Securing quick wins

Bringing your ideas to life

For all the listening and learning you’ll be doing in your first few weeks as an HR leader, it’s only natural that you’ll want to achieve some notable successes too.

At the end of the fabled 90-day period, you’ll want to feel like you’ve made some kind of tangible difference to your new organisation – and you’ll want your superiors to notice the positive change too.

So, as you learn about the business and its current practices, it’s advisable to weigh up where the ‘quick wins’ might lie. Where can you make a significant difference, without too much disruption or meeting with too much resistance?

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Quick wins

Quick wins early in your tenure are key to demonstrating your credibility, and help to buy you the time you need to achieve bigger victories in the future.

Indeed, in research carried out by Corporate Executive Board’s (CEB) Learning and Development Roundtable, it was found that the highest performing new leaders across a wide range of industries all had one thing in common – the achievement of a significant success in those vital early months.

Where to look for your first success

It won’t take long to get a sense of the pain points in your HR department, and in most cases, efficiency and productivity will probably be top of the list.

A quick win could be as simple as identifying and eliminating unproductive meetings, to win back some much-needed time for your team.

You may also be able to introduce new ways of working surprisingly quickly. Modern cloud collaboration tools such as Slack are simple to set up and intuitive to use, while task management tools like Trello will help your teams stay on top of a famously challenging admin workload.

In the longer term, you’ll likely be looking at systems and processes to drive efficiency improvements, but as a starting point, these apps can be invaluable – helping you get a quick win on the board, while showcasing your intention to automate the department further.