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It’s time we rethink HR in a radical way

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Gone are the days when HR was just about salaries and employee benefits.

Human Resources professionals, regularly report a common critical challenge: they feel and experience a lack of credibility from within their business organisations. This finding dovetails with the common perception that, for years, HR has been the ‘least sexy’ end of business, proffering roles that few business science graduates are interested in pursuing. Whilst HR teams have been tasked with attracting and retaining great talent for their organisations, they have themselves struggled to draw talent to their own backyard.

Yet, recent research shows that a transformation is underway. It’s time that we wipe the slate clean and rethink HR functions, careers and value in a radical way. What would you call HR if it wasn’t already known as Human Resources? How differently would leaders and managers meet their “people needs”? Would HR really just be a cost centre, or is there a different kind of value to be added and gleaned? What could your business do differently to address the challenges of people, culture, and performance?

Global human resources guru Professor Dave Ulrich has persuasively demonstrated that HR’s traditional role is a thing of the past. He believes that, going forward, the HR function will increasingly be measured on business value, not people processes and transactions. As customers both inside and outside of the business look to leadership to secure their investment, it is little surprise that human capital is fast finding its way to the balance sheet.

Five years ago, Ulrich embarked on a research project to identify which role within a typical C-suite structure would be best suited to take over from the CEO. Unexpectedly, the HR executive appeared to be the most suitable position to step up to CEO. At that time, however, few if any HR execs were considered as candidates. But five years on, things are changing. A new trend is emerging. The people agenda has finally hit the top job and, in the US in particular, HR execs are not only being shortlisted for CEO roles, but are actually being appointed too. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, for example, served as VP of HR for 18 months. Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox for 8 years, previously ran the company’s HR operations for several years. Today, Chief Human Resource Officers often report directly to the CEO, serve as key advisors, and present regularly to the board. These HR hotshots are no longer filling a support or administrative function, but rather serving as the person who enables business strategy.

Interestingly, all these appointments have had line management experience, and usually experience in other functions too. The HR high-flyer who becomes CEO is not necessarily someone who has only ever been an HR specialist, but quite often more of a generalist who’s spent time in HR.

It’s clear that the time has come for HR to become a more integral part of the business: line and HR need to coalesce. We need to rethink the value of HR as a function, and link HR’s value to organisational performance. If you were to spend the next year securing line management experience for everyone in your HR team, what would you do, and what’s stopping you? In turn, the credibility that HR professionals in South Africa still lack will evolve, not only from their ability to consistently deliver, but because their deliverables will be perceived as strategic and valuable. Furthermore, HR departments will be better positioned to foster a pipeline of dynamic, inspirational, influential leaders for future top jobs.

Nicola Tyler is CEO of Business Results Group, and will be on stage with Professor Dave Ulrich during his two one-day events, in both Jo’burg and Cape Town, on The Future Value of HR, hosted by Business Results Group and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. For more information visit www.brg.co.za/events

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Listen to Dave Ulrich on the Business of Business podcast

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In his latest podcast, Chris Gibbons talks to Dave Ulrich, the world’s most sought after researcher, academic and business advisor in the field of human resources, human capital and leadership.

The conversation starts with the question: “Does HR really add value to an organisation, specifically its customers and shareholders? And if so, why do many people within an organisation still view the HR function in such a negative light?”

Don’t miss the opportunity to see Dave Ulrich live in South Africa, hosted in Cape Town and Johannesburg by Business Results Group and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. Reserve your seat today.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Build Your Credibility as an HR Business Partner Consultant

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The HR Academy is proud to present the first in the our series of eight workshops targeted at raising the bar of the HR professional. HR Business Partner Consulting Skills is a 2-day programme being hosted in Cape Town and Johannesburg. With HR often participating in projects and programmes, spanning system changes to strategy, the skill of being a credible consultant becomes key. This training programme provides you with tools that enable you to facilitate processes and projects that address crucial business problems.

Building on the three critical components of consulting success: managing yourself, managing stakeholders, and managing the project, you will be taken through a series of video cases, practical applications, and skill-building exercises, designed to improve your ability to facilitate and support business leaders in solving problems and deliver business results.

