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'Interestingly,‘professionalism’comesupfairly frequently in HR but there is actually very little that has been written about what ‘professionalism’ means for HR professionals.
We can take‘professionalism’to mean the set of values, attitudes, and behaviours that are expected of professionals.'
'In the 2013 State of Talent Managers Report, conducted by the US organisation New Talent Management Network, 77 per cent of respondents said a primary reason they got into HR was to “help people grow and develop”, but only 58 per cent said they joined the profession to “help my company maximise its profitability”.'
' “Part of the problem is we don’t have a business language of HR,” said Cheese, pointing out that even regularly used terms, such as headcount, have no common definition.
“The business language is principally a language of numbers so this is a really important space to be working in,” he added.'
'I agree that it’s vitally important for HR to make friends with finance, as the alternative seems to be letting finance take over the boardroom. As any good HR professional knows, one of a business’s most important assets is its people. And people can’t be simplified down to finance’s language of facts and figures.'
We're starting with the Credible Activist competency and a well delivered presentation from Christel Heydemann, EVP Corporate HR from Alcatel Lucent.
Christel has presumably been selected for this session because she was a business executive who was selected to run HR because the CEO thought this function said 'no' too often. She got lots of good feedback on her appointment because she was someone who had been in the field and understands the company. (Not that pure HR people can’t develop this level of credibility but it’s a useful warning shot to those who haven’t or say no too much.)
Christel saw her challenge as making HR simple, selling it and executing:
- Simplification because Alctel Lucent face the same issues as other organisations. And a lot of what they do is common sense (Christel repeated this point several times). So Christel grouped activities into three areas:
- Sales because the company had lots of initiatives but people weren't clear what these were for. She spent time explaining to managers what they were doing and simplifying corporate initiatives. Often this was about explaining what the team was already doing - so there was no resistance.
- Execution - doing what was needed well. For example, one activity I quite liked was setting up an internal job opportunity market, 'ijob', where employees post CVs (or use their Linkedin profiles), and hiring managers post internal job opportunities.
Credible? - yes, clearly.
Activist? - yes - Christel clearly understands what she wanted to do in the business.
Great HR? - well, I’d have liked to have seen more... That's not a criticism of Christel or Alcatel Lucent HR - they've skillfully executed the approach they’ve wanted to use. It's just that I personally would have focused more on developing their HR strategy. Please note that I'm not arguing for unnecessary complexity. But I do think great HR has to involve more than just common sense.
This is part of my issue with outside-in. Christel talked about listening to what managers, employees (and yes, customers) want and translating these into HR terms. Fine - that's going to help you gain credibility. But I’d have wanted to see more in this presentation (other than the ijob site) that would help Alcatel Lucent gain competitive advantage. Doing the same as other organisations, or doing common sense things well doesn't do achieve this.
And to me, creating competitive advantage is the key opportunity for HR. So I don't think practitioners can really be seen as credible activists unless we're focusing on this agenda.
But I suppose that’s also more about the Strategic Positioner competency which we’re moving onto next…
Technorati Tags: Dave Ulrich, HR, IIR, Middle East, Summit, Christel Heydemann, Alcatel Lucent, Credible Activist
However Lawler’s team have also looked at what HR actually does, rather than just what it thinks it does, and this isn’t such good news – particularly, supporting the conclusions of the recent CHRO study, in the UK and rest of Europe (though actually the UK has the best results for HR acting as a full partner in business strategy rather than just taking an input role):
This is important because it’s the strategic business partner role that provides by far the greatest input to business success.
In improving on these results, HR’s structural model has been one of the major change in organisations. The major problem has been HR functions going native – only thinking about their line of business, not the corporate as a whole.
Organisations are trying different things eg double hatting but this generally ends up with everyone feeling schizophrenic – above and beyond their sanity.
A better solution may be to give HR a wider set of issues, eg this example from a US company – helping to deliver a terrific EVP etc.
There are also actions we can take to upgrade HR’s capabilities and structure:
Ie, to achieve these benefits we may need to break HR out from the function responsible for Organisation Effectiveness – allowing this higher function to be strategic and analytic – as otherwise it always gets taken over by transactional work.
I think there was some great analysis in this presentation (I often use some of the data in my workshops but haven’t seen the 2010 results before) and I’m partly pursuaded by the conclusions – in fact I referred to and supported these in my own book. I do believe in the need to focus both strategy and structure on organisation effectiveness:
“Strategic contributor to business strategy development and implementation based on considerations of human capital, organisational effectiveness, and readiness. Developing HR practices as strategic differentiators.”
However, I’m not totally convinced we need to separate HR from the OE function.
