Changing HR

Have you ever heard people speaking positive things about HR?  I also wondered why?  When I look within HR, there are lot of good HR professionals, knowledgeable in their field, yet this perception remains - what is HR doing?  There is a constant pressure for HR professionals to prove their worth by demonstrating Return on Investment.

   Most of them try in their own small way to prove their value by bringing in newer frameworks, improving the processes, benchmarking, see the customer voice, increasing their communication programs on how HR helped businesses etc.  But still this perception continues to remain.

With HR putting in 12-13 hours of work in the office, working late nights, even then Senior Management  in every meetings, invariably end up saying “we still don't see concrete actions from HR, we did not see transformation happening, I think HR is bit sluggish”.

 If you are able to relate with any of the above incidences and identify yourself with this, I can imagine what you must be feeling deep within?  

HR is a thankless department, how much ever we work. We probably need to live with it isn't it???  

 Some common labeling done on HR 

·         HR is administrative.

·         We see HR when we join and when they leave.

·         HR is not approachable

·         HR does not understand business.

·         HR lacks capability

·         Lacks visibility.

·         OR worst thing people say, they only help top management, they are not people friendly.

·         Vendors complain they never receive payments on time.

·         Top management says, we don’t understand HR, they seem to be doing lot of things, but we are really not sure how it helped our business.

In one of the Global companies I had consulted, one of the top business executives happened to see nice HR diagrams posted on the wall, he walked up to me and commented “HR does more marketing, it really did not make a difference to the organization what is your view???”.  He put me in the tight spot to answer this question.   I smiled and replied, “HR has many intangibles and it will take some time to show results, please have some patience”.   But inside my mind, I was convinced, I just defended my professional colleagues from the same fraternity.

Ram Charan, business Advisor to CEO’s and corporate boards, author writes in an article Harvard business review, observes that the CHRO rarely executes value proposition.  Most of them are process oriented Generalists, with expertise in personal benefits, compensation and labor relations.  They are focused on internal matters such as engagement, empowerment, and managing cultural issues.  They can’t do well in relating HR contributions to business needs.  They don’t understand how key decisions are made, they face great difficulty in analyzing why people or parts of the organization aren’t meeting business’s performance goals?  

He says the CHRO who did a good job came from line operations such as Sales, service, manufacturing or finance.

He recommends HR to be split into

·         HR –A - HR administration which reports to CFO, to manage compensation and benefits, which sees compensation as talent magnet not just the cost.

·         HR-LO (Leadership organization) - would focus on improving people capabilities and report to CEO. HR-LO will be led by high potentials from operations or finance whose business expertise and people skills give them strong chance of attaining top layer of the organization

·         Leading HR-LO would build their experience in judging and developing people, assessing the company’s inner workings, and linking its social system to its financial performance. 

Dave Ulrich states evolution of HR over the period of time as follows 

He points out 3 spheres of HR Influence

·           Individual: what high-performing HR professionals do as individuals to build effective relationships and reputations within their organization

·         Organization: how effective HR professionals design, develop, and deliver HR systems and practices that enable the organization to create capabilities, manage change, innovate and integrate HR practices, and deploy HR technology.

·         Context: what respected HR professionals do to ensure understanding of the external trends and realities facing the organization, and responsiveness to external stakeholder

He recommends HR people to develop set of competencies that are outside in based on above theme

v  Strategic Practitioner

v  Credible Activist

v  Capability Builder

v  Human Resource Innovator and Integrator

v  Change Champion

v  Technology Proponent

HR is already ready to move in to next generation.  In fact it is moving much faster than we can imagine.  The business have moved in globally, technology is changing so fast, even the new generation employees are born in Technology Yuga or period.

 I recently read one article where a 7 year old kid developing Mobile applications and he is the CEO of the company giving speeches in the global IT forums.   So we are in a period, where knowledge can be acquired instantly, it does not necessarily have to  wait till one completes his or her  professional qualification or wait till reaching particular age.   You will find many youngsters becoming CEO’s at Mid Twenty’s to Thirty’s and running their own business successfully.  

Generations born during Baby boomer period took 20-30 years to succeed, whereas Gen X decided to retire by 40-45 age.  Gen Y and beyond will don't even look at such a longer duration, what their previous generations did in 30 years they might achieve that success in 10 years or even lesser.  So there is significant change the way employees look at their career, they have redefined the loyalty levels (it is conditional, I am there with you as long as you care for me and my needs.  It is no more unconditional bonding like before).  

 Hence HR requires a completely new way of thinking and operating during changing times.   They need to quickly adapt themselves to the fast paced changing needs.

Business doesn’t wait for long and traditional frameworks, it requires instant and fast faced HR solutions.  

Please share what you think? Aravinda Prabhu T, is an organizational Development Consultant and Trainer, having 23 years experience in HR and Consulting experience in HR over 13 years, extensively working with clients In India, Middle East ( Oman), Africa, US and South East Asia region. You can connect him at: aravinda.prabhu@Mpower-HR.com