Inspirational figure of the week - Hanna Grönberg

‍

Hanna, would you like to share some tips with our leaders out there who are juggling all the responsibilities, changes, and their leadership role?

In my job, I have worked closely with managers who have just taken on the team leader role and managers who have long experience in leading teams and organizations. I have coached and supported managers in various aspects of the leadership role and been a safe point of contact and sounding board when things get rough.

Leaders I have spoken with have sometimes felt overwhelmed by all the different leadership theories and information that exists around how a leader should act, which paints the leadership role as an enormous task. In addition, finding time to lead the team when the workload is high and changes turn the planning upside down.

Tips for you as a leader, whether you are at the beginning of your career or have a long experience behind you. I believe that you as a leader should focus on being present for your team. It may sound simple but can be surprisingly difficult when you have a calendar that is jam-packed, a long to-do list, and several people you have made a mental note to get back to.

Presence in actively listening to what your team members say and what their needs are, mental presence when you chat on Teams before the meeting starts, and actually taking the time for a conversation when someone in the group pings you and wants a short check-in.

It will make it easier for you to build trust, set the right expectations, and get your team to work towards your set goals.

‍

What do you think about AI in HR?

Yes, how exciting! I think we are there now. The talk of the town is definitely AI right now, and new players are popping up all the time who have found smart ways to take advantage of AI.

My team tried using different AI services in our daily work to see how we could use smart features to simplify or save time.

It was a very fun team experience to try, evaluate, collaborate, and find new areas to take advantage of AI together.

For us, the biggest benefit was the time savings, hand in hand with skipping the stage of "writer's block" that sometimes occurs when you are going to design a job advertisement, write a policy, or information letter.

The reflection of trying AI operationally within HR was that AI is a perfect assistant for producing first drafts, quickly matching statistical codes against our positions, or coming up with tips for the planned after work. However, excellent colleagues were still needed to continue working with the material that AI delivers, ensure that the information is correct, and add their personal touch to make the material feel like their own.

Last tip for managers who are curious about trying new technology in their organization?

Dare to try!

In my experience, there are often processes that are manual or time-consuming. Take some time to research if there is a technical solution that can help you with your bottleneck.

In my roles where I have built HR departments from the ground up, the starting point has been to build a simple and digital employee experience. Whether it's about innovative and easy-to-use employee surveys, gathering employee reviews in one place, creating a professional recruitment experience from a candidate perspective, or designing and building a training portal and associated training. Dare to test and dare to scrap if it doesn't work as intended.

‍