If I was ever to go back into corporate ‘people management’, this OE one is the one I’d want to have, but I’d ideally like to retain responsibility for the HR function too, so that I don’t have to do everything through influence but also have some of the most direct levels for improving organisational effectiveness under my own control.
Your thoughts?
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This year I’m keen to continue a good rate of posting, and to make my posts more strategic too. There are now an awful lot of HR bloggers out there, but I want to ensure this blog is the one you continue to return to for advice on strategic people management and development.
I therefore thought it might be appropriate to start this year’s posting by reviewing Cornell CAHRS’ report, the 2011 CHRO challenges (based upon meeting the CEO’s needs for HR). I may of course just be reinforcing my image of always being a bit late to the party, but then I only received this document towards the end of last year, and I’m sure the same sort of challenges will apply in 2012 as well.
The other reason that I wanted to pick up on this is that for the first time in three years, CAHRS have been able to separate out European data. I write here for a global audience, but most (not all) of my clients are European based, so I’m particularly interested in their challenges. And it’s interesting to see that European CHROs (or Heads of HR) generally experience the same main challenges as their US counterparts – particularly related to dealing with the lack of talent in the HR function.
However, this challenge is greater here too – leading to a significantly enhance challenge in transforming the HR function.
I had thought initially seeing this result that the difference in Europe would be down to the multi-country / language / labour code environment in which we work in here, but actually the obstacles are mainly about people – HR competencies (Europe 97%, US 58%), HR resources (25 / 34%) and organisational talent (19 / 25%), as well as in Europe, HR processes (29 / 5%), HR technology (25 / 10%) and line support (25 / 6%). Not regulatory / legal constraints – which are actually higher in the US! (6 / 13%).
So what’s behind this lack of people and competencies? One factor is the low promotion rates of CHROs compared to other CXOs (HBR article pictured above), particularly in Europe, where just 24% of CHROs are promoted from within the function.
I also think its about the lack of strategic development opportunities available, particularly again in Europe. OK, we’ve got the CIPD in the UK which is broadly comparable to SHRM, but we don’t have anything comparable to HCI, HRPS etc, and I think it shows.
I’ll be making more announcements about my forthcoming support for strategic HR development during 2012 shortly…
You can also join my webinar on innovating HR at 4.00pm GMT tomorrow.
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The competencies are:
Strategic positioners who understand evolving business contexts, stakeholder expectations, and business requirements and translate them into talent, culture, and leadership actions
Credible activists who build relationships of trust and have a clear point of view about how to build business performance
Capability builders who define, audit, and create organization capabilities required for sustainable organizational success
Change champions who initiate and sustain change at the individual, initiative, and institutional levels
HR innovators and integrators who look for new ways to do HR practices and integrate those separate practices to deliver business solutions
Technology proponents who use technology for efficiency, to connect employees, and to leverage new communication channels, e.g., social media.
In a sense, it’s not that much of a change from last year. Strategic architects has been renamed positioners which might not be much but it’s a useful shift because positioning suggests a sense of uniqueness and competitiveness ie it’s not just about architecting the same HR model as every other organisation.
Talent managers, Organisation designers and Culture Stewards have been grouped together as Capability builders which I think again is useful, as it emphasises that talent, organisation and culture aren’t just resources, but can be sources of competitive value in their own right.
Business allies and Operational executors have been dropped which again I think is positive. Operational execution is the basic minimum, not the difference that leads to success. Business alliancing is pretty basic too, and it’s removal emphasises, to me, that HR doesn’t achieve the difference that makes the difference simply by being closer to the business – it achieves this by creating unique positions of organisational capabilities. These are what is important, and they’re different to, not the same as the value that can be provided by other business functions.
That just leaves change champions – fine – and credible activists – which was my favourite competency in the previous list. Plus – and this is where it gets interesting – HR innovators, and Technology proponents. (No mention of measurement which may surprise some people but I think is right. But also no mention of facilitating decision making, which I still think Ulrich made a mistake of removing from 2003’s to 2007’s iteration.)
I think innovation and technology are essential additions too. Innovation is critical to achieving unique positions and capabilities, and technology – especially, though not just social media - is becoming increasingly central to achieving this innovation too.
Have you seen these posts last week on HR innovation?
I’ll also be continuing to post on HCM technology next year – including on the new site linked to the HR Technology Europe conference which I’ll be MCing again next year.
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But of course this is the time of year that everyone produces their predictions for the next one. I’m not going to do much of this either – I never seem to get these right so there doesn’t seem much point.
But I do want to single out one thing which I’m sure is going to become more important next year. And this is being more innovative in HR.
There are three reasons for this:
It’s going to be a tough, but an interesting, year!
