Why Traditional HR Is No Longer Enough and How a Holistic Approach Returns Real Value to Companies

Dec 3, 2025 6 min reading

A few years ago, when the first major articles about intergenerational conflict—now in full swing—began to appear, I shared my conviction that traditional “pigeonholing” in HR was losing its relevance. Simply put, the way HR approaches its role requires far greater flexibility and adaptability.

I faced significant pushback at the time, including comments like, “But that’s simply not how it’s done, colleague.” To be clear: I didn’t mean that specialized HR roles are inherently wrong. I meant that dividing roles is insufficient if those roles lack connection, context, and a shared strategy.

The Problem with Fragmentation (And What Actually Works)

Breaking HR down into specialized roles helps manage process complexity—it provides expertise and ensures quality control in specific areas. The problem arises when this turns into a system of isolated silos. This leads to a loss of the “big picture” and a disconnection from the core business.

HR in organizations shouldn’t primarily be about resolving tickets and processing administrative agendas—especially in the context of AI, which will soon handle that workload. The true role of HR, which often gets lost in this fragmentation, is the strategic alignment of employees’ physical, mental, social, and financial well-being with the company’s goals.

Let’s Look at the Reality:

Recruiters focus on hiring and work with managers on job descriptions, but often lack deep insight into long-term performance, team dynamics, or a manager’s leadership style. The result? New hires who look great on paper but fail to fit the team culturally.
L&D Specialists design development activities, but often without a direct link to company goals or the team’s daily reality. Training sessions end up as “mandatory box-ticking” exercises with no real potential for growth.
HR Operations handles payroll, contracts, and processes. While key to smooth running, without broader context, this leads to bureaucracy that stifles innovation rather than supporting it.
HR Business Partners (HRBPs) should be strategic advisors to managers, analyzing data and connecting people with the business. They should help give meaning to individual work. In reality, they often get bogged down in operations—firefighting conflicts, conducting exit interviews, and letting administration eat up 60-80% of their time. Or, instead of business partnering, they are just doing recruitment.

Each role does its part well, but without a connection to the business, they are only treating symptoms. Take high turnover, for example. Instead of joining forces to find the root cause in culture, leadership, or processes, we just hire new people. People who will likely leave in the near future, causing the scenario to repeat itself.

The Holistic Approach: Not Esoteric, But a Connected System

Holistic HR means viewing the individual, the team, and the company as an interconnected system. An employee isn’t just “headcount”—they are an investment with potential, a trajectory for growth, and a measurable impact.

It is a highly analytical approach that connects:

Potential: An individual’s competencies, skills, and attitudes.
Growth: The company environment, leadership, and strategy that enable development.
Impact: Concrete results, performance, and contribution to the firm.

Consequently, a holistic approach:

Analyzes what a person can do (competence) and how that affects results (performance).
Connects this to company goals—where we are going and how people help us get there.
Accounts for the environment: Culture, team dynamics, and growth support.

The result for HR is that it doesn’t just set up processes; it contributes directly to the company’s success. Instead of managing a catalog of benefits, it focuses on what truly engages employees and drives productivity. And that is very difficult to achieve with separated roles.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Recruitment: The Recruiter, HRBP, and Manager collaboratively create a job description and candidate profile that includes information on leadership style, team preferences, and the role’s expected impact.
Development: The L&D specialist first maps needs directly in the field with the team, and only then designs modules linked to business goals. These are immediately tested on the team’s real-case situations.
Turnover: Instead of the classic knee-jerk reaction (“I see turnover → hire fast”), an analysis is conducted using data from surveys, exit interviews, team results, working conditions, and the manager’s leadership capacity. The result might reveal that the core issue isn’t recruitment, but leadership within a specific team. We solve the cause, not the symptom.

Collaboration with Managers is Critical

Holistic HR cannot function if the manager doesn’t communicate, lead, evaluate, or support talent. According to Gallup, managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. HR can only be as good as the quality of the company’s managers. Holistic HR is not a magic pill. It is an investment that makes sense primarily where there is a will to change things systemically and collaborate across the company.

TIP: Sloneek connects the entire ecosystem of HR, manager, and employee work—from recruitment, onboarding, training, tasks, and competencies to performance, feedback, and daily processes. Everything is automated, clear, and assigned to specific responsibilities, so managers can finally actually manage, HR gets rid of the operational burden to focus on strategy, and you always have data at your fingertips.

A holistic approach to HR returns real value to companies.

Multigenerational Teams and the Technological Leap

The youngest generation doesn’t view the world drastically differently than today’s “Boomers” did when they were in the same position. It’s just that their attitudes are set in a different context and era. Gen Z isn’t “demanding”—they are requesting things that everyone else wanted, too, just at a different pace. It will always remain true that:

Purpose and visible impact of work are simply strong motivational drivers.
Rapid growth, development, and feedback aren’t the fruits of a spoiled generation, but the consequence of a “fast-paced era” and instant access to resources.
Inspiring leadership that doesn’t micromanage is a non-negotiable beacon of functionality.
Flexibility and adaptability to rapidly changing conditions isn’t chaos; it’s a necessity.

And Then There’s AI

The arrival of advanced automation and generative AI doesn’t just mean more efficient processes. It means that a large part of the agenda upon which fragmented roles currently stand will soon be fully automated:

HR administration will be taken over by AI.
Reporting and analytics will be done with greater precision.
Candidate screening will accelerate.
Document preparation will be automated.

This doesn’t mean HR will disappear. The part of HR based on transactional tasks will disappear. What will remain for HR is the strategic, systemic, and holistic work with human potential, culture, and leadership.

If HR remains fragmented, it will be unable to:

Meaningfully manage diversity and extract the best from it.
Manage and develop talent.
Help build a company designed to survive for decades to come.

Sure, you might still win an “HR Professional of the Year” award. But frankly, that seems like a pretty low bar.

Conclusion

Holistic HR isn’t a fashion trend; it is an evolution that makes sense. It transforms HR from an operational department into a strategic partner that sees the connections between people, performance, teams, and strategy.

It only works where:

HR collaborates across the company and takes an interest in the broader context.
Managers are part of the change.
There is data and a connection between HR and the business.
Processes are not the goal, but the tool.