HR for HR: Are your skills up to scratch?
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Pages | 2-2 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390680000851 |
| Author | Josie Salkey |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Volume 5 Issue 2 January/February 2006
2
FROM THE EDITOR
,
CONTACT
Josie Salkey
E-mail: josie.salkey@melcrum.com
,
HR for HR: Are your
skills up to scratch?
period of growth. Find out how they did it in Focusing
HR on growth at Harley-Davidson.
As well as focusing on hard, bottom-line financials,
strategic HR professionals must also have a thorough
understanding of the more intangible, cultural
elements that impact business performance. In
Implementing a customer-focused strategy, Clive
Hicks and Rory Gear of Summit-IMM describe how
the UK Environment Agency refined its internal and
external communications to improve employees’ and
customers’ experiences. By establishing key
performance indicators and a set of value generators,
the Agency’s employees are now more customer
focused. Turn to page 20 to find out how creating a
wide range of performance indicators can help your
organization improve its customer offering.
Finally, HR practitioners won’t realize their strategic
potential without working in partnership with
colleagues in other functions. In this issue we share an
example of how HR worked in a cross-functional team
to successfully deliver a major change project affecting
over 9,000 employees across the US. Read the full story
in Enhancing staff payment systems at Hughes Supply.
Enjoy this issue – and if you have thoughts or
feedback on articles in this issue or any other HR topic
do get in touch.
The average job description for a senior HR
professional has changed dramatically over the past few
decades. No longer the bastion of transactional
processes and employee administration, the
responsibilities of the director or VP of HR are
markedly different. Large corporates seeking business
know-how and strategic-level experience are
increasingly looking outside the HR function for their
next HR leader. In this issue we bring you some insight
on “HR for HR” – make sure you’re developing the
capabilities you need.
Business first, HR second
For major pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a
new, streamlined HR function meant intensive training
to develop HR’s business knowledge. Workshops
helped create a mindset shift for HR: “businessperson
first, HR person second.” Find out how the function
restructured and retrained in Transforming HR for
strategic impact at AstraZeneca.
With the shift of HR to a more strategic role, much
day-to-day people management responsibility has been
devolved to line managers. As Ray Baumruk of Hewitt
points out in Why managers are crucial to increasing
engagement, HR has a key role to play in helping
managers become effective people managers. HR, for
example, needs to ensure that managers are assessed
and rewarded based on the development and
performance levels of their staff.
Focusing HR on value-adding work
At the world’s leading HR functions, the senior HR
professional has a high level of business knowledge and
the ability to focus the HR team on the most impactful
initiatives. For example, by taking a diagnostic
approach to examining its HR offering, Harley-
Davidson was able to uncover areas of priority. By
focusing on these areas HR has become a more
strategic function and helped the business continue its
Josie Salkey
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