Picture from my recent visit to CERN on the day that we’ve possibly confirmed the Higgs boson – innovation at its most extreme (you may also recognise Katie McNab)
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If you’re in South Africa, I hope you may be able to come along to the session (or if you’ve got colleagues there, you can prod them!). You can get booking details from vitaltraining.co.za. I’ll also probably fly down a couple of days early, so if you want to meet up and talk about something else, we should be able to do that too.
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“Social media is one of the main drivers of change in business at the moment. In HR, it is enabling major transformations in recruiting, learning and other areas.
Many HR teams are now using social media and other web 2.0 technologies to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of their people management processes. Most of these teams are using social media in the same way as traditional communication channels to ‘push’ information to employees.
However, social media also provides access to further benefits including improving the quality of recruit, the capability of individuals and teams, employee engagement and organisational culture. HR teams gaining these additional benefits are using social media to ‘pull’ current and potential employees closer to the organisation, and to enhance sharing and participation across the workforce.
In addition, HR professionals have the opportunity to play a further role in their organisation’s use of social media too. Businesses are using 2.0 tools to empower their employees to deliver better customer service; to keep track of customer needs (social CRM); to support knowledge management and to enable collaboration and innovation (enterprise 2.0). However many of these projects present behavioural and cultural (rather than technological) challenges, requiring HR to lead or at least collaborate in the implementation of these systems.
Attend this workshop to understand how to gain all these sets of benefits for your HR team and your organisation. In addition, we will also talk about why you yourself might benefit from more personal involvement in social media. And to start you off along this path, we will be encouraging you to get onto Twitter to tweet the session and ask questions of the trainer, and to contribute to a new blog summarising learning from the two days.”
I don’t know why all of the faces in the brochure are western, and am a bit worried that the guy in the bottom left clearly doesn’t want to be associated with the programme, but I’m sure it’ll be a great event for everyone who attends.
If you wish to book for the session, contact Ms Sarah Avery Chua (Marketing Executive) at International Podium Allianz Group:
Email: sara.a.chua @ ipa-group.com
Tel: 6631 9899
Fax: 6631 9894
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All CIPD members are welcome (not just those based in West London) and it would be great to see you there.
If you can’t be there, then do still keep your eyes on the twitter stream around then – hashtag #CIPDWL20 (CIPD West London 2.0). We’ll hopefully be setting up and posting to a blog as well.
Also see this report from Rick at Flip Chart Fairy Tales.
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I’ll be blogging this session live from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston at 1.00pm BST / 8.00am ET on Wednesday 16 June (please join me via CoverItLive or tweet using hashtag #e2conf-26):
Strategic Objectives #e2conf-26 Track: Set Your Enterprise 2.0
Strategy HR leaders today are grappling with creating and retaining a cohesive and collaborative culture across an increasingly global workforce. In addition, a quiet revolution has been taking place in the human resources world: powerful cloud technologies with 2.0 collaboration components baked in have made major inroads into the backbone of the enterprise infrastructure. Enterprise 2.0 concepts and technologies offer significant opportunities to help HR teams accelerate organizational performance in the context of aligning with strategic objectives. This session will feature customers that are embracing newer social and collaborative approaches brought about by Enterprise 2.0 concepts.
Moderator - Oliver Marks, Blogger, Sovos Group, ZDNet
Panelists:
You’ll find broader coverage on the Enterprise 2.0 conference at http://blog.social-advantage.com/search/label/e2conf. Or follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/joningham.
A summary of the session and HR’s emerging role in Enterprise 2.0 will also be published later in Personnel Today.
My other posts on HR 2.0 are here: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/search/label/HR-2.0.
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Of course, there’s a lot more of these fallacies as well. One of my other favourites is ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. It’s. Not. True.
There are more of these in Jeffrey Pfeffer’s books, ‘Hard facts, dangerous half-truths and total nonsense’ (with Bob Sutton) and ‘What were they thinking?’. And in Bob Sutton’s blog. (Yes, OK, I know these two are fans of evidence based management and would therefore probably want you to measure so that you can manage. So?).
Anyway, regarding ‘people join organisations but leave managers’, Jack Wiley suggests the issue is just a lot more complicated than that.
Kenexa’s WorkTrends survey shows that the key factors influencing stay / leave decisions in Europe at least are:
The manager is there, at #7, and they’re also going to influence the rest of the factors. But it’s certainly not all about them.
Like Jack, I’ve seen data which discredits Marcus Buckingham’s suggestion (OK, I don’t think he was the first person to suggest it, but I think it’s down to him the phrase draws 1,480,000 results in Google).
For example, when I was at Penna, we produced evidence, which I found compelling, that while this might be true for production workers, knowledge workers were much more influenced by organisational values and senior leadership.
