We need to put the "human" back into human resources. Employees are humans, not commodities, and HR departments have to start seeing them differently. With the current push towards strategies that engage employees, attract top talent, and contribute to the bottom line, this change is imperative.
We need to stop whining about being at the table. These days, almost every book or article you read about the role of HR talks about HR needing to be ‘at the table’ or to be more strategic. It’s my observation that in almost every respected company, HR is at the table. So for most HR leaders, the question is not ‘how do you get to the table’. It is ‘now that you are at the table, how do you best contribute to the success of our organization?’. ‘How can you be taken seriously at the table?’
Clearly, the first step is to make sure that the organization’s HR practices are effective. The practices should create a competitive advantage by building strong organizations, strong leaders and managers, and strong teams and employees. But few HR departments do this in a measurable way. CEOs are demanding that HR stop giving lip service to strategic performance and find the metrics that prove they are contributing to the growth and performance of the company through effective people management. Increasingly, more is being expected of HR practitioners than just being good at HR. They need to broaden their skill-sets so that they can sit at the executive table and understand as much about the business as the other leaders.
A Finance person who only understands Finance and a financial perspective, a Salesperson who only understands Sales and the Sales perspective – these individuals will have limited career prospects and very little chance of succeeding in a leadership role. The same holds true for HR people. That this is the case is good news for HR. It means that HR and HR people are too important to be set aside in the corner. It means that HR skills and knowledge need to be brought to bear on the strategic management of the organization.
Organizations consist of people. People are real. You can see them, touch them, hear them. And people have capabilities. And those people with their capabilities will determine whether the organization thrives or dies. As Jim Burns, Ceridian’s president likes to say “people are the only company asset that increases in value.” If HR is to be perceived as an enabler of business strategies, they need to be seen to be making measurable contributions to the bottom line through expense reduction, or revenue generation, talent management, and risk mitigation. HR people need to be a lot more creative in the way they do things. The “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work anymore. HR departments of today need to be the talent departments of tomorrow.
Post by: The People Pod | Recruitment Agency
