Theresa Welbourne

<p>I´m worried about the future of Human Resource Management (HRM). Here´s why:</p>

<ol>
<li>There are very few CEOs and senior management teams who really go to Human Resources (HR) for help.</li>

<li>HR was in its glory when the war for talent was on the minds of everyone. Today, my friends in very large and established companies are being downsized, reorganized out of their jobs and being told that HR is not part of the core business (and they are all going back to basics).</li>

<li>CEOs still know that managing people is key to their success, but they´re not going to HRM. Instead, they´re hiring executive coaches.</li>

<li>Executive coaching is all the rage. I think there are more executives coaches out there than HR executives! That´s because a lot of professionals who have been laid off, or are tired of a corporate job, are deciding to be a coach. Laid off consultants, executives wanting a change, people who wish to work part-time, sports enthusiasts, and others are all turning into coaches and charging lots of money to help your CEOs. I´m not saying that that there aren´t excellent coaches available. In fact, I know many of them. But even the most experienced and qualified coaches would say they are worried about the "onslaught" of talent in this field.</li>

<li>I recently went to a meeting on Strategic HRM conducted by the Conference Board, and 90% of the presenters talked about how successful they were because they outsourced HR.</li>
</ol>

<p>All of this does not add up to good news for HRM. We all know how we got here - too much bureaucracy, not being trusted, lack of good business savvy, saying we´re strategic but not changing anything we do, and the list goes on. But rather than focus on the reasons why HRM "gets no respect" and is in the shape it´s in, I´d like to share some thoughts about the things HR can do to move the pendulum in a direction that supports growth.</p>

<p>In order to do that, I want to focus on the last bastion of productivity. I heard Greenspan speak about the economy yesterday. He said that we´ve been able to maintain growth due to technology advances and squeezing productivity out of our people. We can keep pursuing those two approaches, but I have one that may be an eye opener for some of our leaders.</p>

<p>You can unleash extensive amounts of productivity by better equipping your managers to manage. Yes, I´m suggesting that managers are the last untapped source of productivity improvement. This is not just the senior leadership team but also those managers who were promoted because they are technical geniuses but have no management skill whatsoever (you all have some of them on board). Managers make HR happen, not HR. So, it´s getting to those managers who will make HR successful, and by "manager," I mean everyone from the CEO to the first-level supervisor.</p>

<p>As a CEO, I know that my success is a function of being able to establish and maintain excellent relationships with the people important to my success. Those people include:</p>

<ul>
<li>Investors</li>

<li>Customers</li>

<li>Suppliers</li>

<li>Partners</li>

<li>Employees</li>

<li>Potential clients</li>
</ul>

<p>I want my HR staff to help me be successful with ALL of those people.</p>

<p>Look around you. In every company with which I work or read about, I know there is a missing job at the top of the organization. The newest C-core job should be "Chief Relationship Officer". That person should help the leadership team by understanding that relationships with ALL people are important to their success. In addition, HR should help ALL managers (from the CEO to the newly promoted first-level supervisor) develop those same skills.</p>

<p>Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the hottest markets today. Estimates I´ve read indicate that this market is expected to exceed $70 billion by 2004. Do you, the HR executives, know what CRM is? Do you know that it is impossible to have good CRM if you do not have excellent ERM (employee relationship management)? Your CEOs know it intuitively, and their coaches know this, but I´m not hearing HR executives speaking the "relationship management" language.</p>

<p>Executive coaches help CEOs develop skills with their senior leadership team. They help them win new business. They help them by giving advice when people problems drive them crazy. I only have twenty employees today, but people are my number one concern. Everything I do is a people challenge. If I were not trained in HRM, I don´t know how I´d do my job. But even as someone trained in HRM, I need help.</p>

<p>I keep imagining the CRO job and whom I will hire. I am working with some other businesses interested in making this dream a reality. Here´s how the dream goes:</p>

<ol>
<li>You hire a CRO to be in charge of your overall approach to relationship management. This includes customer, supplier, partner, employee, investors, retiree, and general public relations. One brand and one identity are communicated to these groups. This relationship management (RM) team is in charge of gathering data from each stakeholder group (doing research), educating the leadership team (sharing data), coaching managers (teaching managers to respond). As a result, the RM team helps each and every manager and department improve productivity and be more successful.</li>

<li>I imagine great HR executives in this department as well as great marketing or sales executives. People in RM would have an entirely different approach to their jobs - their jobs would be relationship management - not <i>only</i> investor relations, OR employee relations, OR customer relations. They would share information, and they would propel their companies to greatness.</li>

<li>What I call HR accounting would either be outsourced or report to accounting. Students who want to do this work (e.g. benefits administration, compensation administration) would also get training in accounting and information systems.</li>

<li>Core HR functions that are not accounting in nature, and not under the customer relationship umbrella, could continue in their current states (as part of a corporate function or as generalists), but they would have dotted line responsibility to the RM group.</li>
</ol>

<p>Eventually, all of "core HR" that is not accounting in nature should report to the CRO function, but that´s too radical for most large firms. Smaller firms would benefit from hiring someone who could do the CRO job right now. For example, HR and public relations are not full-time jobs, but a RM job that combines those <i>two</i> functions at a minimum (e.g. you could add customer, partner, or supplier relations) is a value-add job for a smaller organization.</p>

<p>Supporting the CEO to me, and to all my CEO friends, means having an understanding of the people issues that are key to building the business. Core HR is important (making sure compensation works, being able to hire quickly, etc.), but there is more to the job. When CEOs say they want a business partner, they want someone who can help them move their business forward. I believe that the number one strategic asset that any organization owns is its relationships with people. In order to help support any CEO, you need to help the team of managers (all of them) build long-lasting and successful relationships with employees and other stakeholders. If HR does not start doing this well, executive coaches or consultants will continue to flourish, outsourcing will expand, and HR as a field will be done by staff in the outsourcing firms.</p>

<p>Multiple forces are challenging the future of HR. The result will not be "same as usual" HRM. Something will change. When it comes to the fate of HRM, things can change for the better, or they can chance for the worse. But in the end, CEOs will get the support they need - whether it is from a new department within their organizations, outside consultants, or a revised and refreshed approach to HR that I, and others, have not yet discovered.</p>

<p>For me, I have been on a mission since 1975 (when I first began working in the field) to see HRM change for the better, and I am very excited about the reception I´m seeing to the CRO job and the corporate relationship management approach to business. I have hope that HR can play a major role in making the next big transition happen.</p>

<p><!--Theresa Welbourne--></p>