HR as director of people strategy - includes related article - Career Development

While HR leaders join top management in strategic planning, HR managers best serve their organizations by being good business partners.

It's been more than a decade since the word first got out. If organizations are to survive in a service-oriented economy and a constantly changing, knowledge-based work environment, HR must function as a strategic partner with management.

Can you hear the bell ringing in the distance? It's the death knell for referring to human resources as a staff versus line function. Rather our future roles must be as "colleagues," "team members" and "business partners."

But is there a "disconnect" between human resources and its clients, the CEOs and middle managers? In a recent survey, it was clear CEOs and middle managers expect human resources to continue in its traditional role--administering benefits and providing training. However, HR professionals must become recognized as business partners on equal footing with all operating business functions to help their organizations face today's challenges.

PEOPLE ISSUES DOMINATE BUSINESS

It is a well-known assumption that by the year 2005 the service sector will account for almost half of all new jobs and profit centers. This means that a company's edge will depend on the competencies and talents of its people--the only assets its competitors can't completely duplicate.

Ironically, while corporate America is realizing the value of its "people asset," organizational change--in the form of restructuring, downsizing and re-engineering--has left this resource severely wounded and the people themselves increasingly disenfranchised.

When it comes to revitalizing, transforming and leveraging this ailing workforce in support of the strategic needs of today's organizations, senior management within the human resource department will have to aggressively assume leadership. They must take charge of the people asset and assert themselves as business leaders and strategists with an understanding of and responsibility for cost control and profits.

To become business leaders, we need to make meaningful our organizations' missions, values and visions for the future. To act as business partners, we need a people-asset strategy, which allows us to play an integral role in determining the future road map for our organizations.

A THREE-LEGGED CHAIR

To begin the process, it may be helpful to visualize the organization's long-term, strategic business plan as a three-legged chair.

Business strategy. The first leg is the traditional business strategy, which addresses the financial priorities of the organization with respect to market share, product direction, profit performance, and so forth.

Change strategy. Change strategy is the combination of strategic organizational change initiatives needed to help achieve the business plan. Mergers/acquisitions, business process re-engineering, rightsizing and total quality programs all share an intent to dramatically improve an organization's efficiency and cost-effectiveness in order to achieve the business strategy.

In general, today's leaders focus only on the business and change strategies. As a result, their well-intentioned plans are literally "toppling over" from an imbalance of priorities related to people.

People strategy. To fully achieve their goals, organizations need to create the third leg of the strategy chair, the people strategy.

Developing a people strategy that is independent of, but aligned with, the business and change strategies of the organization requires two critical steps:

Step one, identify the people problem. We, as HR professionals, are in the best position to identify the gaps between current employee behavior and competencies and the employee behavior and competencies needed in the organization's future.

Do individual career interests align with the organization's business strategy? Do the employees' personal values align with the organizational culture and climate? Do the individual's skills and competencies (including the ability to survive and thrive during times of change) ensure they can support the organization's functional and technical needs?

Step two, develop the plan. We must formulate the corrective action necessary to remove the gaps. We can create the processes, systems and environment necessary to bring these components back into alignment. To gain the emotional commitment of its employees, HR must communicate its people strategy and demonstrate that people are as valuable an asset as systems, policies and other organizational elements typically addressed in the business and change strategies. When realignment is achieved, the employee can once again connect with the organization in a new, nondependent trust relationship that fulfills the needs of both parties.

While sponsoring and co-creating the people strategy, the HR leader brings to the table information on employee morale, motivation and adaptability to the strategies under consideration. We should be readily able to discuss the current complement of people skills and competencies and determine how these must be enhanced and leveraged to achieve the organization's mission.

And we must be able to discuss implications and advantages in financial terms, with projected quantifiable results. An important part of our people strategy should be a measurement phase following rollout of tactics.

THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILLS

While the most senior HR executives are teaming with other corporate leadership to define strategies, others in the HR function must implement these strategies through a new role defined as business partners to the organization. This client-HR partnership ensures the timely and effective implementation of the people strategy within each operating unit.

Acting as professional management consultants, the HR managers need to master certain critical skills to be effective.

Continuous learning. HR professionals must keep abreast of rapidly changing market conditions and competitive pressures as well as advances in HR strategies. This is a tall order and we all must strive for learning, taking advantage of opportunities such as evening classes, corporate mentors, and networking, networking, networking to build relationships.

Global perspective. HR must position itself as not only having a worldwide perspective but also facilitating the management of diverse groups of people.

Team leadership. To head task forces or facilitate group planning and implementing processes, HR managers need to become comfortable with team and cross-functional structures.

Financial and marketing literacy. HR staffs should be comfortable addressing the issues of our internal clients and partners. Are we achieving our five-year financial projections? What does our current P&L reflect? Are there changes in the product mix? What are the key demographics of our company's consumers? Who are the competitors and what are their strengths/weaknesses? HR managers should make sales calls and meet with operations people.

Effectiveness measurement skills. To measure HR's effectiveness, we must look at every HR activity in terms of its costs, what variables can be manipulated to change those costs, and how the result adds value to the achievement of the business and change strategies.

Consulting skills. Nurturing consulting skills--asking those questions that lead to understanding and then providing workable solutions--will facilitate communication among departments and help to increase productivity and organizational efficiency.

Presentation skills. Once members of HR staffs have analyzed a business challenge and created a people solution to the problem, it is important that they be equally adept at presenting the proposal or idea to all levels of management to help others share their vision. We have to overcome the image that we are not "sales people."

It is, therefore, a combination of leadership and supportive behavior that will allow human resource professionals to achieve the level of strategic impact we need to confront future business challenges. We HR professionals must help our middle and senior management counterparts envision our new strategic role. The very life of our organizations depend on it.

Different Perspectives on the Future of HR

Human resource professionals and their management are at odds over the future of the HR function, according to a recent Drake Beam Morin, Inc., survey "Human Resources in the 90s: A 360 Degree View." Most HR professionals (82 percent) envision themselves playing a more significant role over the next five years, listing their future priorities, in order, as strategic planning, team building, quality improvement, diversity management and training.

That viewis not shared by senior and middle management, who see a more traditional future for human resources, not far removed from its current role, and revolving around employee benefits and relations, training and health care. They rarely mentioned strategic planning, according to survey results.

For middle managers, quality improvement and productivity do make it to the bottom ot their lists of HR priorities, providing the only hint of recognition that human resources might be helpful to this group in less traditional areas.

A full 60 percent of the senior and middle managers had never sought help from human resources. And half of the senior managers who had never asked for help said they still would not ask.

For more information, contact the firm at 100 Park Ave., New York, NY 10017 or call Claire Stoddard at (212) 692-5813.

William J. Morin is chief executive officer of Drake Beam Morin, Inc., an organizational and individual transition consulting firm.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Society for Human Resource Management
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group