WHILE MANY Australian HR professionals see themselves as strategic contributors to their organisations, non-HR executives do not rate the strategic abilities of their HR colleagues and still view HR as a largely transactional function that does not add bottom-line value
WHILE MANY Australian HR professionals see themselves as strategic contributors to their organisations, non-HR executives do not rate the strategic abilities of their HR colleagues and still view HR as a largely transactional function that does not add bottom line value.
Recent research found that 48 per cent of HR executives and 27 per cent of non-HR executives believe HR suffers from a lack of time to work on strategic change programs, largely due to the constant demands of delivering basic HR functions.
Almost a third of non-HR executives are more likely to mention HR’s lack of business context and project management expertise as factors that limit the strategic contribution made by HR.
A survey of 60 HR executives and 33 non-HR executives from 78 Australian companies, with an average number of 6,386 employees, found HR professionals need to transform the HR function in order to position themselves as strategic contributors to their organisation and achieve high performance against local and global competitors.
“HR needs to get the basics right and provide a level of internal credibility on which strategic initiatives can be built,” according to Catriona Brash, executive partner, Accenture Human Performance, Australia, which conducted the survey in conjunction with Fairfax Business Research.
“The HR function needs to more accurately measure what it does and drive a more definitive link to business outcomes. It needs to promote this performance internally.”
Many Australian organisations are struggling to build a high performing HR function, according to Brash, and as a result, will be poorly positioned to deal with workforce-related business challenges such as an ageing population and changing attitudes towards employment.
“In this context HR transformation becomes a competitive necessity.”
The survey also found 36 per cent of non-HR executives believe HR can best contribute to change initiatives via the provision of information, while 35 per cent of HR executives see their role as relating to provision of strategic insight.
“Executive teams should proactively engage with the HR function at a strategic level to ensure the HR function, its staff and the initiatives they are implementing are fully aligned with the organisational goals and direction,” said Brash.
The survey found payroll is the most common IT-enabled function (82 per cent), however, only 23 per cent had implemented business intelligence and 18 per cent were utilising talent management systems. Less than half of those surveyed said that they have attempted to measure the ROI of HR technology systems.
The research highlighted the need for HR to measure its processes against organisational outcomes.