As a participant you will be asked to bring or identify a consulting project that you are currently involved in. Throughout the training you will apply the tools and principles to ensure that your learning investment adds value to your business. The programme is designed to take you through an active learning process where you will apply the phases of professional consulting.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Learn and apply tools for understanding and managing stakeholders
  • Identify strategies and tactics for dealing with resistance that could affect project success
  • Build skills in scoping, diagnosing, and contracting projects with business leaders
  • Improve ability to set up project teams that will lead to successful project outcomes
  • Integrate change management principles to enable project completion and business impact

Click here to find out more and to reserve your seat.

HR Capability Development Programmes

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In 2015 Business Results Group sponsored South Africa’s participation in Prof. Dave Ulrich’s Global Research project to identify the core capabilities required for the HR Professional of the future. The results of this research have not only underpinned Dave’s latest HR Capability Model, but for the first time in history South Africa’s contribution played a significant role with our participation ranking 3rd in the world, behind China and the USA.

The research has unveiled the 8 core competencies that will underpin the future capability and credibility of HR, a function that is increasingly challenged by paradox and required to be a trusted advisor to boards, leaders and the business. The impact of people is evident on the bottom line, and HR as a function is now playing a pivotal role in determining business value.

Development programmes for each core capability have been designed and are exclusively available in South Africa under the auspices of Business Results Group.

As a leader and HR Professional, you now have access to a series of 2-day workshops, each one targeting a specific area of your professional development. In partnership with IPM, members will also receive 2 CPD points for each day of training, and participants completing more than 5 programmes will not only qualify for a discount but will also be issued with an International Certificate of Completion issued by The RBL Group in the United States.

Click here to find out more and to reserve your seat.

Why neuroscience matters for business

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It’s imperative that business leaders can create a lasting environment in which creativity, meaning and purpose can thrive. How and why does neuroscience come into this? Harnessing neuroscience lets us embed sustainable behaviour change in existing leadership patterns, in turn leading teams to be more innovative and allowing organisations to flourish within a culture of trust.

Our brains are by no means fixed or set in adulthood: we are all capable of neuroplasticity, changing the way with think and feel about things.  If we want to make a change, say from fixed to growth mindset, we have to do it consciously and deliberately with awareness, focus and attention. In applying ourselves to a new skill or activity in this way, we can retain the capacity for the brain to change, reformat and potentially grow well into our 60s.

We can of course also help the brain by ensuring that we care for it. When working with new clients, the first thing we tackle is not just their surrounding environment, but their internal environment. Sleep is one of the key factors in neurological health that cannot be ignored. Many executives survive on far too little. What they don’t realise is that lack of sleep can have the same effect on your decision-making ability as being drunk. This is not what executives are hired and paid for. Seven to nine hours of sleep is key for the cerebrospinal fluid that sits around your brain and spinal cord to filter through the brain.  We can also help the brain by resting during the day (short naps, for example) if we want to and are able to.

What we put in our bodies as fuel also has a huge impact on how our brain works. Our body is not just a convenient vehicle for moving the brain from meeting to meeting. We receive a lot of information and input from our bodies. In the stomach and gut, you find almost all of the neurotransmitters – such as serotonin and dopamine – that are also active in the brain, and help us make decisions and function in everyday life.The gut is often referred to as the other brain. Caring for both body and brain with a healthy diet, we can improve our brain’s effectiveness at work. Good hydration is equally important; likewise, cutting back on alcohol and caffeine is ideal.

Senior leaders also need to understand the effect that stress hormones – cortisol and adrenaline – can have on our bodies and on those around us. What’s even more interesting is that cortisol can spread around an office. That’s right. It hangs around the body and can be absorbed by others through the skin; this effect is even stronger is if it is the leader that is stressed. Reducing cortisol and adrenaline are key to a happy and creative work environment. It can be sweated out through exercise. Other things that help include mindfulness, meditation, journaling and coaching – where you can release tension and worrisome thoughts onto paper or to another person.

Sometimes it’s not possible to remove the stressors from our lives. In these cases resilience, or an ability to deal with stress, is key. If we are able to use our brain plasticity to reframe and rethink the stress we’re feeling, we will be more resilient to its negative effects.

In sum, neuroscience turns out to be far more important for business than we might first imagine. Neuroscience-based coaching, and drawing on the remarkable plasticity of the brain, helps create the ideal environment and mindset in which business leaders can thrive, enjoy their work, and build happier teams too.
Tara Swart, CEO of The Unlimited Mind, is a medical doctor and neuroscientist. She will be speaking at South Africa’s only ‘Happiness-at-Work’ event this December. Learn more here.