A study of senior executives lists the skills and qualities human resources leaders must gain to reach full strategic partner status in their businesses, starting with “credible activism.”
There’s good news and bad news in the world of human resources.
The bad news is that according to a study of more than 468 companies worldwide by the accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, most senior executives still see HR as primarily an administrative function and a cost center.
Though 85 percent find “people vital to every aspect of a company’s performance,” only 23 percent “believe HR currently plays a crucial role in strategy formation and operational results.” The situation is such that HR blogger Donald H. Taylor, in reporting on the survey, titled his piece, “HR is our least important asset, say CEOs.”
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The good news, surprisingly, comes from the very same study. That’s because the results also showed that within 3 to 5 years, 82 percent of those same executives “expect HR to be perceived as a strategic, value-adding function.”
The question is, of course, how do we get there from here?
The answers come in another study, intriguingly titled the “Human Resource Competency Study.” It was conducted among more than 10,000 business leaders by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a Provo, Utah, consultant, the RBL Group.
The study, which has been repeated five times since 1988, identified several key abilities C-level execs currently look for in their colleagues from HR. Prime among them are…
Attitude. “Our data say you’ve got to be an activist,” says Ross School Professor Dave Ulrich, who also is a co-founder of RBL. Where once “personal credibility” was foremost in earning HR respect, now the primary need is “doing HR with an attitude or a point of view.” Another expert described it this way: “CEOs are not waiting for HR to come in with options. They want your recommendations … similar to what you see from legal or finance executives.”
Stewardship. Business leaders want HR to be the cultural and change stewards of the organization, the study says, building the brand that makes working for one organization unique against all others and maintaining it in the face of change.
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Talent Management/Organizational Design. HR must not only identify and develop talent, says Ulrich, but also fashion a teamwork-oriented organization that complements it. “If you have great talent and they don’t work well together, you won’t have great success,” he says.
Strategy Management/Business Ally. These concepts relate to the HR professional as a businessperson, able to recognize and capitalize on trends and to be, as the study puts it, “business-literate” in knowing how his or her organization achieves its financial success.
Operational Execution. In addition to all of the above, HR also must expertly manage its normal day-to-day administrative and compliance-oriented activities. This is something that Deloitte Touche survey Co-director Jeff Schwartz calls “the dial tone of HR,” a service that the organization just assumes will be properly delivered.
The survey shows a current shortfall of skills, but in the opinion of the survey authors, it also presents room for growth.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity here,” notes Schwartz, “for HR to step into the breach and lead.”
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Repeatedly I read articles about HR not being strategic partners. True. No doubt. But, one of the critical points that almost every article fails to point out is that HR practitioners are not hired to be strategic. They are hired to be administrative. And yet, the CEO wants them to rise to the business partner level. May I suggest that if you want a strategic HR person, you hire one? This means that CEO’s look for a person with the qualities and the qualifications mentioned in the article. As a professor of HR at California State University in Fullerton, I am trying to prepare my student’s to understand the strategic impact of solid best HR practices and how to communicate that to Senior Management and how to BE Senior Management.
Study Lists Abilities HR Mus Have for Success
Monday,August 06,2007 12:33 by Theresa Highsmith
I recently graduated with an MBA in Human Resources and while I slightly agree with Ms. Thorp is that HR has been looked upon as administrative but it is time that HR step up to the plate and become visionaries for these companies and that is the strategic partner that these CEO’s are searching for. If we as HR professionals cannot implement change with a vision to move these companies in another direction, then we as HR professionals become limited in our abilities.In other words,these CEO’s need help and I am more than happy to oblige.