The times are changing and HR is witnessing not just incremental, but a revolutionary change. HR professionals need to adapt and evolve with the changing needs of organisations to take their business to the next level.
In 2014, Ram Charan in his Harvard Business Review article ‘It’s Time to Split HR’ highlighted some radical points on eliminating the position of CHRO and splitting the HR into two strands i.e. HR-A (Administration) and HR-LO (Leadership and Organisation). In his views, HR-A would primarily look into payroll, compensation, and benefit and report to the CFO. and The HR-LO, on the other hand, would focus on people capabilities and would report to the CEO. His recommendations were based on his observations that CHROs
-Can’t relate HR to real-world business issues and
-Don’t know how key business decisions are made
He highlighted, how CEOs of the world are desperately looking for a trusted partner in their CHROs. A partner who possesses the necessary skills to link people’s decision and the business numbers, visualise the future of work, and build organisational capabilities.
“We all know that times are changing and there is an increasing need to adapt and evolve with the ever-changing forms of competition. Over the years HR has definitely evolved and matured as a profession.”
The article definitely raised eye brows in the fraternity. However, four years have passed and it is evident that majority of the HR Leaders are still grappling with issues of relevance and introspecting on ‘Are we there yet?’ We all know that times are changing and there is an increasing need to adapt and evolve with the ever-changing forms of competition. Over the years HR has definitely evolved and matured as a profession.
Lot has been written and discussed on HR taking central stage and being business relevant. We all know that HR has moved through several stages of evolution. Dave Ulrich, one of the Key Thought Leaders in the HR field, categorises this evolution into four waves-
- Wave one: HR Administration-Focusing on terms and conditions of Work, Regulation
- Wave two: HR Practices-Design of innovative HR practices in sourcing, C&B etc.
- Wave three: HR Strategy-Business success through strategic HR
- Wave four: which is still emerging, is about using the HR practices to respond to and create value for the business based on external business realities.
For most organisations wave one and two are well established and most of the HR Professionals thrive in this space. But the next orbital change for HR in Wave three and four will take significant time and effort. While most HR Leaders would acknowledge its need and understand its relevance, yet many will miss out on the execution framework or find challenges in building consensus within organisation.
While there are relevant concerns that HR professionals are facing in their organisation, individual HR Professionals need to ask themselves if these are ‘skill’ or ‘will’ issues that are restricting them to move forward. Also, being an effective HR professional is not just about knowing the body of knowledge that defines the profession but being able to apply that knowledge to business challenges. So, how do we change this reality? As they say, ‘When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you’ HR Professionals need to reimagine HR beyond HR. Today the challenge is not about scarcity of talent alone but retention and recognition of traits like agility and adaptability of talent to take up job that doesn’t exist in the present scenario.
HR professionals need to be rainmakers that can transform people’s thinking and actions in the organisation. If the organisation re- quires speed, creativity, innovation, and leadership as its core capabilities, the goal of the HR function should be to deliver such capabilities in the organisation.
With technology and analytics, evidence-based HR has become increasingly important. Decisions are more analytical and investments are easier to justify. Paradoxical as it may be, the very devil of quantitative analysis that many HR professionals avoided to get into HR, will hunt them for the rest of their lives!
“While there are relevant concerns that HR professionals are facing in their organisation, individual HR Professionals need to ask themselves if these are ‘skill’ or ‘will’ issues that are restricting them to move forward. Also, being an effective HR professional is not just about knowing the body of knowledge that defines the profession but being able to apply that knowledge to business challenges.”
Gone are the years where the primary tasks of an HR department involved administering payroll and employee benefits. While they are still important, the scale that balances significance of duties has surely shifted towards envisaging interventions that impact organisational capability.
For the HR fraternity itself while we may be custodians and champions of talent framework, utilising similar initiatives in creating talent pipeline within the HR ecosystem, skilling young aspiring HR professional, working on standard curriculums for universities, advocating in having HR from multi-discipline could go a long way in building HR leaders of the future who have the necessary skills and business acumen to change the face of HR.
“HR professionals need to be rainmakers that can transform people’s thinking and actions in the organisation. If the organisation requires speed, creativity, innovation, and leadership as its core capabilities, the goal of the HR function should be to deliver such capabilities in the organisation.”
