HR has heard it all before: CEOs throughout the country do not believe that HR leaders are strategic thinkers, and as a result, they do not believe that HR leaders should be allowed to sit at the same table as other senior company executives to discuss business strategy. Human resources’ ability to predict business demands is reportedly deteriorating rather than improving, according to the experts.
Several CEOs have expressed concern that their top human resources experts are unable to use analytics to estimate the company’s employment needs, are unable to successfully identify new talent pipelines and sources of talent, and are unable to connect personnel planning to business planning. Only 11 per cent of respondents believe their HR team is proficient in these competencies, down from 20 per cent three years ago.
In the study’s authors’ words, “although human resource management should be in an enviable position, in reality, it is losing the race. “Their organisations are changing at a faster rate than they are, causing them to fall even further behind the curve.
HR professionals who are successful with analytics are 6.3 times more likely to have new advancement opportunities than those who are not, and 3.6 times more likely to have a positive reputation with senior business leaders.
Executives in the C-suite are highly aware of the broad business advantages of making data-driven decisions, and they expect HR to apply the same digital advantage to their talent decisions.
In order for human resources to be viewed as a strategic business partner in the C-suite, they must move beyond simply meeting the demands of the current business environment. This includes demonstrating, often through visualisation and storytelling techniques, that their strategy, decisions, and actions are based on solid data, as well as demonstrating how those decisions are linked to improved business results and financial performance, among other things.
Without a doubt, not every human resources professional believes the findings.
When top executives at a firm don’t listen to HR concerns, it can be quite upsetting, as I’ve learned from personal experience. The executives mistakenly believe that our worries are about administrative tasks, but in fact, they are about long-term issues such as developing talent pipelines, immigration, employee drug use, and payroll procedures.
A vicious spiral, says other human resource professionals. They are not provided with the resources they require to transform their reputation as being reactive rather than strategic. And, with a smaller staff, they are forced to concentrate on compliance, remuneration, recruiting, and other critical everyday matters that must be attended to first.
If your company’s HR managers are working in the trenches and dealing only with day-to-day employment issues, you’re most likely understaffed. Many human resources departments, particularly in smaller businesses, are under-resourced, and CEOs frequently exclude HR from strategic planning discussions.
Having Anticipators Is Important
According to the findings of the study, human resource specialists can be split into three groups:
- With line managers, partners collaborate toward achieving joint goals, sharing information with the company regarding talent-issue gaps, and providing human resources solutions to the organisation.
- They establish and monitor policy compliance, respond to company needs and implement the foundational efforts for managing talent that is necessary for success.
- Analytics is used by anticipators to forecast talent requirements, provide insights and solutions to assure a high-quality supply of personnel, and link talent planning and business planning processes.
In their firms, top executives report that 48 per cent of their HR leaders act like business partners, 41 per cent act as reactors, and only 11 per cent behave as anticipators, which they believe is the function that HR should take on in their organisations. According to the study, 62 per cent of HR professionals who were asked the same question responded as partners, 21 per cent as responders, and 17 per cent as anticipators, indicating that they are in the majority.
It’s interesting that both leaders and human resources evaluated the anticipator function as low as they did. Human resources’ self-image has historically been low, but he claims that it has improved in recent years, more so than the perception of top business executives. What he wants to know is whether or not an improvement in self-perception is justified.
While HR may be defensive and claim that they do not have a seat at the table, I would ask them two questions: When and how do you become involved in the strategic planning process, and how do you compare to other functional areas in terms of leading digitally and leveraging predictive analytics, which is both critical and future-focused?
If Human Resources is not involved in strategic planning until after the business planning is completed, top management is indicating that they do not believe HR has the necessary capabilities to perform this function.
Although I believe some senior HR professionals are developing real insights into personnel requirements in relation to future company plans, many are not. While being an HR partner is important, there is a significant difference between that and [being] an anticipator, which has significantly greater value to the CEO. The human resources department goes to the C-suite and presents the strategic benefits of their actions as a proactive strategy.
If you are using data analytics, recruiting data scientists, and otherwise predicting the company’s future needs but are not receiving attention from the top, you need to do a better job of blaring the company’s praise for human resource departments.
The C-suite about how the higher-level analytics your department has adopted have impacted your business planning.
Increase Your Strategic Thinking Capacity
And so, what exactly does it mean to manage personnel strategically by leveraging data, digitization, and analytics?
Imagine digital assistants in the type of Alexa working as virtual coaches to answer questions about benefits, retirement, and paid time off. Alternatives include using a chatbot to provide answers to commonly asked topics among employees. Perhaps HR will give cloud-based services to employees and supervisors that were previously delivered in-person by the department. It is also possible to forecast future talent requirements by using data analytics techniques.
The risk of putting the wrong individual in a position, according to Sinar, is too great for executives who don’t want to take the chance. Management is looking to human resources for information that can assist them in predicting whether or not an individual will be successful in their job.
Alternatively, you might begin testing new technologies and concepts within HR and then share the results with the rest of the organisation to demonstrate your willingness to take chances with the company’s future.
Become an effective adopter by watching the trends and being open to test-driving new technologies, including AI and machine learning, which show some real promise for HR data processing. Trying to persuade the CEO that Human Resources is important isn’t my interpretation of the situation. My experience has taught me that human resources must deliver results and that when they do, the C-suite will take notice.
There are some CEOs, of course, who are less adaptable and forward-thinking than human resources would like them to be.
A critical question for CEOs is, “Am I being truthful with my human resources department?” Similarly, if a CEO does not believe that HR is thinking strategically, but does not provide an opportunity for that within the company, HR will be unable to change that perception went on to say that Human Resources is a direct line of communication between the company and its most valuable assets—its people.
Human Resources is given a seat at the table by CEOs who pay attention, without doing so, the financial aspect of the company will almost certainly dominate the debate and planning, and the organisation may wind up hurting its employees. Although top executives frequently exclude HR from these discussions, their perspective eventually becomes reality and serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy for the organisation.
Improving the Situation: Next Steps
Human Resources workers can benefit from a variety of recommendations in the report, which include the following:
- To get an idea of which function best represents human resources in your organisation, take a step back and consider the following.
- Keep in mind that line managers should be solicited for their opinion.
- Maintain a strong presence for human resources in your organization’s strategic planning process.
- Improve employee engagement and their feeling of purpose and progress by providing business leaders with the support and tools they need to do their jobs more effectively.
- Make certain that your team is developing superior predictive ability.
- Examine the possibility of rotating recognised line leaders both within and outside of the HR department.
- Deploy intelligent human resource solutions to improve leadership effectiveness while freeing up HR professionals’ time to focus on the higher-value-added duties required by their organisations’ missions and goals.
- Improve your HR capabilities in eight evidence-based approaches to help you move toward the anticipator position.
- Strategic planning should be integrated with talent management.
- Per leader, increase the amount of money dedicated to their development and training.
- Make use of a diverse set of data and predictive analytics.
- Consider using a tiered pipeline method.
- Offer high-potential employees the opportunity to participate in programmes.
- When making recruiting and promotion decisions, rely on thorough assessment data.
- Provide access to global mobility.
- External mentorship programmes should be developed.
