The Superstar HR Director

I've just had a research report sent through to me prepared by CFO Research Services titled "The Superstar CFO". 

Anyway, there's two interesting points in it.

First of all, it acknowledges the importance of performance management and talent for the modern organisation.

Secondly, it says "Executives are most likely to call for CFO's (to)...oversee administrative functions like HR". (emphasis is mine)

The juxtaposition of those two lines of thought are brilliant in their irony.  Acknowledging the importance of talent to the organisation, and labeling HR as an administrative task to be "overseen" by someone competent - like a CFO.

Well there's no point crying over spilt milk. This line of reasoning exists because of one thing: business doesn't see HR as being strategic enough / responsible enough / impactful enough to handle the "talent" imperative.  So they hive off the operational aspects of HR and consign it to the "administrative" dustbin, and muddle along or get in consultants to help them with raising the Talent bar.

So how do the best HR departments claim their rightful seat at the table to take charge of the Talent question?

Well, by doing just that - taking charge of it.

With that in mind, what are some immediate practical steps that can be taken to start this process? 

1. Measure the activities of HR staff, and turn those into practical, reportable metrics.  Simple, I know, and it's all been said before, but I have very rarely seen it actually done in practice.  For example - preparing employment contracts?  OK, well we're going to measure them for accuracy, with 100% being the benchmark. We're going to measure them for timeliness, with 24 hours to dispatch being the benchmark.  Get the picture?

2. Link the activities to their business objective (eg, risk minimisation, avoiding legal costs, increasing sales performance, reducing billing errors) using BUSINESS LANGUAGE not HR jargon.  After all, if they don't have a business objective - why are we doing them? Again, many CEOs I deal with end up speaking to outside advisors because they don't get this type of insight from their HR Directors, which is a crying shame.  They want to have a business conversation about how this function will help them achieve more revenue, minimise cost, or enhance the corporate reputation in the short and long term.  Keep it that simple.

3. Manage HR staff according to the activity metrics, holding them accountable to benchmark levels of performance, then show them the actual business outcomes that are relating to their performance.  For example, if the Head of Recruitment is targeted on minimising "new-hire turnover", show them sales results (lower turnover should increase sales performance), the customer service benchmarks (longer tenure should lead to more competent service and greater customer satisfaction), etc.  They need to know the point of it all as well!

4. Give senior management the results, whether they ask for it or not, and shamelessly self-promote yourself.  If your team ensured 100% compliance during the hiring process for 98% of hires and this led to a $107k reduction in the legal costs associated with contested employee severances, then highlight it and report it.  How else would they make the connection if you don't make it for them?  If you reduced the time-to-hire in the sales function from 67 days to 18 days and sales revenue rose by 29%, then don't assume that the executive board will see the relationship - point it out to them.

Basically, what I'm saying is that real, measurable results is how they judge each other.  So if you don't want to be stuffed in an "administrative" corner, get in the ring with them and show them what your girls and guys are contributing.  And if you don't want your staff to behave like administrators, help them understand the business impacts that their roles have - ie what's the point of their job in the first place?

Comments

[Alfy]

Liam, you make some good points here and we in HR should learn from observing what other business support functions like marketing, procurement and IT have gone through. All of us in business have some kind of impact on the businesses we work for, it's a question of working out what that is and ensuring it is relevant to the people from whom we will be asking for bigger budgets, more headcount or, dare I say it, pay rises and promotions!
I've tried to pick up, even as a layman, the money saving attitudes of procurement, the promotional strengths of marketing and the commercial awareness of finance - the IT stuff I may still have a way to go with!