I have recently read a lot about Squads and how this methodology has helped several companies to gain agility and improve cross-functional cooperation. None of the examples mentioned the HR department. I’d like to propose a new org design model for HR to improve the connection with the business by envisioning HR organized in Squads. I’m not sure if this model already exists somewhere but I wasn’t able to find any information.

For those who are not familiar with this term, Squad is a small cross-functional, self-organized team, usually with less than eight members, that has enough autonomy and knowledge among its members to deliver a specific product. The team members have end-to-end responsibilities, and they work together towards their long-term mission. On Squads the key driver is autonomy. Autonomy to decide what to build, how to build it and how to work together while building it. However, the Squad needs to remain aligned with the company and product mission, strategy and goals.

Autonomy provides employees with a sense of collective ownership; it motivates people to build better stuff and faster, by allowing decisions to be made locally instead of by managers and/or committees. In order to achieve this autonomy, it must be a multidisciplinary team, with different skills and capabilities represented.  A simple Squad, for example, can be composed of a Product Owner, responsible for understanding user demands, a UX Design, responsible for the user experience and the product interface, and five or six developers, who will turn the user’s needs into reality. They may functionally report to different managers but the main focus is on community rather than hierarchical structures. This methodology has been introduced years ago by Spotify and today, several technology companies, whether large or startups, still use this concept to manage their technical teams.

Why am I thinking that this model could work in HR?

During the last few years, HR realized the need and urgency to reinvent itself to get closer to the business and play a key role in the organization. One of its attempts was the creation of the Business Partner model by D.Ulrich. Many years later, the figure of the Business Partner is still a mystery to several companies that often failed in their attempt to implement it.

By bringing HR closer to business, the intention was to strengthen the relationship between the two in order to translate business and people needs in good HR product and experiences. The reality was that this move often strengthened its operational support role, without effectively contributing to the organization’s strategy. HRBPs were/are often seen as the go-to people for any people related matters and the implementers of processes and projects coming from the CoEs (centers of expertise). We can attribute this failure to different reasons but one thing is sure: pretending that a single person can effectively master such different topics as recruitment, compensation & benefits, performance management, business strategy, people engagement, coaching, analytics, legal and compliance, project management, internal communication and much more, and call this profession HR Business Partner, is very ambitious.

On the other hand, companies that do not have this role often complain about the amount of time they need to spend to find answers to even simple HR questions due to the fact that their different HR functions are not always aligned or responsive. It is common, for example, that Recruitment strategies are not linked to Performance Management strategies, which may not be linked to rewarding strategies etc. In addition to the waste of time, this lack of alignment results in the implementation of projects that are hardly being able to create the desired impact on the employee experience and create confusion for leaders as they need to have several different points of contact within HR to share their feedback and thoughts. This is one of the reasons why I do think that implementing a Squad structure in HR can help creating the desired alignment between the different HR functions and the business.

My idea of Squad in HR would be to split the HRBP role with a small group of people. Instead of having a HR Business Partner that serves the area of Technology, for example, you will have a team of 6 HR professionals who are experts in their fields (like recruitment, learning & org development, comp&ben, employee relations, people analytics, internal communication) that work together in projects that involve all these aspects of the employee experience. This squad can then behave as part of an established tribe within the business area. Thus, this team can fully understand the needs of this specific tribe or business area and can create products, standards, practices and projects that help them achieving their goals and objectives. Representative of the business should be regularly involved in the different phases of each projects and actively contribute to the successful implementation in their respective areas.

It is common that, in a traditional HR structure, the different HR functions are located far not only from the business but from the different HR functions too. In this proposal, the squad needs to be physically close to ensure the rapid exchange of information. For a squad to be successful it is necessary to reduce hierarchy and increase trust in the employees. Only in this way is it possible to build autonomy in the team. The decentralization and/or reduction of organizational lawyers can be perceived as a challenge in many companies where it is still common to see areas of “support” such as HR, Finance and Legal often operating in a hierarchical culture.

In a Squad, the role of the leader is to point out the objective and the problems to be solved, and let the team find the solution in the way that makes more sense to them. In this methodology, you have a matrix management structure, where members report to the “technical” leader of their specialty while dotted line reporting to the leader of Squad. For example, the recruiter will report both to a Recruitment Manager, for “craft” matters, and to the Squad Lead (ex-HRBP), who will be responsible for directing the projects to be delivered to internal customers and ensure alignment within the squad.

In my opinion, this type of structure reduces the chance of HR to create projects disconnected from the needs of their internal customers or create programs that hardly connect to the companies’ objectives. After all, how many of us in HR have not received feedback that we are “too procedural, un-flexible and far from being close to the people needs” or that we are “imposing meaningless projects and programs” to them? It is also common for HR to receive criticism related to the speed of its deliveries. Many leaders point out that their needs are not met within the expected time, and when they are not always meet all the necessary requirements.This is common because, in HR, we are used to the cascade model of project management, a sequential model in which the process is seen as a constant flow forward (like a cascade) through the different phases. In this model, for a new stage of the project to start the other must have been finalized.

These criticisms play a role in the disengagement of HR professionals too. When you delay delivering a project, it means that you put a lot of effort and time into this project, and if it is criticized or no longer makes sense for the company, you may feel demotivated and reluctant to start a new project. From the Squad model will become easier for HR to start using Design Thinking and User Experience tools to validate projects hypotheses and A/B testing, pilot projects, MVPs to test the project in a controlled reality and thus understand their possible problems and correct them way before gaining scalability.

Certainly, the process of implementing Squad in a support area is a big challenge. More than just a new process or org structure introduction, it is a mindset and cultural change in which several factors play a key role, such as having the right people on-board, leadership& company buy-in and sponsorship, investing in people new skills development. However, I strongly believe that the autonomy of a Squad will bring immediate benefits to the company. With a deeper and more integrated business approach, speed in the implementation of projects that cover the full spectrum of the employee experience, reduction of errors and increase in clients usability and satisfaction, I can only anticipate a greater potential for business impact. Last but not least, the deserved recognition of HR as a strategic area for the organization.