WHILE MANY HR directors see themselves as strategic business partners, some feel they are being spread too thinly and being dragged into too many mundane, lower level activities.
WHILE MANY HR directors see themselves as strategic business partners, some feel they are being spread too thinly and are being dragged into too many mundane, lower level activities.
A recent survey of 350 HR executives across the globe found that as the demands made by companies of their HR functions seem to grow and grow, some HR directors are having to respond to moving objectives as the business agenda changes – rather than having the luxury of planning more systematically.
“Not only is business as a whole becoming more demanding, but there seems to be a new generation of CEOs who have a greater sense of what the HR function can deliver to help them achieve their business objectives,” said James Martin, a consultant with executive search firm Egon Zehnder International, which conducted the study.
“As a result, the talented HR executives coming up through the ranks have never been better placed to make a significant business contribution to their companies, and indeed, many group HR directors are seen by their boards as critical to the success of the enterprise.
“Yet we got the sense from some of the executives in our survey that there still seems to be some unease and fuzziness around what is expected from HR directors and the HR function as a whole, and how to meet the needs of the business most effectively,” he said.
As a result, it was hard for HR directors to determine just how successful the HR function had been, leaving some feeling more like followers than leaders.
Those HR directors who are customer focused, responsive, and deliver quickly and effectively may also be most in danger of being sucked into a variety of day-today activities, he said.
Furthermore, there often seems to be less effort in HR careers than would be ideal to prepare individuals to step up and cope with the demands expected in the top job in the function.
“There are so many areas that group HR directors now work in, that it is hardly surprising that they can’t be as adept and experienced in all areas as would be ideal,” he said.
“Furthermore, success in one’s 20s and 30s as a HR manager is often predicated on being able to deliver against demanding targets set from above. The transition towards becoming the more proactive agenda setter is a hard one for some people to make.”
The survey, Making Partnership a Reality: A global view of the state of the HR function, surveyed HR directors working in more than 100 cities in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and in total, respondents were responsible for the functional leadership of 274,000 HR staff serving 6.5 million employees.
As well as collective breadth of experience, there was strong depth of experience amongst those surveyed, with 71 per cent having worked in HR for more than 11 years, and 49 per cent for over 16 years. Moreover, they all worked at senior level, with 86 per cent reporting to the CEO.
“One of the key areas that would help most corporations from a top down perspective would be to think rigorously about the competencies and experiences required by executives in the upper tiers in the HR function,”Martin said.
Corporations could then help systematically plan career moves and training interventions for individual HR executives so that they could plug their specific development gaps and prepare for more senior level roles effectively and proactively.
“For example, most global corporations would like to have a highly international executive leading the HR function. Yet few international corporations encourage (or even in some cases allow) HR executives to have overseas postings (even when they have well developed programs for line executives).”
He also gave the example of most corporations wanting their HR directors to be able to contribute to financial discussions and broader business strategy development.
“Yet few send their HR executives to the same internal or external business courses that many line executives of the same tenure or grade enjoy,” he said.
“Many companies seem to rely on a Darwinian [suvival of the fittest] approach to development, yet even in corporations with good management development programs, HR executives can be left out in the cold.”
How up and coming HR directors can help themselves
From a bottom-up perspective, Martin said individual HR directors can help themselves by taking the time with their line managers to sit down and really articulate thoroughly what they want and need from each other to be successful.
This includes setting clear expectations and agreeing longer term targets, but also finding ways of measuring their success beyond qualitative feedback with quantifiable metrics that they review and discuss at regular intervals.
“It sounds obvious, but many senior HR executives appointed into new roles never seem to get the opportunity to do this,” he said.
“They can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of immediate and pressing short-term imperatives, and want to prove their worth by delivering quickly. Before they know it, several years have passed in delivering against a continuous stream of similar short-term objectives, and it then becomes clear why the HR function struggles to be seen as strategic.”
Martin said most capable and impressive HR directors have never allowed themselves to fill someone else’s model of what they should be.
“They set out from their earliest days to understand the commercial imperatives they face in their department or business area and were determined to add demonstrable bottom-line business value.
“They also never waited for someone else to develop them, but took the initiative, owned their own development, and invested time to learn about the areas of the business and the technical matters with which they were least familiar (such as understanding a specific manufacturing process or how to read a balance sheet or P&L statement).
“Through better understanding and knowledge they made a real impact and then they made themselves an indispensable part of the management team,” he said.
