Four Groups

Regina Miller wrote a great piece on the ‘Value Added Attitude’ of HR and the fact that this is a subject that Regina “could blog on for hours on this topic, but will stop here. I will come back to this again and again.” Anyway, the three tips follow;

Tip 1: Now this is not new stuff…this is the baseline and if you are not operating from this perspective and strategic framework, you are way behind.

Tip 2: If you don’t see one of HR’s main responsibilities in the business as the facilitators of strategy alignment, strategy deployment and strategy execution, then you are in the wrong job.

Tip 3: So, if you are feeling like your HR group doesn’t have the right “attitude”, then you need to ask yourself what has to be done to get it? Make sure you are working on the right things so the organization has the capabilities to execute on the strategy. Make sure you deliver what you say you will. Make sure all that you do is connected, integrated and relevant to the business.

I guess we’ll both be writing for some time to come…

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Watmuff and sharing a chat over coffee (Tim’s looking to move to the South West in a senior HR role, so if anyone can help, please get in touch). We spoke about a variety of different things but the key theme was that of culture, change and working internationally.

The one thing that struck me during the conversation was the contrast in cultural and commercial outlook and how a company’s values have such a bearing on performance. Tim’s had a fair amount of experience with Japanese firms and he introduced me to the ideal of Nemawashi. The definition below is from Michael Phillips.

The process of making changes in Japan, a truly cooperative-self examining culture, is called nemawashi. The word refers to a tree transplanting. The tree is dug to the roots, wrapped and left in place. It is then taken out of the hole and left in place near the hole. A week or more later it is moved to the new site and placed next to the hole, where it waits again until it is put in the hole.

I think this bottom-up or covert approach offers a superb complement to the often relied upon top-down or overt styles of leadership that are practiced and preached so frequently on these shores. Perhaps there is an ideal balance between them both?

Following on from the previous post, my curiosity was roused by Paul Kearns‘ comments in the same article. He states;

HCM has to show a direct causal connection between effective HR strategy and bottom-line business performance, but because HR is failing miserably to take up this challenge, when push comes to shove - such as the advent of OFRs - no-one will give it house room.

If we take Paul at his word, I wonder if there are any good examples, case studies or HCM champions that people would recognise or have been ‘outed’?! Quoting directly again from the article;

Randal Tajer, a senior HR executive at financial services firm UBS, said most reporting on staff-related issues does not really inform investors and reflects badly on HR. “There’s lots of ‘data’ out there, but no ‘information’,” he said. “HR wants the respect of a discipline, but not the discipline of a discipline.”

These comments remind me of the apparent paradox that we featured recently in the post “The Strategic Perceptions of HR“. The fact remains that HCM would appear to be caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to adding value and being seen as strategic rather than operational. Alternatively, perhaps HR needs to improve on its ability to sell itself internally?

There’s a great haircut over on Ian McKenzie’s site

There are more rumblings about the Accounting for People (AfP) taskforce. In an article entitled “Taskforce members ignore own advice on people data” we learn that;

…close inspection of their [BP, Compass Group and ITV] most recent annual reports reveals that some only pay lip service to their staff in their main documentation, with as little as two paragraphs on “employment” in the case of ITV. BP has just one paragraph on “human potential” in its report, although there is quantitative data on staff employee issues. Compass includes only five paragraphs on staff in its 105-page annual report.

I happen to believe that AfP is a hard internal sale and as a consequence of this, the take up is slow or non-existent. On a positive note however, one might conclude that some reporting is better than none and the first step is always the hardest.