a few ups in in in from my time. I just want to show one example of the reality I've met during the these two and a half years. This is an icebreaker in sunset and I was so happy to meet a icebreaker in reality. Normally we use icebreakers in meetings to add to ease up the thing. This is a real one and it's one of my Swedish maritime organization and it can actually break 1.8 meters of ice up in the Baltic Sea or actually even up in the Arctic. But again, the team here is great and the team also have their challenges and these kind of things so it's people, even with an icebreaker need some kind of support. Okay, just wanted to share a bit of that. I'm very proud. Okay, this is one example when I didn't really go well. This team, we had five great HR professionals and they were handling an important initiative for the organization so the attention was there, absolutely. And this was about a sort of downsizing project I can. So people, it's not the same as I talked before this was quite bigger involved 160 employees that were sadly needed to leave or change. But it needed to be really planned well so we organized our work in three week sprints. So, instead of having the full project PPS planning I just, that was my role as an Agile coach to say well, great that you have done this long time project planning. But let's just focus what are you going to do in the upcoming three weeks. I wouldn't say it went perfect from beginning, sometimes people in this kind of situation started to talk about the long term goals so my role was to. Okay, great but what what's actually happened coming this week this Monday, next Monday. And we use the mural, if you haven't used moral please do it it's great because this was during the cobit time so we couldn't really meet physical. And we had review every third week with our managers coming in and so so everything was going great I was so happy I say hey I learned the new tools it's working. But then suddenly, I remember during a review. Everything started to crash. I heard worry. I heard anxiety I heard fear from this great kind of people as a what is happening and I was. They will start worrying and I said what what is this. So, I tried to say the meeting, the way I thought could be gone to say hey what is happening. I'm going to address it in like, yeah, you know, okay this is a problem let's put it up on the on the list here and who can start thinking of it so we ended the meeting in some kind of ordered way. But I kept on thinking what happened really so. That's why really we have this seminar today because I called a job people. Hey, be a Maria was answered at that phone time and said what happened. So, we don't know exactly. But what I think is what I did wrong was in my ambition to do a lot of things during the review review of the three weeks I also started to ask about retrospective questions like how did the team work. How was it in the groups because I thought it would be good for the managers to hear. Because my view was that we had a good session was to hear that. And then I got really about. No, no, no, you can never mix managers and employees in a retrospective it's not going to work because this was in a quite large organization. The managers are involved, the people will start to think about their careers people will start to sort of make sure that they don't do anything wrong. So this, you can only while that was the idea at least from the theory, you can only do a great retrospective in a safe room and safe is is certainly when you leave the hierarchy out. If you have a hierarchy in the company you cannot really rule it out so so you can only do retrospective with the team, not with a full stakeholder meeting, which of course is. If you read the scrum thoroughly, you would have discovered that for any. So that was a learning for me next session went far better because I focused it on the team, etc. This was another example and now it's going to went a little bit better. So this organization had grown. It was a public company government body but still it had grown due to two new tasks that the government and put on it. So they had grown from 20 to 100 employees. However, the managers in the in the organization were more or less the same. And they agreed on a change journey and so because we all realize that we need to change the organization now and we are growing. So what we did it was established a platform five years from now we're over now what have we done and to establish that platform sorry I imposed that let's do a sprint let's do it. We're having every follow up, almost daily 15 minutes to see that we're actually moving I know that you're busy, and they agreed on that and they had. It was quite fun for them I realized that to just call in and say what they have done and then we put it up on a Kanban board. Sorry if you thought if you all haven't really these terminology but it's just to to Google or join any courses. And it's a great way to sort of sort the ideas and then start to pick what are you actually moving forward. But the good thing in there is I wanted to share is sometimes I realized okay this was only managers shall we now involve employees in doing this change which by the philosophy should be natural. No, the managers, they are so engaged to let them continue a little bit more before we start to move in involved because they they they really need to feel that they had this change. So, you need to, I at least find that balance a bit tricky but I wanted to say no let's wait a bit before we do that because they are not really agreed on where we're going. And it went really well and it's it is going well this organizational change and now we're actually moving into two teams to start to discuss the same topic. And another example. As an agile coach you discovered I discovered that it's not always people questions that