Download - HR Transformation Network Meeting June 2009

CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

Mortlake Business Centre20 Mortlake High StreetLondonSW14 8JN02 3178 [email protected]

HR TRANSFORMATION NETWORKING MEETING4 JUNE 2009

Ensuring HR has the Rights Skills, Experience and Voice

Facilitated by Anton Fishman, Catfish Solutions Ltd

Notes from Group 4’s discussion and debate

OverviewIncreasingly HR is leading change and CEOs and Boards are demanding more of it. As a consequence HR needs to innovate and support their organisations at all levels of the function. HR people now have to be change agents regardless of their role or seniority.

These requirements over the last few years have demanded significant changes from HR, with an increasing call to ‘professionalise’ the function. But the concern expressed by many HR Directors is that they don’t have enough quality people, people who can demonstrably add value to the business to fulfil these critical demands from the business.

The group debated these topics, illustrated how they and their organisations addressed them, identified best practice and left open a number of critical questions for debate and discussion by the wider HR Transformation Network.


Professionalising HRProfessionalising meaning more than obtaining professional qualifications through the CIPD and other routes. It is essentially about the demonstration of a core set of professional skills, traits and attitudes:

understanding the business

active engagement with the line and operations

knowing the core business issues and drivers

having a well developed commercial understanding and business knowledge

having well developed investigative and analytical skills

being innovative

having the capacity to engage people and take them with them

a strong delivery orientation

a capacity to understand and navigate oneself around organisational, practical and psychological barriers to progress


Professionalising HR These are seen as skills core to all functional professionals – not

distinct to HR. But too few in HR seem have possess the full breadth of these professional skills. And why might that be?

Is it because HR remains too insular in businesses?

Is it that there is now less career flexibility within HR with fewer opportunities for job and functional rotation?

Is it because those who start in HR generally stay in HR?

Are more centres of excellence leading to deep but narrow expertise, not grounded in the business nor broad in its view? As a consequence are HR specialist too insular, too intellectual, too abstract in their analysis, and too inflexible in the design and implementation of practical HR processes?

Has HR cracked the challenge of ensuring that HR Business partners drawn from within the HR community have the business credibility necessary for the role? Are they too often ‘rebadged procedural HR people’ slotted into the role rather than carefully selected people brought in from wherever appropriate from the business as a whole?


Leading Transformation from the frontWhere HR has gained the respect of organisations, proven their value added and earned their voice at the top table it has been because HR has transformed itself first. It has:

demonstrated the courage to do so

cleared out those who do not fit the requirements of the value-added, change agent HR function

carefully selected a new team

invested in the development of its own people

given everyone the opportunity to grow to their next level of experience

used very rigorous performance management

linked functional performance measures to those of its customers and their business performance criteria

and has lead change from the front


Developing the HR professionalBest practice HR Professional development has included:

the identification exceptional HR people, observing and learning from what they do and selecting, training and developing in their image

giving people early and practical experience

providing challenge and support, feedback and space to model, practice, role play and become more proficient

allowing mistake and encouraging the learning from them

creating best practice forums

creating effective channels for knowledge transfer

fostering a learning culture across HR

and encouraging them to take the lead in their engagement with the business, rather than be responsive only, and so generate respect and be valued


Is HR attractive enough to the right sort of talent?

The perception of HR has moved on greatly in the last 3 – 5 years to the benefit of the transformation agenda, but we must still work on being clear about ourselves to our businesses and in developing and strengthening the HR brand.

The continuing challenge is one of supply, with perceptions of limitations on the number of people of the right calibre in the marketplace – a issue that is true for most functions, not just HR.


In conclusion:

The lean HR organisations that emerge from this functionally led deep transformation demand and generate the highest levels of capability, competence and impact. The constraints of resources ensuring that the function stops doing marginal activity to focuses on the ‘vital few’ - only on those things that truly make the difference.

If there are issues, themes, and topics addressed here that you’d like to respond to further then please take the opportunity to post these on the HR Transformation

Network’s Linked In Group Discussion Board.


Download - HR Transformation Network Meeting June 2009

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