HR professionals are constantly being told they need to be more strategic in these times of rapid industry change. But that’s easier said than done – as well as knowing your business inside out, it’s important to continuously monitor trends and know where your organization plans to be in two, five or 20 years.
Three senior HR leaders recently spoke to HRD and revealed their biggest priorities for the next 12 months and beyond. They also shared their views on change, and how HR professionals can both adapt to and lead it.
Leadership Development
Instead of focusing only on advancing skills for the leaders you already have, HR should be cultivating leadership skills throughout the business – whether it’s mapping pathways for high-potential hires, or encouraging leadership-related skills like communication and responsibility in other workers.
Leadership development is a major priority for her, with an emphasis on building skills across the workforce, as well as coaching and mentoring, and stretch assignments, according to Anna Crane, director of human resources at LED lighting market leader Lumenix.
She added that Lumenix has never done performance reviews, instead favouring year-round employment engagement and empowerment.
“Coaching and mentoring and development is really key to our success, and we’re doing it one-on-one. We’ve never done performance reviews here,” Crane said.
“You need to continuously develop your talent. It keeps engagement high and is very powerful to retain key employees. This helps the roadmap to promotion as you tie it into specific observable behaviours to see the return on investment in your people.”
Data and Technology
The three leaders agree that keeping on top of technology trends and tools, and using meaningful data to track human capital and drive smarter business decisions, should be priorities for all HR professionals.
It’s important to understand each business unit’s strategy and goals, and to help them by gathering the most relevant data.
“The data and the dashboard that you create for one of your business units could and probably will look very different from all of your business units across the board … Make it really meaningful for them, understand their business, and understand what data points you can collect from an HR perspective, while maintaining privacy, to help them drive those decisions forward,” said Anna Petosa, vice president of people and culture at weather information network Pelmorex.
Cheryl Fullerton, executive vice president of people and communications at Corus Entertainment, urges HR professionals to spend time with marketers to understand how they look at customer data and with finance professionals to understand performance metrics, then consider their business’ unique needs, before getting started on HR metrics.
Crane agrees it’s the application of data that really matters.
“It’s not one-size-fits-all. You just have to know your executive team and what they’re looking for, and you have to have the smarts to understand how it applies to your business. Being able to make decisions faster, being agile, and developing our leaders as a result of it, Crane said.
Brand and Culture
Culture and employee experience play a crucial part in both attracting and retaining talent – and needless to say, they’re top priorities for these HR leaders.
Once companies are clear on their purpose and internal culture, they need to project that to customers, Fullerton said. “Where you don’t have clear definitions and alignment on how to describe who you are, that will be next.”
Petosa believes it’s important that companies have “culture with a purpose”, based on values, which is woven into all of their work, from recruitment to development, retention and even business strategy – and that everyone, not just HR, takes ownership of it.
“It’s an old saying that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ and I really believe that. Anyone can replicate your strategy or your product. It’s much more difficult to replicate your culture.”
Change Management
According to Fullerton, it’s important for HR professionals to actively develop change leadership.
“Whether transformational change at the organization level, or process change at the individual level, the way people respond to change has a major impact on business success,” she said.“And human behaviour is at the heart of this, which is in our wheelhouse.”
To both understand change, and help their organization and people adapt, Fullerton says HR professionals first need to build expertise across three fields: change management, behaviour science and communication.
“Then look at current practices in your company and critically assess [those] to increase effectiveness or to simplify. The end game is to take the lead to develop the leadership mindset,” Fullerton said.
Changing HR
There’s a clear link between change management and the increasingly strategic role HR professionals need to position themselves in, if they want to prove their essentiality at work.
“There’s no more ‘traditional’ HR. It’s evolving, and it’s what it takes to empower people, what it takes to cultivate leaders, it’s how do we capitalize on growing our people,” said Crane. “Stay ahead of trends and keep a pulse on the market… be creative, and don’t be afraid to come up with your own ideas”.
HR should also not fear change – including the adoption of new technology. “As tech changes, so must we,” she added.
For Petosa, separating HR into two categories – administration and strategy – can help ensure each function has the right leaders, and increase their chances of success.
“It’s about providing personalized, relevant, essential services to the businesses, and moving away from tactical and administrative to more of a talent consultant with really deep expertise in change management, talent acquisition, performance management, and how do we trigger it so all of those things are driving the business.”
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