The Evolution of HR (Employee Engagement Insights from a Successful Job Search III)

The Evolution of HR (Employee Engagement Insights from a Successful Job Search III)

How Progressive Leaders Are Thinking about HR Strategy

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I was fortunate in the course of my recent job search to interview with business leaders from Human Resources, Marketing and Communications, Operations and other business functions in a wide variety of industries including transportation, technology, healthcare, business services and more.  Although I did not transcribe these interviews for research purposes, I wish I could have: not surprisingly, many leaders are asking the same smart questions about how employee engagement – and, human resources more broadly – can really be turned into better business results.

Based on my conversations, I believe that a version of this question is, in fact, at the heart of every progressive HR leader’s agenda: specifically, “How can I align my organization’s people strategy with business strategy to improve performance?”

Isn’t this the same question HR leaders have been asking? Yes and no. Progressive HR leaders have always sought to contribute business value, but undoubtedly the way in which we approach the partnership between HR and the business has evolved rapidly in recent years.  Remember when the most celebrated CHROs (Chief HR Officers) were those who were able to outsource and down-skill to save corporations money? Or those who signed the biggest contracts to implement HRIS systems? While efficiency and standardization are still important, the conversation today is fundamentally about how HR practices enable people and organizations to win.

Below are three trends I observe in how smart and successful HR leaders approach their jobs.

• HR strategy is inseparable from business strategy. People are at the core of how work gets done in even the most automated of work environments, because people are making decisions, every day, at every level. Progressive HR leaders work closely with business leadership not only to understand how people can help a business achieve a certain set of results, but also how a business can exceed its goals through well-led people-practices like talent development, executive compensation, recruiting and employee engagement.
• HR strategy is really strategic. What I mean by this is, progressive HR leaders aren’t just re-labeling tactical plans as “strategies” then continuing to do what they have always done (although some less progressive HR leaders are). The best CHROs are: looking at the long-term objectives of the business and articulating where the workforce needs to be in 3-5 years to achieve them (= drawing a compelling vision), putting intelligent and adaptable plans in place to get from here to there (= laying out a strategy), and empowering their people to start constructing the path to the future (= executing).
• HR strategy is a single strategy. The most important and challenging insight I garnered from my conversations is that going forward, HR must view itself as a single function in order to deliver the level of value businesses need to sustain competitive differentiation. While the brightest HR executives are leading the charge to make this so, not everyone is willing or able to follow. As a result, HR practices are largely approached as silos or loosely-coordinated activities instead of different strands of the same DNA, resulting in inefficient or mis-aligned programs.

These trends have huge implications for HR and the businesses they belong too: they require fundamental changes in the who, what, when, where, why and how of work getting done. Of course, people in the HR game haven’t been talking about HR transformation for a while – what I am reporting is less different in character than different in degree from the HR transformation conversation to date. The good news is, there is real opportunity. Companies that do this well (or partner to do this well) will win. And if anyone can figure out how to build better organizations, it is progressive HR teams!