It’s time we rethink HR in a radical way
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