And didn’t Theresa Welbourne produce some similar findings suggesting that low performers might be engaged most by their managers but high performers again were influenced by broader issues (I might be making this up but I don’t think so).
It doesn’t even stand up to a decent bit of introspection – which to me at least is much more powerful than all of Jack’s stats. Think back over the last 10 years of your career and reflect on when and how you’ve been engaged, and why you’ve left or joined organisations. I bet it’s not ‘I joined because of the organisation and left cos of my manager’.
It’s complete rubbish. So why do so many HR people trot it out? Is it simply because they’re so busy, they just don’t stop to think?
I hope so. Because the alternatives are far more worrying!
Photo: Gordon Bown (the exception that proves the rule?)
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Update January 2011: I’m no longer delivering the HCS certificate for the HCI. However, I am delivering great value and high impact human capital strategy workshops for teams of HR practitioners within organisations. Contact me for more….
I’ve posted previously to let you know that I’m now delivering the Human Capital Institute’s Human Capital Strategist certification course in UK and Europe. There’s some great new information about this programme on HCI’s new website, http://www.hci.org, and I’ve copied this down here:
Master the new business science of strategic talent management, and prove your expertise with HCI's Human Capital Strategist (HCS) Certification. HCS is the recognized credential for strategic knowledge in the Human Capital field and is an important career achievement for Human Resources, Organizational Development, Recruitment, Corporate Learning and Line executives.
Talent is the only sustainable advantage in a global knowledge economy, and integrated talent management strategy and practices are now central to business results. HCS provides the foundational framework, practical application and tools to move the needle in your organization and career.
Human Capital Strategist (HCS) Certification and Master HCS Designation programs are available for teams of up to 20 participants onsite at your facility. Curriculum and content are tailored to your organizational objectives, and training is delivered at a significant discount to the cost of public classes.
Transform The Way You Think About Talent
Managers and organizations are accustomed to thinking about people in industrial economy terms, and within the bureacracy of organizational silos. HCS graduates understand the knowledge economy paradigm of integrating talent management leadership and practices across the enterprise.
Broaden Your Human Capital Expertise
Strategic Human Capital and Talent Management span recruitment, HR, OD/Learning and the Line. HCS graduates understand each practice across the talent lifecycle, and have the context to think strategically beyond the confines of their own traditional discipline.
Become a Strategic Business Partner
Human Resources and related disciplines must learn to communicate in the language of business. HCS graduates understand the vocabulary of business strategy, how human capital drives business success, and how to create value through their knowledge of strategic talent management.
Execute and Measure Results
The business science of Strategic Talent Management has moved out of the theoretical stage and into the field. HCS graduates go back into their organizations with proven best practices, new ideas and the tools to implement and measure them.
Advance Your Career
Administrative HR and related functions are being commoditized, outsourced and offshored. The future belongs to professionals who can demonstrate strategic capabilities and value to their organizations. There has never been a better time to change the game in your career, by taking a leadership role in this critical new discipline.
Transform Your Organization
Talent is the most powerful competitive lever in a new economy characterized by rapid change, accelerating product cycles, decelerating prices and worldwide disintermediation. HCS graduates are at the cutting-edge of this inflection point, and are leading the transformation to talent-driven business execution inside their organizations.
Get Certified!
HCS is a rigorous course of study, recognized by business and government organizations worldwide as the standard certification for Strategic Talent Management. HCS graduates are the first wave of leaders that understand, and can apply the principles of this new science to drive business results.
Stay Current
Rapid change requires continuous learning. HCS graduates are plugged into an ongoing stream of news, information, research and collaborative opportunities through alumni groups and HCI's Center for Human Capital Excellence.
HCS graduates are eligible to pursue HCI's Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS) Designation, a distinguished achievement recognizing practical application of Strategic Talent Management principles. HCS candidates can now purchase the HCS and MHCS programs together and save over $200 on the bundle.
If you're in UK / Europe and you’d like more information on this programme, or other support to develop the strategic capabilities of your HR team, please contact me at jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com.
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Well you may want to run some training for your HR team. How about a day covering at least some of the following:
Set-up
Introducing and reviewing the technologies
Enterprise 2.0 and the Social Business
HR 2.0 – the potential benefits (and legal / other difficulties)
Action planning
Web 2.0 – using the tools
This workshop is available now for you to provide in-house (in the UK or elsewhere). If you’re interested in attending an open programme on the above (probably only in London, UK), let me know.
For the open programme, I’d also encourage participants to join a social media community set up specifically for the particular conduct of this workshop, in order to facilitate further support and collaboration with other participants.
As background, you may also be interested in:
Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business blogs:
HR 2.0 blogs and podcasts:
Web 2.0 blogs:
I hate doing these types of lists. What have I left out?
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If you've found my posts interesting, please do leave a comment!
