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This a typical conundrum related to HR’s reputation.
In its 2018 “100 Best Companies to Work For” issue, Fortune magazine published an impressive array of stories on what organizations are doing to engage their talent. In many of the “100 Best” stories, HR likely plays a key role. But was the HR profession cited as a constructive force?
Not so much. Instead, that same issue produced the feature article “HR Is Not Your Friend. Here’s Why.” The premise of the article is that HR works primarily to protect the interests of the company and senior management team rather than of employees in general.
Although the article takes HR to task for many of the ills in the modern workplace, it also notes that “many [HR professionals] point out—and employment lawyers do too—that you don’t read about the many everyday cases in which HR does its job well.”
In order to better cope with this conundrum, HR needs to take stock of what it does well and what it could and should do better. In this section, we take a deeper look at what HR does well, what it should do better, and how it might improve.
In our '2018 The Advancing HR Function' report, we found that only 27% of responding HR professionals said their functions were well prepared to thrive over the next three to five years. Similarly, in our 'Workforce 2020' report, only 11% of the respondents said they'd made significant progress toward building a workforce capable of meeting their 2020 business goals. Generally speaking, HR has a lot of work to do quickly in order to prepare itself and its workforces for the near future.
In The HR Blindspot Report, we gathered and contrasted perceptions from HR professionals and employees. We discovered that, generally speaking, HR does not view itself in the same way that employees do. We defined three typical HR roles: Regulator, Advocate, and Strategist. Although HR must play all roles well, it most commonly views itself as a Strategist. Employees, however, most commonly see HR as filling the role of Regulator. In other words, there's a serious disconnect here. If HR is going to succeed in the future, it will need to convince the rest of the workforce that it is more than a rule-enforcer and paper-pusher.
In 'The State of HR Skills and Education' report, we discovered that HR suffers from some major skills gaps. In the original survey, we asked two questions:
We examined the various factors that separate those who consider themselves experts versus those who consider themselves as less proficient. Experts are far more likely than others to:
HR professionals may not be prepared yet, but they overwhelmingly feel that they need to move from an administrative past to a strategic future. In fact, only 8% expect HR to stay the same over the next five years. Half indicate that HR will be transformed into a much more strategic function, and another 39% thinks the function will split in two: one that handles strategic issues and another that handles administrative issues.
The following are suggested practices for organizations that wish to improve in this area. Of course, every organization is different, so only adopt or adapt the ideas best suited to your circumstances.
Wouldn't it be nice to find a future article in Fortune's 'Best Company to Work' For issue with a title something like: "The HR Heroes That Drive the Best Companies"? To achieve something like this, HR needs to continue to change its role, its skill sets, and others' perceptions of what it does. In short, it must (like so many other functions) learn to excel via a transformation process.
HR professionals must take control over their own development. Not only do they need to hone their functional skills, they must ramp up their expertise in business skills and strategic thinking. HR leaders cannot maximize their value unless they master the same skills required of any successful general manager. They must create insights around their organization's talent capabilities, and senior leadership needs to view these insights as indispensable.
Technology is moving to the front and center for all corporate functions, including HR. New and improved HR applications pop up regularly across every phase of the talent life-cycle. Used wisely and strategically, these technologies can increase both HR effectiveness and efficiency. But it can be daunting to decide which of these technologies will have the highest payoff and how to best implement them. To make better purchasing and implementation decisions, HR professionals require greater technological and project-management savvy.
High-quality metrics and analytics give HR professionals the power to answer the two critical questions from senior executives: Do we have the quality and supply of talent to meet our future business goals, and which of the multiple HR practices that are available will have the highest payoff? To be a strategic player, HR must be able to supply the answers.
An excellent HR professional can anticipate the role that talent will need to play in driving the business forward. Every year, most organizations spend hundreds of hours on strategic business planning. Too often, these plans are made in the absence of a knowledgeable and data-loaded talent management professional. Therefore, the connection between business strategies and the talent required to execute them is often lost in translation. Instead, HR is asked to prepare workforce plans after strategic planning been completed. This leaves HR leaders holding the proverbial bag when business plans fail due to a lack of an educated talent management perspective. Top HR executives need to ensure that they are involved at the early stages in order to maximize the chances of strategic-planning success.
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