In our recent webinar, The Changing Frontier of HR, presenters Aaron Fisher and Amna Aslam from the Department of Home Affairs talked about how they successfully reimagined the role of HR to meet the people and business needs for the Department of Home Affairs.
The webinar focuses on the challenges HR faced when the immigrations and customs functions of government merged to become the Department of Home Affairs back in 2015. The HR functions of those two formerly separate agencies needed to follow suit and merge too, giving rise to an opportunity to develop a new model that could better deliver on the needs and expectations of business.
Bringing two separate departments together, maintaining HR services to more than 14,000 staff spread across Australia and overseas, and developing a HR service offer that was fit for purpose was challenging – to say the least. Some of the first things on the agenda for Fisher and Aslam were: gathering an understanding of cultural issues, developing strategies to break down the silos and, most importantly, developing HR capabilities in the executive cohort.
Their aim was to make HR an integral part of the business by educating the executive level staff in matters of recruitment, retention strategies, and succession and workforce planning. Doing that provided for closer, clearer connections between leaders and staff, and it also allowed a space where HR could focus on the long-term, bigger picture and play a much more strategic role in the organisation.
The experience at the Department of Home Affairs demonstrates the strategic value HR can bring to an organisation and the importance of HR being an integral part of every executive group. This webinar showcases just one example of how we are beginning to see the benefits of the changing frontier of HR. It’s definitely worth a listen.