people ask to can you help us with. This was another company and they are doing selling high technological components for automation. And they were really great about selling their components that it's has been going so well and the business going well but now they were looking out to move from selling things to to a more project oriented approach to be more consultant to their customers. And the question was, can you help us move in this organizational change. Could we move from selling to supporting selling and supporting products to helping customers with their problems was actually the question. And I don't know anything about the products and what they actually are doing I can understand that the technical components are important. They are talking about that and they're so happy, but when they but the change in moving from let's say a more reactive, if my if I might say so selling to a more proactive. I definitely think that I as an agile could help agile coach could help them moving that. So we're now taking on board two new products and we are working in sprints we have my on that now for four sprints. And the whole company so involved in the new future and they're not at all discussing can we really work in project and be more consultant it's more like, Ah, how can we help that customer the problems. So, still, I don't know exactly what the components do, but I definitely understand the change that they are going through and their employees and the teams are going through. So yes, don't be afraid of joining doing things that might not be traditional HR this might be a more selling coach but it works so well. And that was a little bit our main message today that we don't need always to make things very complicated so even if us and on is independent consultant who works on different tasks. You can still you can still start working agile and you can start in the small. Doing small tasks into larger projects. I see that we have some people online who I think working agile HR departments. Is there anyone who would like to add something. We start working agile. We was thinking that we would start to do little that we could work in groups in breakout rooms. We were thinking about that you if you work in a company and you were going to implement agile in your HR department. Where would you start. And I don't know. It would be great if we could have some feedback from the audience if you would like to participate or if you just want us to ask questions. Yeah. Okay, anyone has any questions to honor. First enable my cam so I can see you. The question I could have on the fly on is that for me I've been working in HR HR is huge. Depending on the size of the company and I think you have to take that into consideration before you start with the implementation of agile. The benefits I can share from this part is that agile is so. familiar by so many. So it's not difficult to implement in HR as well. I've done it so many years for software and for them it's of course today, but agile has reached HR and is popular there among those people as well. That's my take on it. Do you agree on it. I definitely would agree. I have never come across any HR team that is not interested in the future what is moving so that gel was definitely on on on the map for for many years but I was. I must just sharing that I sort of read about it but I never really took my time to do this to get into deep what it was before now and that I can only feel sorry for that but however I'm really enjoying it and I agree with you. The HR team are normally into the future but I can also feel that they sometimes, or we if I say so, are a bit struggling because yeah my it if you look at a larger organization that that is not have done the whole journey. You might hear the same thing from the IT team you might hear some, maybe the CEO or the head of the organization might say, but not the full organization and. What I mean is you can always start in your own, at least and then suddenly you was the word will be spread and hey what are you doing guys it seems like you're doing something fun can we join sales team normally they will jump on anything that you propose because they, they will love this. The idea from implementing agile in HR was that start asking people what they need, instead of thinking yourself of what they need to ask them. That is really the major change from in traditional HR department because I think it was Lucy Williams from disruptive HR who started where I saw it first but she says that you have this parental view. I kind of think this is good for the employees, this is good for the managers to learn, and that is something I really think they need to think differently on. Any other or in the audience. Who has any questions I would like to add something. Hi, hi, this is one coach. Hi. So I had a couple of points to discuss the second one being more like a question. The first thing is to implement agile HR. My thought process was that it would be a good start to actually have the head of HR kind of be part of the agile center of excellence perhaps. I would like to know our needs thoughts on that. And the second question is more around something that caught my attention where you said value stream HR and made a lot of sense. So, and coming from the thought process of the value stream mapping so if we do identify two or three value streams to start off or kick off the organizational transformation, you know, and, and then we start forming teams around them. So how do you see the structure of the HR team in that case when we say along the value stream. Do we have something similar in your mind, you know the similar hierarchical structure in the HRs, because they're aligned along the along the value stream so any thoughts on that would be helpful. Thank you punch a great question sort of thinking. What what