Meeting the Challenges of HR
One of the reasons I love consulting job is I have the privilege of going to so many companies, and really trying to figure out what’s happening in the field of human resources today. What a great opportunity. And I’m so grateful for literally hundreds of HR professionals who teach me far more than I teach them. But as I go around, one of the things I’m running into is a very common challenge. Let me frame it with a question. And if you’re thinking about what’s happening in the field of HR, in a nutshell, think about this question. What’s the biggest challenge I face in my job today as an HR person? What’s the biggest challenge I face in my job today?
When I run workshops and seminars, I often begin with that question. And here’s what I often hear.
- Gaining credibility.
- Getting access to the senior manager.
- Winning the war for talent. (This war for talent is continuing no matter what the economic cycle is.)
- Redefining an HR practice, to do better training, to do better compensation, to do better work redesign.
- Redefining communications.
- Restructuring the HR department.
Whatever you put on your list. As I’ve thought about that list, what I’ve begun to discover is that there are four circles. In HR, we’re beginning to move from the second circle to the fourth circle and the first circle. Now let me go through the second circle.
The second circle is what I call HR. In tradition, when we’ve thought about HR and what our challenge is, it’s related to HR, either gaining personal credibility, either doing an HR practice better, or finding some way in HR to do what we do and to do it well. I think for years that was the right model. And we’d see models of HR that would say it’s staffing, training, compensation, communication. And that’s what HR is about. I think we in recent years have moved up to the second circle.
The third circle is strategy. What we’re now doing is moving. What we’re doing to accomplish and deliver against a business strategy. Here’s the question. Ask yourself, what’s the biggest challenge in my job today? Is it talent, compensation, credibility? Use a two-word phrase so that moves me to the business level, so that I can deliver business value. That means meeting the financial goals, meeting the customer goals, delivering a business value that helps us be successful. In the last decade, I think we’ve tried to go from activity to the outcome connected to the business. In the recent economic crisis and in recent years, with demographics and technology and globalization and economic uncertainty, I think we now move to the last circle, which I’m simply going to call context. The context is some of the economic conditions, we face regulation, we face inflation, we face deflation, we face technology changes, we face industry changes, we face demographic changes.
The fourth circle on the right is the one that I’ve been intrigued with lately in the world in which we live, because HR must go from activity to strategy to context. We are feeling more demand than we’ve ever felt. Almost every HR professional I know is saying my job is tougher today than ever. I must do more with less. I must be more productive; I must help my company manage change faster. In HR we are often on the front lines of that change. In a growth economy, we’re pushed to find people to do work in China and India and Vietnam and a down economy. We’re the face-to-face person at taking out head count, at managing cost. All that bears an emotional burden.
The fourth circle is giving care to the caregiver. We NHR are the caregivers of our company. We’re the ones who must have the heart and the soul that helps our company manage that value chain. And we need to take care of ourselves to make that happen. And some of the recent thinking we’ve been doing is how do we in HR have the resources to provide help with the demands that we’re facing? When we have resources to respond to those demands, we’ll be successful. And that’s what we need to be able to build. So, what’s the biggest challenge in my job today? Circle four, to do good HR work, to be credible, to build good practices, to build good HR organization. So that I build a business strategy and help the strategy happened. So that in the world we live in, we respond, and we adapt. Well. Because of going down to the first circle, I have managed my emotional well-being. I’ve taken care of myself, and I’m fit and able to be a successfully our professional. When we see the lineup of those four circles, I think we’re going to be more successful in the work that we do.
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