Can HR fulfil its promises?
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390680000852 |
| Pages | 3-3 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Robert Bolton,Sonia Storr |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
3
Volume 5 Issue 2 January/February 2006
STRATEGIC COMMENTARY
,
Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and
its direction for the future
DEPARTMENTS AT A GLANCE
STRATEGIC COMMENTARY
,
e-HR
,
HOW TO…
,
PRACTITIONER PROFILE
METRICS
HR AT WORK
REWARDS
,
RESEARCH AND RESULTS
,
,
,
,
F
or more than 20 years we have
debated the role of HR and how
best to achieve it. HR functions
have pushed for a place at the top
table, outsourced administrative
activities, rebranded practitioners as HR
business partners and placed them in
“centers of expertise.” But an air of
disillusionment has emerged among
many senior executives – “Don’t talk to
me about being strategic when you
can’t even get the basics right,” they
say. Has HR promised too much and
delivered too little?
Impotent HR
Within HR too, there’s unease that it
hasn’t yet achieved the ambitions it
envisaged. The structures and processes
may have changed, but instead of being
empowered, many HR practitioners now
feel disenfranchised. They are working
hard to deliver their promises, but are
being held back. One of the key
elements at the heart of this issue is the
need to bridge the gap between the
skill sets of the “old” HR practitioner
and those of the “new.”
Raising the skills game in HR
So, what are the new skill sets that HR
practitioners require? Leading business
thinker Professor Gary Hamel says that
“the problem with HR is that, unlike the
finance function, it does not have a
single, accepted theory about how it
adds value to the business.” To
some extent, while HR is working hard to
align and support the business, it is, in
effect, being reactive to it. By failing to
advance their own view about how their
actions drive value, HR professionals are
not being proactive.
This is the key differentiator for
“successful” HR. The difficulty, though, is
that unlike finance, the way outcome
value is created from people is different
in each organization and marketplace.
However, the principles are the same and
it’s these principles that should inform the
approach taken to building HR’s
development.
Identifying HR’s key attributes
Discussions often focus on the capabilities
that HR practitioners should develop,
with change management skills and
business acumen at the top of many
development plans. However, capability is
just one element of a broader range of
skills developed by the best HR
professionals. We developed the “Four
Cs” model of desirable attributes for HR
professionals:
1. Capability: use business acumen to
shape HR activity, think strategically,
engage employees, facilitate change
and exceed expectations.
2. Credibility: establish authority
through previous achievements,
experience and interpersonal impact.
3. Career management: proactively self-
Robert
Bolton
is associate
partner at
the People
and Change division of Atos
Consulting. He also lectures at
the University of Bristol, UK.
manage career and operate with
political astuteness to maximize
effectiveness.
4. Character: demonstrate fundamental
leadership qualities including
integrity, resilience and
distinctiveness.
The combination of these attributes
enables HR to develop and operate the
value model that effectively drives
superior performance of their
organization. The key is the ability to do
this uniquely for each organization, as
market leadership is not achieved by
copying others. While capability is
important, the new HR practitioner must
possess the broader set of attributes
described in the Four Cs model.
Achieving your potential
HR has achieved much towards
changing its role over the past 20 years.
Having reshaped its structure and
processes, HR has increased its
contribution in many organizations.
HR professionals must now be brave
and address the personal challenges of
developing these new skill sets. This will
provide them with the platform to
answer Gary Hamel’s challenge and
create an accepted theory about how
they create value and – importantly – put
that theory into practice. Only then will
HR professionals fulfill the promises they
made to themselves and their companies.
Can HR fulfill
its promises?
Robert Bolton and Sonia Storr of Atos Consulting discuss how HR
must develop new skills in order to continue facilitating value creation.
Sonia
Storr
is a senior
People
and
Change consultant and HR
transformation specialist at Atos
Consulting.
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