I came across is. Yes, of course, the HR leader or director you need if that's is your boss you need to sort of discuss it and the problem at least I have faced is that sometimes you might be agree with your your boss but then you're part of a large organization that is international and let's and I can also understand that sometimes they have just moved from old HR to a more transactional HR repeat with different, you know that all the transaction HR and then suddenly you start to say hey yeah but guys this is really not really wrong you need to move into more agile. You need to understand that changes also taking time in larger organizations so so. Yes, I would agree to line up with your your your leader and but don't wait for the rest organization that's more my message and and that's what I've done in some of the organization just okay let's move into this T. And then you can also even if you're even larger than that you can start to say okay about your question or thinking about value stream. Yeah, I mean if you want to do start with sales why not, or start with logistics or whatever. Normally, you have a great HR partners there that that wants to and I would I would go for for more volunteering. Who wants to who wants to go and use the the first, what do you call it the first 20% that really want to change instead of you try to to move the last month. I don't know that this, but that's my comments more when you posted the questions like that. Yeah, thank you very much that does give me more of a perspective that shouldn't just we shouldn't just wait for a top down thing to happen. incremental transformation can also start at the same time from anywhere and that's what you were referring to as the first part of. Thank you. Thank you. But I also think it's very important that the age of understands the value streams of their processes and they are not used working that way. And, and, you know, if you're going to do a recruitment for department you can start working agile and really close to the organization in that department without all HR going agile. Yeah. Any other questions or reflections from the audience. I don't know if you still are there but I know that you work quite agile if you would like to add something you are welcome. I think what you discuss is kind of agile HR for larger organizations. We are a small organization. You know, we are 65 people. And we didn't start with working agile but I think we figured out along the way that we do work agile. We are focuses focused on the individuals. I work in consultancy. They are highly attractive in these days. Hard to get. And we know that we have to find out what really attract the different competencies and consultants. And that one size does not fit all. Yeah, yeah. It's a small organization but I really liked the way I think I was attending one of the meetups but I really liked the way you described how you see the individuals in your organization. Yes, but we also make them, you know, responsible for how they would like to be, for example, followed up in how to develop their competencies or in other kind of skills or different assignments. They have to help us be a good leaders or an organization for them as well. They are also part of HR. I have the title, but we all work in HR. I'm getting so curious. How long have you been working with that company? I've been there for seven years. Oh, so you have seen really this. Yes. And it was really exciting for me to start there because my prior position was an HR director in a telecom company. And I used to get all the, you know, troubles from the different leaders who wanted me to solve their problems with their employees or employees who wants to get rid of their manager. And you know, that's kind of different way to work, even though I could solve some of those issues. It's not like they are applauding you when you enter the room. And then I came to Miles and I see that, you know, I work with people that actually wants help. And they come because they have addition or a goal, something they want to accomplish, which is kind of different, of course. It's more fun to work with people who wants to go somewhere instead of telling them that you have to go this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No choice. We are very serious about, you know, telling them our expectations during the recruitment process as well. And just let me, when you describe the sonic I realized that I had an assignment with with the auto company that is doing stainless steel had been for 300 years in this mill with you know traditional unions and everything. But yeah, you I could really feel the same thing when you move into teams and the machines that they were almost individuals themselves and our team members that really could know how to sort of speak with the machines and handle them and develop them. And I realized these guys don't girls don't need to be told they they are our consultants in house. So I can see the similar things. And just imagine that some of our tools were made for workers that were not. Yeah, more or less drinking all the time I just realized this is not going to work we need to change which they are doing. We, I think we realize that people get really good at what they are interested in or engaged in so we don't we don't decide where they need to develop. They decide where they would like to go and we support that in every way we can. Great thanks. Yes, thank you. Right, anyone else have something they would like to add I see people start to drop off. The lost comment from someone. Then I say thank you to honor who joined us for just sharing your experience is great. And we'll probably see you around again maybe in another set up in a new topic. So thanks everyone for today. And we will come back next month with a new stories from reality. Thank you. Thank you.