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No one can predict the future. An executive recently said that a business that took 20 years to create could be gone in two years if it can not adapt quickly to unpredictable changes. Even with this bleak ability to predict the future, we still need to anticipate it or we become mired in the past. HR professionals must understand that to contribute to the future they must add value. Adding value means focusing less on what HR does and more on what HR delivers and to whom it delivers.
Moreover, HR professionals have are responsible for helping their stakeholders get value from HR work. Employees should have a value proposition where those who deliver value get value back. Line managers should be assured that strategic plans are realised by having as much discipline about making strategy happen as crafting strategy. Customers should know that the firm will be organised so that customers buy products and services and increase customer share with targeted firms. Investors gain value from HR as they have confidence in future earnings as reflected in the price/earnings ratios which affects stock price. Communities are well served from HR as firms build reputations for social responsibility and service. As HR serves each of these clients, they deliver value.
HR professionals who deliver the most value manage paradoxes. Traditionally, HR was asked to do one thing;, now they are being asked to simultaneously do multiple things. HR may consider the three primary paradoxes that may shape successful HR professionals in the near future.
Manage both the individual and the organisation
HR professionals will need to manage both individual talent and organisational culture. A trend in HR is to focus on an individual's ability, called talentship, workforce, or human capital. Many have focused lately on winning the war for talent. One person told me recently that the war for talent is over and talent won. Managing talent means that employees are competent, committed and contributing. Competence means that employees have the skills required for business results today and tomorrow. This means focusing on staffing, training, promoting, retaining, and outplacing employees. Commitment means that employees put in discretionary energy and are engaged to the firm. This shows up in commitment indices and productivity. Contribution, an emerging area for talent, means that employees find personal abundance at work. This means focusing on meaning, purpose, identity, and other disciplines that touch employee's' hearts and souls.
But having great talent without teamwork makes turns people into all-star teams who do not work well together. The challenge ahead will be to build both individual ability and organisation capability. Organisation capability deals with the culture and organisation as a whole. Culture deals with the identity of the firm. It focuses on how individual talent comes together in with a common purpose to make the whole worth more than the parts. Culture makes individuals who can do good events into teams who create good patterns
HR professionals must learn to manage both the person and the process. HR professionals who only play in the talent arena and avoid organisations may find great people who do no't make others around them work better. HR professionals who primarily look at organisations may have wonderful systems that lack the individual ability to win.
Connect the inside and the outside
Historically, HR focused inside the organisation on employees and line managers. For example, we have heard the words that a company wants to be the employer of choice. Increasingly, HR needs to connect the inside and to the outside, and change the image. Today, we want to be the employer of choice of employees our customers would choose. This has implications for the movement on building on strengths. No one disagrees that strengths matter, but HR professionals should learn to build on strengths that strengthen others. Leadership competency models should be guided by customer and investor expectations. Norm Smallwood and I have written about leadership brand which defines leadership from the outside/in. It starts with what customers want an organisation to be known for (firm brand), then translates this external identity into internal employee actions and organisation capabilities. If a targeted customer looks at your company's performance appraisal or training programme, will they see the behaviours and outcomes that increase customer and investor confidence in the future of the firm? If your company has a set of values (often created from the inside/out), shift them to an outside/in focus. Take them to targeted or key customers and ask them:
[1] Are these the values that matter most to you?
[2] How do we live the values in ways that are meaningful to you?
[3] When we live these values, would you be willing to buy more from us?
Each of these examples connect traditionally internal HR practices to external customers and investors. By connecting the inside to the outside, HR comes to management discussions with the ability to deliver real business value. Too often, HR professionals see their '"customers'" only as employees inside the firm, not taking into account customers, investors, and communities in which the firm operates. HR professionals who think about value do so by understanding customers. One firm encouraged their HR generalists to spend a day a month in customer sales calls. HR professionals go with sales or account managers into a customer's offices. At first, both the account manager and customer wondered what HR delivered. Then the customer learned that when HR could translate customer expectations into hiring, training, paying, and organising work, customer needs were better met. Account managers were delighted to find longer-term customer relationships rooted in the organisation more than an individual person. And, HR professionals could revisit their HR work to upgrade it.
Deliver both transaction and transformation
Going forward, HR must learn to manage both transactions (administrative and, operational work of HR) with transformation (change, strategic, and long-term work). These are often seen as two different types of operations. The operations require efficiency through technology; the strategic requires transformation through alignment and integration. Just as other functions have gone through separation (finance vs. accounting, sales vs. marketing, information for data vs decision making), HR may split in half. Technology will drive transactions to be increasingly self-reliant and efficient. Contribution will require that embedded HR generalists work well with specialists in centreers of expertise to deliver real value.
We do no't know the future, but we do know some trends that need to be managed to anticipate and create it. These three (and other) paradoxes may help HR professionals position themselves to contribute and add real value.