HR creaks under today’s complexity: Time for a more humane operating model
Written by: Nienke Sinnaeve, Community Manager at Rvdb, July 2025
The classic HR model is creaking in a world where change is constant. What once worked in processes, systems and rules and guidelines now frustrates growth, engagement and meaning. Because at a time when people crave autonomy and meaning, the old model has become a bottleneck. McKinsey hit the nail on the head in a recent article: it is time for an operating model that is not about control, but about experience. HX, in other words.
Why HX?
We are at a crossroads. The traditional HR model is built for stability, efficiency and manageability. Think fixed job descriptions, annual appraisal cycles, centrally driven development programs and a tightly defined employee journey. In a world where change is the norm, that approach is proving not agile enough.
The shortcomings are felt at multiple levels:
- Structure: rigid job roles no longer match the dynamics of work. Skills age at lightning speed, but the system barely catches that movement.
- Process orientation: HR often continues to revolve around rules, formats and systems, while employees yearn for customization and human contact.
- Assessment and reward: annual interviews do not do justice to continuous development. Bonuses and targets only partially motivate, and can even undermine autonomy and cooperation.
- Perception: many HR processes are perceived as “corporate”: correct, but detached. It lacks emotional resonance.
According to McKinsey, only 1 in 5 employees experience HR as effective. That’s not a sneer, but a wake-up call! The classic model squeaks and creaks under today’s complexity. The time is ripe for something fundamentally different.
HX provides that foundation. Where classical HR often assumes standardization, HX assumes differentiation. Each person is different and so each person also requires something different: in management, in development, in reward, in commitment. Not because we are “difficult,” but because we are relational beings. With unique drives, dreams, needs and lives outside the context of work.
The promise of a new model
In their article, McKinsey describes an operating model founded on three forces: more personal, more tech, more human. A model where customization is not the exception, but the norm. Where technology enables customized experiences, rewards and development, tailored to role, culture and individual preferences. And where automation takes over routine jobs, giving managers more time for empathy, mentoring and coaching. Technology should not be seen as a substitute, but as a catalyst for human experience and connection.
They propose restructuring the HR function around a “strategic triumvirate,” made up of three strategic roles:
- People strategists – connect organizational development to individual growth;
- People scientists – translate data into human insight;
- People technologists – build systems that allow for experience.
They are not functions in addition to HR, together they form an alternative to HR. With the human experience as the organizing principle.
HX as a guide to organizing around experience
What McKinsey articulates here is, in fact, a call for HX. For they outline a future in which organizations are more flexible, more data-driven and focused on human interactions. That starts with a different view of people: no longer seeing the employee as a production factor, but as a co-shaper of sustainable work. And that also requires different systems.
After all, what does an organization look like that is not about structure, control or functions, but about experience, meaning and development? According to McKinsey, the operating model is fundamentally shifting. Not just in what we do, but in how we organize it. Instead of static organizational charts, dynamic networks are emerging in which technology, data and human drivers are converging. McKinsey identifies five design principles that enable this transformation, which one by one resonate with our HX thinking:
1. From Job Titles to Talent Marketplaces
Instead of fixed roles and departments, an internal ecosystem is emerging in which employees are matched with work based on their skills, interests, and ambitions. This allows people to develop and contribute where they can add the most value at any given moment. HX facilitates this by systematically engaging in conversations about motivations and opportunities.
2. Workforce platforms vs. traditional structures
Organizations are moving toward more platform-like structures in which people or teams can flexibly scale up or be integrated. Employees remain connected to a “home base” but are “assigned” to temporary projects that require their skills. HX recognizes that people don’t fit into fixed categories and provides space for “fluid” roles, temporary teams, and personal growth.
3. AI Drivers: Peer Feedback, Digital Co-Pilots, and AI Coaching
In this new model, technology supports people, not the other way around. From personalized onboarding to real-time feedback and digital learning coaches, AI makes it possible to deliver personalized solutions at scale. Managers are freed from administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on human interaction. For HX, this means leveraging technological progress to actually enhance the human touch.
4. Organizational Health as a Real-Time Metric
Data and analytics make it possible to continuously monitor how people are feeling, where tensions arise, and where there is room for growth. No annual employee satisfaction survey, but a dynamic system that tracks the organization as a social organism. HX places people—not processes—at the center of that feedback loop.
5. New Leadership: Network-Driven Teams
McKinsey describes a future in which leadership shifts from a “single leader” model to network teams that collectively focus on value creation, agility, and inclusion. Instead of command and control, the focus is on facilitating, connecting, and building trust—a more coaching-oriented and relationship-based approach. HX calls for exactly that: leaders who take humanity seriously, create space for co-creation, foster connection, and prioritize psychological safety.
And now?
The path from HR to HX is not a quick fix. It is a strategic and moral project. But the McKinsey model shows: it can be done. There are organizations making this shift, and it is paying off. According to their analysis, people-centered companies are as much as four times more likely to perform above average.
Nor is the shift from HR to HX a blueprint that you just roll out. It is a step-by-step process of looking differently, listening differently and setting up differently.
The five principles outlined by McKinsey offer direction. But real movement only occurs when we ask ourselves: what does this mean for ón our context? What does it require of our systems, culture and technology – and most importantly, ourselves?
For HR professionals, this may mean repositioning: less as a manager of processes, more as a shaper of experiences. For leaders, it requires letting go of control and embracing co-creation. And for organizations as a whole: the courage to redesign work. Because those who see people as creative, relational and meaningful beings organize not in structures and silos, but in connection and experience.
HX provides the compass for this. A way of looking at things that helps to have the right conversation. About what people need to thrive. About how technology can support this. And about how we can build organizations that not only work for people, but also with people.
So: how people-oriented is your operating model really?
Do you dare to redesign based on experience, rather than efficiency? Are you willing to use technology as an ally of humanity? And do you see leadership as something that may be shared and felt?
In conclusion
It’s time to say goodbye to the old way of thinking in HR. From standard to unique. From process to experience. From resources to people.
Or as McKinsey puts it: more personal, more tech, more human.
Or as we put it: Bye-bye Human Resources, Hello Human Experience.