Reinventing HR:
Educate. Motivate. Inspire.
by Dr. Trish Holliday
The Ever-Changing Landscape of the Workforce
Picture the workplace of years past. The room is filled with row upon row of desks. Employees are doing much the same work, processing documents and shuffling large amounts of paper. Now, picture today’s workplace. Technology has eliminated the need for many people doing similar tasks. Work spaces are more open and collaborative. Employees work more in teams rather than individually.
How the workforce is viewed now differs tremendously from that of the past. Employees are not viewed as an expense as they were when the economy was based upon agriculture and industry. Now, having progressed through the knowledge to the talent age, employees are viewed as assets to the organization. The evolving nature of the workplace requires adaptation of the HR professional.
The Evolution of the HR Profession
Peter Cappelli, in Why We Love to Hate HR...and What HR Can Do About It (Harvard Business Review, 2015), provides the following overview of the evolution of HR. In the early 1900s, the HR function and profession was born. The need for workforce management (industrial and labor relations) became a necessity in the rapidly growing US economy. As the economy thrived in the 1920s, good workers were hard to come by and harder to keep, causing HR to induce supervisors to treat employees well.
During the Great Depression years of the 1930s, HR became less critical and the profession lost some of its glamour. Supervisors favored the “drive” system of management, even to the point of threatening and hitting employees. HR was viewed more of a hindrance during this time. The image of HR changed after the Second World War, as the need to create new hiring and development programs became popular, and necessary. HR became a powerful component within organizations.
However, many of the programs HR had developed in the 1950s were dropped in the 1970s as the economy slowed, and labor was plentiful. Even into the 1980s as the US was deep in a recession, workers were reluctant to leave their jobs, resulting in HR relegating hiring and development initiatives to managers. HR regained some of its glamour during the “dot com” boom of the late 1990s as the profession focused on hiring and retention of top talent. As the economy began to slow, and the effects of the Great Recession caused workers to not leave their jobs, HR once again began to lose its impact. Now, HR has to make a case for its existence, and fight to get a seat at the executive table.
If anything, what the history of the evolution of HR as a profession indicates is that HR must constantly adapt to the ever-changing workplace. HR professionals simply cannot sit idly by and wait to see what impact the economy will have on the profession. The need for HR to move from a transactional-only part of an organization to that of a strategic advisor is well known. The ability of HR professionals to contribute at the executive level requires thinking beyond the transactional, and become more strategic in their contributions to the organization.
Four Roles of the HR Strategic Advisor
Becoming a strategic advisor within an organization requires attention to several key components. Trust is critical, but never easy to acquire and maintain. Certainly it begins with following up on commitments, being straightforward and honest, and showing integrity in all matters. The roles of HR strategic advisors can be presented briefly in four broad categories, each with its own specific responsibilities.
1.
The first category is that of a subject matter expert.
This category requires in-depth experience and understanding of the human resource body of knowledge. Responsibilities pertaining to this category are providing timely, accurate, and consistent internal and external data on talent, the workforce at large, and external trends related to defined performance objectives. The ability to define standards to ensure consistency in practices across the organization, including communicating legal and cultural implications of practices that impact the workforce, require HR professionals to keep current in the legal and business arenas.
2.
The second category for HR strategic advisors is to be a problem solver.
It is easy to point out the problems, but to be prepared to assist the organization by seeking solutions through an understanding of the organization as a systemic whole raises the trust factor for HR professionals. Important responsibilities in accomplishing this category are connecting data and practices to the organization’s goals, challenges and opportunities; explaining long-term impact
3.
A third category is to be an internal consultant.
This role places HR professionals in a position to function as a consultant within the organization. Such a role requires that HR recommends strategies in the context of unique situations, not just “HR best practices.” HR professionals need to be able to put issues into perspective, looking at those issues from a fresh point of view. An internal consultant can act as a resource to the executive leadership regarding recommendations unique to the organization.
4.
A final category in HR becoming a strategic advisor is functioning as a partner within the organization.
This function provides an opportunity for HR to intervene with others in the organization to collaborate and produce strategies designed to achieve stated goals. In this capacity, HR serves as an executive coach on human resource issues, working with others to identify management goals for the organization and collaborating with the executive leadership to ensure the success of initiatives.
The categories discussed above require HR professionals to think more strategically about the organization and how HR can contribute to assisting in accomplishing the mission and goals. Understanding the organization’s business, not just HR business, helps build credibility with executive leadership.
In a study reported in The Chief HR Officer: Defining the New Role of Human Resources Leaders (2011), where Chief Human Resource Officers spend their time was presented. The top four areas where their time was spent were as a functional leader, strategic function, talent architect and executive coach. These areas cover the transactional, talent acquisition, advising and coaching roles for HR professionals.
Reinventing HR
HR professionals need to improve both the impact and the credibility of the HR function as a whole if it is to influence the executive level regarding the people agenda of the organization. HR can’t use an old map to find a new route – it must reinvent itself.
The following are some changes Dave Millner in Show Some Resilience: We can and will change old perceptions of HR (HR.com, 2015) offers that can help make the reinventing process more transformational.
Educate
One change is to educate leadership on effective people practices. HR has considerable thought leadership expertise and needs to educate leaders on which tools will ensure top talent is acquired and retained; initiate the most effective development programs; and identify the benefits packages that will motivate employees to higher performance. These all need to be based upon a foundation of clarity as to who owns the people agenda and the respective roles management and HR have to play.
Motivate
Another change HR can consider is to motivate executive leadership to see the added value that HR brings to the organization. HR has always struggled to consistently demonstrate that it adds value to the organization and provides a real competitive advantage. This requires using the right data gathered from measuring the key elements that are seen to add value and return to the organization. HR can motivate executive leadership to see the critical role it has in the organization, and what the return on investment it can provide.
Inspire
A final change is inspiring leaders to view HR as a thought leader on effective people practices. It is more than just changing what HR calls itself, but actually changing the way HR operates and contributes to the organization by truly understanding how the organization functions. Such business savvy goes beyond just knowing the organization’s culture, but understanding the business world that it operates in.
As the HR profession has moved from serving only the transactional needs of an organization, and now becoming more of a strategic partner, the next step is to think seriously about how HR will reinvent itself.
No longer can the profession simply respond reactively to the ever changing and volatile economy, HR professionals must be proactive in educating leadership and managers on the expertise they bring to the organization. HR truly owns the “people agenda” of an organization. HR can reinvent itself by motivating leadership by showing how it adds value to the organization. Collecting and analyzing the right data that indicates the impact HR has on the business.
Finally, by becoming more business savvy about the organization, both internally and externally, HR demonstrates it is more than just there to make people decisions, but can make those decisions in reference to how the organization will be affected.
Today there is a lot of talk about the future of HR. Some of it is encouraging, and some less so. Still, all organizations have people, and the one profession that is all about the people of the organization is HR. A reinventing of the profession provides an opportunity to once again show that not only is HR a critical strategic advisor and business partner to executive leadership, but a glamorous profession!
This article was originally published in HR Professionals Magazine.