What is HR's Role in Your Organization, What's New in the Vendor Space, and Much More

Greetings from my desk (for a change).

HR's Role in your Firm

Let me ask you a very important question. What is HR's role within your firm?

Typically, we get answers like:

• To hire the right people
• To ensure we have the right leaders and bench strength to run our organization
• To ensure we are in compliance with all state and federal laws and protect our firm from blah blah blah ...
• To provide the back end administration of the people part of our business such as training, payroll, benefits, recruitment.

But these are all wrong ... these answers are very tactical. These are things you do but are not your role, per se. Your answer should have been something like this:

"Our role is to provide overall company assistance and guidance with the execution on our company's missions, values and ethics, while ensuring we have the right people in the right job at the right time."

Too often we look upon ourselves as not strategic, which in itself creates an aura that HR is driving administration, not the strategy of the organization. If you are aligned with the strategy and held accountable for the business results, you will be able to increase your department's value within the organization while increasing the ability to execute and deliver on business results.

A commitment to execution is a huge challenge for most organizations as most projects fail. One of the best books I have ever read on delivering execution was "Twelve Steps to Achieving Any Goal on Time and on Budget," by Robert Nieman. Available in paperback from Amazon, this book is more like an execution toolkit that any company can use to help increase the probability of success for project delivery. The book outlines some of the key issues in establishing successful projects, such as setting and defining clear expectations, and getting people on the team aligned. It also highlights some of the critical derailers that can facilitate failure in a team, such as:

1. We do not have enough of the proper resources that are focused on the project to ensure its success.
2. We under estimate the commitment to change management and do not take the time to communicate the required changes in process to accomplish our goals.
3. We do not communicate the results and progress of the event throughout the project.

HR.com's 5th Annual Employers of Excellence Conference

We are currently looking for Subject Matter Experts who can lead of team of 10-15 senior HR Executives through a series of exercises and programs at our national conference. These teams are focused on a specific topic or initiative that you may be undergoing at your organization. The openings we currently have are:

1. Creating a Culture Focused on Execution
2. Creating a High Performance Culture
3. Aligning and Building a Business Strategy
4. Creating Sustainable Innovation and Growth
5. Building a Matrixed Organization
6. Breaking Down Silos Within a Business's Unit
7. Creating a Pay for Performance Environment
8. Ensuring Mergers and Acquisitions are Successful
9. Building Your Bench Strength
10. Managing the Baby Boomers
11. Creating a Culture of Service

Ideally, the lead on these teams should be a seasoned HR Executive who believes they have created a sustainable environment utilizing these topics as an instrument for success. They need to be able to share their expertise and stories in a meaningful way that can help others accomplish their goals. Our event will be held October 25-27 at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa. If you are interested or can recommend anyone please let me know at dmcgrath@hr.com.

Vendor News

What's new this week on the vendor side of the business?

Well so much for D.J. Chhabra's contribution at Oracle. This week he showed up at Enwisen. A huge hire for Enwisen, but a major loss for Oracle.

The RightThing, Inc., an RPO player, has signed a multi-million dollar contract for a three-year term to provide RPO services to Unisys Corp. The RightThing will manage hiring processes for more than 2,000 estimated annual hires in non-exempt and lower level exempt roles for Unisys' North American locations. They will also assume some of the Unisys staff.

First Advantage Corporation (NASDAQ: FADV), continues their acquisition spree this time with a global acquisition of Tokyo-based Brooke Consulting.

Workscape creates a strategic alliance with Asparity Decision Solutions, a leading provider of online decision support and data services for the self-service marketplace. By teaming with Asparity, Workscape has incorporated decision-support tools in its Online Benefits Administration solutions, helping employees to be better healthcare consumers and employers to better understand the needs of their workforce and to design plan choices in a more cost-effective way.

Ultimate Software has launched its Compliance Resource Center, a website created by Ultimate to give businesses easy access to information that can help them understand and avoid their risk of human resource-related compliance violations. The Compliance Resource Center can be viewed at http://www.ultimatesoftware.com/compliance.

Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in providing customer care, human resources, and billing services, today announced it has been accepted into the "BPO Services Powered by SAP" program. Convergys, the largest holder of outsourced SAP licenses in the world, is expanding its 10-year SAP relationship to help accelerate and increase its global growth of its employee care business.

And last but not least, below is a response I sent to Roger Herman (The Herman Group) about a recent alert that he published, entitled "Career Security Influencing Birth Rate."

The alert contains some of the following highlights:

When young men and women are more confident about their ability to support a family over a long period of time, they are more likely to marry and have children. When they do not have good jobs or perceive economic and other conditions to be uncertain, potential parents tend to delay having children until they feel more secure. Anecdotal evidence suggests that young people today are even delaying marriage until they feel more stable and secure in making long-term commitments.

As we project these indicators into trends, we forecast that the divorce rate will decline. If people wait until their prospects for the future are stronger, they will approach marriage with expectations of longer relationships. We anticipate that the value set of the Millennials will include expectations of higher commitment levels than experienced by the past two generations. Marrying later, decisions will be more mature and carefully conceived.

To read the complete article, visit here.

My response was this:

Roger I hope you are well. I would disagree with the declining divorce rate. I think divorce is more acceptable and this is the single largest factor driving the rate. Just my opinion but I am sure if we looked at the data you would find for the last several decades people have been marrying later for various reasons yet the divorce rate continues to climb. I personally am more concerned that today's generation is missing the influence of grandparents in their lives. I believe they play such an important role in establishing stability, ethics, and role models.

Have a great week everyone and please feel free to post your comments about my blog, and help me build out my community.


Debbie.

As always please send feedback to dmcgrath@hr.com or call me 905-727-1340 x 104. Check out my blog on HR.com, post comments and share them with other members of HR.com.