The Ambidextrous Advantage of HR Leadership
One of the greatest challenges facing HR leaders in Nigeria today is that we are expected to hold two seemingly opposite realities at the same time.
We must protect the organisation while empowering people.
We must control costs while investing in talent.
We must enforce policy while demonstrating empathy.
We must focus on today’s operational realities while preparing the organisation for tomorrow.
This is the Ambidextrous nature.
An ambidextrous HR leader has the ability to exploit what currently works while exploring what the organisation will need next.
In the Nigerian context, this has become more important than ever.
With inflation, talent migration, changing employee expectations, skills shortages, regulatory changes, hybrid work, AI and increasing pressure on organisational costs, HR can no longer operate primarily as an administrative function.
HR must become both a people function and a business function.
What does this look like?
- Be employee-centric and business-conscious: Understand what employees need, but also understand what the business can sustainably afford. Employee experience without business sustainability is not a strategy.
- Protect culture and challenge culture: HR must preserve the values that make an organisation strong while challenging practices that have become outdated, inefficient or harmful. Sometimes, HR’s job is not to protect the culture, it is to evolve it.
- Drive efficiency AND create capacity: The real opportunity is to eliminate low-value work and create capacity for higher-value contribution.
- Manage today’s workforce and build tomorrow’s workforce: Recruitment fills today’s vacancies; workforce planning prepares for tomorrow’s capabilities.
- Be the voice of employees and the voice of the business: HR should not become management’s mouthpiece. Neither should HR become an employee advocacy group disconnected from organisational realities. The strategic position is in the middle: Understand both sides. Challenge both sides. Align both sides.
We need HR leaders who can move between:
People and Performance
Empathy and Accountability
Cost and Investment
Compliance and Innovation
Operations and Strategy
Today and Tomorrow
The future of HR leadership in Nigeria will not belong simply to those who are excellent at managing people.
It will belong to those who can connect people, performance, systems, risk and business outcomes.
Because ultimately, HR leadership is not about choosing between people and business.
It is about building an organisation where people make the business stronger and the business creates an environment where people can thrive.
Excerpts from the just concluded HRBL Retreat
Tags :
Future of Work,HR Leadership,HR Strategy,Human Resources,Leadership,People and Culture,Strategic HR,Talent Management
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