What is HR’s Value?December 13th, 2007 |
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In his blog, John Ingham has two recent interesting posts about the value of HR within an organization — placing them at a new level of involvement with business objectives. We’ve been seeing for some time that in many marketplaces, HR is becoming more and more strategic and when its programs are planned and executed well, HR is offering a competitive advantage. Executives are taking the function much more seriously. And HR is increasingly being called into the boardroom to offer business-level strategy, and to defend its overall contribution to organizations.
Ingham points out that traditional business is built on financial capital and customer capital. But in today’s knowledge-based economy, where everyday workplace tasks require many levels of problem solving and judgment, human capital becomes the key to securing bottom-line results.
So HR begins to have a role of not only meeting company objectives, but in setting those objectives. For example, they may set the objective of successfully filling all vacated executive position from within company ranks. This type of strategy (business succession planning via talent pooling) can make or break a company that may be going through numerous executive transitions and team upheaval. It’s all too common a story, where too many new executives in one company (Nortel, anyone?) aren’t able to improve the company quickly enough to please shareholders, because the level of ramp up and change required to get them functioning at 100% capacity is too great. If those positions were filled by seasoned internal recruits, the time needed to improve company processes may be much less.
Ingham challenges HR to move from providing value for money, to adding value, to eventually CREATING value for its organization. Well-thought out employee performance and talent management initiatives can do just that: creating employers of choice by investing in the careers of your employees and demonstrating to them what is expected of them, and where they are headed.
Tags: employee performance management, HR, succession planning, talent managementRelated posts
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