How to Align HR and Operations for Stronger Business Success
Key Takeaways
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Alignment between HR and Ops eliminates silos, driving smarter decisions and stronger business outcomes.
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Collaboration boosts employee engagement and retention, creating a more motivated, high-performing workforce.
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Modernized workforce technology connects HR and Ops by simplifying processes, ensuring compliance, and making data-driven decisions.
Human resources (HR) and operations (Ops) are vital complementary functions within an organization, with each department playing an essential role in creating a positive workplace environment. HR focuses on managing and developing the workforce. Its goal is to build and maintain a motivated, skilled, and engaged team while also managing employee relations. Operations centers on the running of day-to-day functions. It oversees the processes, systems, and resources needed for a company to operate efficiently and meet its business goals.
To create a productive environment with efficient processes and motivated and engaged employees, these departments must work together with the strategic objectives of the organization top of mind.
Focusing on the power of “we”
When HR and operations leaders understand each other’s core goals, they can better appreciate differing priorities and perspectives. That understanding creates space to find common ground, align on shared objectives, and ultimately get on the same page.
When HR and Ops work together, they enable smarter strategic decisions, improve efficiency, and foster a high-performance culture — all critical to organizational success. But when these departments operate in silos, the result is often conflicting priorities, inefficient resource use, miscommunication, low employee morale, and missed business opportunities.
In a sector defined by disruption, success hinges on HR and Operations leaders aligning with purpose. This isn’t just a theoretical principle — it’s a performance imperative.
Logistics Industry Principal at UKG
7 immediate benefits of unifying HR and operations
Let’s look at some of the real-world benefits that result when HR and Ops unite to allow HR initiatives and operations-focused business processes to be mutually supported. A unified approach fosters better collaboration between HR and Ops, breaks down departmental barriers, and encourages a more holistic approach to managing the workforce. This leads to:
1. Optimized workflows
Working together, HR and Ops can identify workflow bottlenecks and develop solutions that can simplify processes and increase productivity.
2. Smarter resource allocation
By understanding operational needs, HR can optimize staffing, training, and resource allocation and ensure the right people are in the right place at the right time.
3. Improved recruitment and onboarding
With real-world feedback from Ops on production needs, HR can tailor recruitment strategies to meet them. For example, HR can develop training and upskilling programs to proactively close skills gaps rather than reactively hiring to fill them. But when new hires are necessary, HR can work with Ops to develop effective onboarding processes that integrate new hires into the workflow quickly.
4. Increased employee engagement and retention
A collaboration between HR and Ops work to improve employee wellbeing and development can significantly boost engagement. Engaged employees are more productive, have lower rates of absenteeism, and are less likely to leave.
5. Improved communication and feedback
Open communication channels between HR and Ops help ensure employee feedback is heard and addressed. This fosters a culture of trust and continuous improvement.
6. Data-driven decision making
By sharing data and insights, HR and Ops can make more informed decisions about workforce planning, resource allocation, and employee development.
7. Strategic business goal achievement
By developing HR strategies that support operational needs and business objectives, HR can help ensure that the workforce is aligned with the company's strategic goals.
The role of technology in creating alignment
Technology is a critical bridge between HR and Ops, replacing manual processes with integrated digital solutions that drive efficiency, improve data-sharing, and enable more strategic, aligned decision-making.
Technology-driven workforce management creates a more agile and data-driven organization where HR and Ops can work in sync to optimize productivity and achieve overlapping business objectives. Technology helps:
Improve the hiring process
Labor shortages and inefficient hiring practices are why organizations are now focusing on automating and streamlining the recruiting and onboarding processes. HR and Ops leaders are turning to workforce management solutions that incorporate AI as a helpful tool.
Increase retention
Retention challenges put pressure on HR and operations leaders to create an environment where employees want to stay. Modern workforce technology simplifies processes, balances workloads, and delivers insights that help prevent employee burnout and lower turnover.
Address evolving compliance requirements
The cost of keeping up with shifting regulatory and compliance demands has risen steadily in recent years. A strategic, collaborative partnership between HR and operations is now needed to effectively navigate these evolving requirements. Automating the tracking and reporting of compliance requirements is a strategy more organizations are using to mitigate risk and avoid costly penalties.
Optimize staffing levels to meet demand fluctuations
Ops and HR leaders recognize the need to make optimized staffing levels a top priority because more efficient scheduling results in lower costs and less turnover. Deploying shift optimization and real-time planning tools ensure overstaffing and understaffing issues are minimized.
Industry case study: Labor and distribution
A recent UKG survey of more than 250 HR and Ops leaders in the labor and distribution industry at enterprise organizations showed that they agree on many of the factors driving increased costs and challenges. However, the survey also showed there is often misalignment on how to prioritize strategies to address those factors.
The survey clarified areas of alignment and nonalignment between HR and Ops leaders:
Aligned: | Not aligned: |
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Let’s take a closer look at how misalignment plays out by focusing on labor costs, compliance risk, and technology use. According to the UKG survey, HR and Ops agree that the biggest impacts on business performance in the coming year will be rising labor costs, the increased cost of goods due to inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty. However, drilling down into the survey details reveals that Ops leaders are more focused on controllables such as labor costs, scheduling, and turnover, while HR leaders are focused on external factors such as inflation and compliance.
As for compliance risk, the survey reveals that approximately 83% of large organizations had a 6%–30% increase in compliance-related costs in the past year. And while 25% of HR leaders cite compliance risks as a major concern, only 16% of Ops leaders agree.
There is also misalignment on the use of technology to automate workforce management. In the logistics and distribution industry, automation optimizes the workforce in five key ways: employee self-service tools, personalized career development, automated onboarding and training, AI-led workforce planning, and AI-guided performance and engagement insights. However, Ops leaders tend to view workforce automation as having a greater impact on the business than HR leaders do. And it’s this misalignment that could keep an organization from finding greater success through technology.
In summary: Collaboration makes the difference
The most successful organizations today are aligning HR and Ops departments to be more collaborative and work together as one. Investing in the right workforce technology further strengthens this collaboration, driving efficiency and impact across both functions. The UKG® workforce intelligence platform delivers AI-guided HR, payroll, and workforce management tools that can empower your people and business and create true alignment. Learn how UKG can help.
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