Do you match up to what business leaders are telling us they want from their HR partners?
By Valerie Hughes-D’Aeth
January 2021
We all want to be effective HR partners to our business leaders - to be held up as exemplary in what we do and to be truly influential. Overnight the Covid crisis threw a spotlight on our profession and there have been some fantastic examples of HR leading the people agenda through these unprecedented times. But how can we build on this influence and take the lead in designing the new world of work, balancing good work for our people with good business outcomes for our organisations?
A recent survey of HR professionals reported that one in five said they lacked the skills needed for their current role and 37% said they didn’t have the skills needed for the more demanding work heading their way. As a profession we’re a bit like the cobbler’s children – great at advising others on their development but not so good at planning our own. Finding time is often cited as the issue, but we owe it to ourselves, as well as our organisations, to invest in our own development. Grab a coffee (or a glass of wine!) and have a think about how you match up to what business leaders really want from you:
1. Do you take a real interest in what’s going on in the world and your industry - reading, watching and listening to as much as you can? Things are changing at such a speed and if we’re not curious and continually learning it isn’t going to be possible to provide valued advice to our organisations
2. Have you challenged yourself to really understand the business you work in? Can you explain its culture, strategy, objectives and key performance outcomes? How would you explain the value proposition? Are you familiar with the products and services, the customers, competitors, partners, other external stakeholders, cost structures and finances, the workforce and what motivates them?
3. Do you take time to get to know your key business leaders, as people as well as their specific priorities? Have you built strong working relationships with them and other key colleagues that can be of real help to you? Colleagues in areas such as Technology, Finance, Legal, External Communications and colleagues across the wider HR community both within your organization and outside of it?
4. Are you clear about your purpose as an HR partner? Are you focused on enabling good work balanced with good business outcomes through ensuring you have the right people in the right roles with the right engagement, mindset, skills and capabilities, and working in the right environment?
5. Are you tech savvy? Do you understand AI, digital transformation and people analytics, and do you know what data is relevant to the success of your organisation? Can you use it with your business leaders as evidence to base decisions on?
6. Is your HR domain expertise broad enough and up to date? Have you evaluated your skills against the CIPD Profession Map (Employee relations, Diversity and Inclusion, Reward, Resourcing, Learning and Development, Organisation design and development, Talent management, Employee Experience and People analytics) and are you challenging yourself to keep developing? It’s not possible to be expert in all areas but take time to know where to go to find help from a colleague or elsewhere when needed.
7. Do you have the other key technical skills you need? Skills such as agile project management, consulting, change management, decision making, complex problem solving, critical thinking, culture change and presentation skills (keeping things simple and jargon free)?
8. Can you improve your softer skills and behaviours? Skills that are transferable like Adaptability, Innovation, Proactivity, Teamwork, Problem solving, Resilience, Curiosity, Emotional Intelligence, Empathy. Do you have the drive, courage, determination and resilience needed and are you prepared to be confident and brave and speak truth to power? Can you understand your different stakeholder groups and their needs and how to specifically target communications to them to best influence outcomes? Are you curious and creative and willing to adapt – taking the business issues, prioritizing them in a pragmatic way (80/20) and using evidence to come up with winning outcomes?
9. Do you role model your organization’s values and embody HR professional standards such as ethics and inclusivity?
10. Are you proactive – using data and evidence to recommend solutions ahead of your business leaders even knowing they need them? Over the last year of the pandemic crisis, we’ve had to be very reactive and our HR reputation and profile has increased significantly. Now is a great time to build on this influence and seal our place at the centre of organization thinking.
