Late last year Brian Hults the Vice President for global organisation and people development at Newell Rubbermaid, wrote a short article published by the Harvard Business Review titled, “Why HR Really Does Add Value.”
The article focused heavily on the premise that HR can add significant value to a business provided it can support and enable the execution of strategy through building organisational capability.
The Feedback
Last week the article was followed up by Ron Ashkenas, a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organisation. The title of his blog…”Stop Dashing HR.”
Apparently many folks did not see eye to eye with Brian Hults article. Here are some of the posts:
“I have yet to see HR add value to any organisation.”
“[HR] is more often an obstacle that needs to be navigated to complete real business processes.”
“The fact that the author essentially advocates turning HR into something that would be called ‘strategic planning and integration’ is exhibit A as to the complete uselessness of HR…”
Our Experience
For the past 10 years we have focused purely on the Execution of Strategy. We have been fortunate to have worked across a diverse range of industries in Asia, the US and the UK. Of all the various departments and teams we get to work with HR is by far the toughest.
Why, because more than any other department, they lack clarity and direction. Whenever we ask a HR team to Describe Success, they are normally confused and conflicted. Ask them to provide their Measures of Success and they will go with the tried and true, Staff Satisfaction and/or Staff Retention, but even these are rarely clear and usually don’t carry with them any enthusiasm or commitment.
It’s Not Their Fault
This lack of clarity and direction, the grey haze that rests over the performance of HR comes because they are rarely given clear direction from the top. I cannot recall any HR Team that was clear on what was expected of them. In the absence of direction they simply make it up themselves and that is why they are seen as not being aligned and have to incur the distain of other departments who normally have extremely clear objectives and know the consequences for not achieving them.
The Challenge
The challenge for Senior Management is to be extremely clear on your expectations of HR and develop a set of metrics that will allow you to evaluate success and failure. At the heart of this challenge is balancing the Long Range Objectives with Short Term ones and giving direction on where the priorities lie.
EXAMPLE:
We recently worked for a company that was expanding quickly in a number of different locations around the world. They were in a rapid start up phase and what they needed more than anything was the recruiting of quality talent.
When we spoke to the HR Department they had recruiting in their sites but the overwhelming focus was on defining and developing a Company Culture and setting up a Management Development Program.
It was a clear example of long term versus short-term priorities. Working on company culture and improving the Leadership and Management of the group is clearly important, the problem was both of those at that point in time were not critical. This company needed quality people quickly and if they didn’t have them they were in serious danger of missing extremely valuable opportunities. With limited resources the HR team could not afford to focus their time and effort anywhere else but on recruiting and on-boarding the recruits quickly.
In the end it was simple. It only took a single one-hour meeting with the CEO to get the focus right.
Solving the Problem
The problem for most HR teams is that in absence of clear direction they will tend to focus on those high level functions their professional training tells them is part of developing a Strong Company with a sound culture. To get them really focused you really only have to ask three questions:
What does this company need from HR in the next 12-months?
What does this company really need from HR in the next 90-Days? (i.e. Now!)
How will we Measure Success over the next 90-Days?
Note:
If you are HR Team get your CEO (or those you report to) to help you answer these questions.
