Boundaryless HR: What and how

Daniel Chee and Millie Gracie, from Deloitte’s Human Capital practice, explore what ‘boundaryless HR’ means and how organisations can implement this concept.

The traditional role of HR is undergoing a transformation, driven by the rapidly evolving nature of work. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report From function to discipline: The rise of boundaryless HR, introduces the concept of ‘boundaryless HR’, which emphasises the need for HR to evolve from a siloed function to an integrated discipline embedded across the entire organisation.

This article explores the meaning of boundaryless HR and its benefits. It also provides brief case studies and practical suggestions for implementing this new concept.

The Boundaryless HR Mindset

Boundaryless HR represents a new mindset where every part of the organisation shares responsibility for people expertise, not just HR. It breaks down boundaries between HR and other functions, between HR and workers and managers, between jobs and skills, and between the organisation and external entities.

This concept challenges the traditional boundaries of HR and emphasises integration and collaboration across all levels of an organisation.

Emergence Of Boundaryless HR

The traditional HR function – often siloed and reactive, focusing on administrative tasks such as payroll, recruitment and employee relations – is no longer fit for purpose. Work is evolving, and the business and market environment is rapidly changing. This is characterised by increasing complexity, technological advancements, and the need for agility and adaptability.

HR has an opportunity to build on the success of its role during the COVID-19 pandemic, where HR’s efforts went beyond its traditional boundaries. HR teams were instrumental in ensuring employee safety, sustaining business operations, leveraging digital technologies for new work paradigms, and fostering human sustainability by preserving employment.

As a result, the percentage of executives who are “very confident” in HR’s ability to navigate future changes doubled from 2019 to 2020.

HR needs to build on this and evolve into a boundaryless discipline that is integrated with the overall strategy and objectives of the organisation.

Boundaryless HR In Action

Organisations such as Johnson & Johnson and Google are embracing boundaryless HR by creating cross-functional teams, introducing new metrics and analytics dashboards, and leveraging datadriven decision-making.

Johnson & Johnson, for example, saw an opportunity to break down functional boundaries by creating the HR Decision Science team. The team was tasked with tapping the organisation’s vast data resources to make better workforce-related decisions and improve organisational and people outcomes. It included experts and specialists from across the organisation working together to address challenges in a data-driven way.

Google Cloud managers now use people dashboards provided by HR to share insights on organisational health and performance. In addition, the team plans to embed artificial intelligence in the future to model changes to things like team structure or role changes.

Benefits Of Boundaryless HR

For HR professionals, boundaryless HR enables a more strategic role, evolving with organisational needs. By breaking down silos and fostering collaboration, boundaryless HR enables HR professionals to enhance their strategic role within the organisation, shape organisational culture, develop a more diverse and inclusive workplace, foster innovation and creativity, improve employee experience and engagement, and increase agility and adaptability.

By embracing a boundaryless approach, HR professionals can use their strategic position to drive organisational success.

In addition, the adoption of boundaryless HR can unlock many benefits for organisations. This includes improved organisational agility and responsiveness to change, enhanced employee productivity and performance, increased innovation and creativity, better alignment of HR initiatives with overall business strategy, and an enhanced employer brand.

By integrating HR with overall business objectives, organisations can create a more agile and responsive workforce. This can help them to adapt more quickly to changing market conditions, drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Organisations are still in the early stages of adopting boundaryless HR. However, the shift towards a more integrated and collaborative HR function is well under way.

Accelerating this shift will require HR to step out of its comfort zone. This entails moving away from owning the domain of people expertise to collaborating and co-developing it alongside employees and the broader business community, fostering shared objectives with joint responsibility.

HR will need to actively seek better integration across roles, processes, objectives, teams, metrics, technologies and systems throughout the organisation.

As a starting point, organisations and HR should ask themselves some important questions to uncover their current position.

• How does your HR department work crossfunctionally with other parts of the organisation?

• How have you equipped managers to help them solve people-related issues?

• How are you preparing HR team members to tackle new issues within the HR function and other functions?

• How do you define your workforce to include workers beyond employees? How do you define work in ways including and beyond the job?

• How does HR collaborate with external entities to achieve its goals?

From here, organisations can start transitioning to boundaryless HR by:

• redefining the role of the manager to be a people leader, to embed the people discipline throughout the organisation

• creating new metrics and analytics shared across functional areas to promote accountability

• democratising people practices and data with science-based processes that unlock performance

• creating cross-functional teams or cross-functional ‘integrator’ roles to tackle business problems and people issues

• transforming workers into producers of people practices, not just consumers

• lastly, pursuing collaborations and partnerships with external entities to engage with the broader community, including educational institutions, governments, partners or global collective movements.

Conclusion

Boundaryless HR represents a crucial shift in how organisations approach people management. By breaking down traditional silos and fostering collaboration, organisations can stay competitive and innovative in today's rapidly changing business environment.

ADDRESSING THE RISKS OF BOUNDARYLESS HR

While boundaryless HR offers significant benefits, risks are also associated with its adoption that organisations need to consider. These include the following.

RISKS

• Loss of HR specialisation and expertise within the organisation

• Inconsistent people practices

• People-skills gap

• Resistance to change from within the organisation

• Potential for misalignment with organisational goals and objectives

MITIGATIONS

• Implement appropriate governance structures, ways of working and expectations

• Invest in training and development for HR professionals and people leaders within the organisation, developing strategic capabilities and ways of working

• Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation between the HR function and the business

• Implement technology solutions to facilitate communication and collaboration and enable a transparent and joined-up approach

Dan Chee is a Director in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice. Dan’s expertise lies in leading HR transformation and the implementation of digital solutions that enable organisations to enhance efficiency and drive operational excellence. Dan also has experience in delivering strategic workforce planning initiatives, organisation design projects, and the development of organisational and people strategies.

Millie Gracie is a Manager in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice. Millie holds broad expertise in consulting and in-house HR roles in both the New Zealand private and public sectors, and abroad in the United Kingdom. Millie has diverse experience in change management, organisation design, talent management and employment relations. Millie is passionate about enhancing the value and impact of HR practices within organisations.