Sorry to spoil your melancholy, or interfere with your inherent HR inferiority complex, but HR as a career is alive, well and going from strength to strength. The future holds both great challenge and great opportunity as much for aspiring HRD’s as it does for new HR apprentices. Whilst some may harbour a hope that they no longer need us, others observe with envy our influence, zeal and capacity.

Article by Graham White – Interim HR Director

HR experts assert on their organisations as long as Gallup surveys continue to reveal that less than 15 percent of new generations of employees around the world are engaged at work HR needs to exist, develop its staff and evolve career succession planning. I am tired of reading articles that tell people not to consider a career in HR and that my profession is dying or already dead. Like a blinding flash of the obvious a week can’t pass without some aspiring “futures’ thinker” seeking a cause announces like it’s a great new revelation that HR is Dead. If only they had taken a moment to search the internet they would have discovered ninety two million, six hundred and twenty seven thousand, three hundred and ninety nine other articles or references already exist declaring this worst kept secret. I still smile at the quote from a leading consulting house which declared a number of years ago that “while HR is not exactly drinking in the last chance saloon, it is perhaps sipping a glass of chilled wine in the bar next door.” With leaders of industry and commerce increasingly recognising the competitive advantage to be gained through people, anyone considering a career in HR needs not worry about their long term career opportunities, instead they need to make sure they are, like so many in the profession today alive to the evolving realisation that they need to be fit for purpose and capable of delivering exactly what is needed in a time of great opportunity.

I still remember, with a wry smile, sitting in an interview process, in which I was seeking a new HR Manager. Without exaggeration, every single candidate interviewed that day informed myself and the rest of the panel that they were “not a typical HR person”. When probed, each informed us – using a range of definitions – that they were very different from your “run-of-the-mill” HR professional and were “unlike” the rest of the candidates we would see that day. In monotone, each informed us they would add value to our organisation. Unfortunately however that’s where the thrill ended. The applicants all sought, quite profoundly, to claim to add value yet none were able to extrapolate that in a manner that persuaded the panel that they were credible applicants for the role. Also, for the record I take exception to anyone in my profession defining themselves as both ‘not typical’ and “better than average” when comparing themselves with the wider HR fraternity. All this does is create a negative image of the wider HR profession, which isn’t helpful for anyone. It implies the ‘typical’ or ‘average’ person in HR is sub-standard and reinforces the outdated perception of ‘personnel/welfare’ as a 3T’s service (Tea, Tablets and Tissues). Have you ever heard a Finance or Production Director say they were not typical? Good HR professionals at all levels from trainee to HRD don’t waste time labeling themselves as “strategic” or “adding value” or “commercial” they are too busy being strategic, actually adding value and always talking about their organisation and what its purpose is.

So now we have cleared up any confusion about the longevity of the professional of HR and if you are genuinely seeking to advance your career or coach others into our great profession let me add my advice on what I believe HR needs from its members whether future HRD’s or budding apprentices. The unfortunate reality today is too few people start their vocational planning by picking HR as a career and this results in mediocrity to often becoming acceptable. Far too many fall into our profession by accident and discover the art of focusing all of their efforts on “administrivia” and lack vision and strategic insight into what HR can really do. Our history is riddled with insipid powerbases supposedly constructed on integrity and fairness, but actually simply relied on making organisations perform tasks they would otherwise ignore, such as meticulously recording performance, documenting problems with employees and preventing managers from recruiting people they know are the right fit for vacant posts. In spite of HR living through every Global Human Resource opportunity from the great depression to the recessions of 2001 and 2008, we still have much to learn and more to do in our evolutionary journey. Throughout my career in HR I have given five simple pieces of career development guidance to everyone who has asked me “how do I advance my career in HR?” From deputy directors of HR to aspiring students and I am reliably informed that there are as many who did not take my advice as there are those who did take it. And similarly there is a natural correlation with those who went on to HR success and those who have either left the profession or stagnated in their original roles.

It pays to know your Business, a cliche for sure, but in every HR department I have led, it has been my paramount purpose to ensure every member of my HR team has a deep knowledge and understanding about what our organisation does, how it measures success and what its common workplace issues are. Secondly, measure everything: HR needs to help organisations make sense of all things human. Successful HR professionals at every level must be able to mine their organisations data to solve classic HR problems and predict everything from good hires to successful project teams, to minimise absence costs and identify best performers. HR must set the agenda on people management and, in doing so, it must have both the appetite and ability to gather, analyse, interpret and solve HR issues using credible data that will stand up to the challenge of others. Next, highlight HR contribution in financial terms (ROI). During my time in the public sector, my HR team worked very hard to convince the organisation that improved employee attitudes led to a better customer experience and in turn, to higher productivity and reduced cost. Unfortunately this does not seem to be a natural occurrence in all HR teams. An inherent desire to calculate the value of HR activity in a financial way does not seem to be as obvious a requirement as I would have liked. Consequently I have made it my professional goal in every organisation I have worked in to present HR as a profit generator, rather than an overhead cost. Many HR teams fail to calculate ROI, even though other organisational functions have been expected to do this for decades. Yet with the help of enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) HR has access to copious data on turnover, productivity, and other factors that can be developed to support the quantification of the HR contribution in financial terms. A simple example showed that in one organisation I worked for, HR delivered an attendance management initiative that resulted in an annual, seven figure financial saving by reducing unplanned absence and consequently reduced the additional cost of agency staff.

It’s very important to always be alert to time-wasting initiatives. I still smile when I recall a prospective CEO I was to work for lamenting that his HR department had had “more pilots than British Airways”. There is little compelling evidence that HR needs to change at the alarming speed many of its members feel it should. We must not become adrenalin junkies or worse Cheerleaders of change, enjoying the thrill of launching initiatives rather than delivering credible business contributions. There is a picturesque waterfall at the start of the Kalahari River. The noise and visible spectacle is both deafening and awe inspiring. Rainbows rise out of the water spray and light flickers and dances in each splash. At the other end of this magnificent river is the Kalahari Desert, where the river doesn’t actually end, it just seems to gradually fade out and slowly and silently disappears without as much as a whisper. I think I have just described more than 50 percent of HR initiatives launched in organisations across the UK. And finally, a useful initiative is to blend the long term with the immediate. Traditionally, one of HR’s biggest challenges has been supporting business strategy. With an inherent need for structure and bureaucracy, HR struggles with organisational strategy that regularly changes. Yet we need HR professionals to embrace the concept that strategic direction is a moving target. We need to be able to reconcile the immediate pressures that businesses face while still progressing the longer term initiatives that will reshape the organisation and remove the problems in future. Many HR colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with have previously attempted to explain away any previous lack of HR career opportunity by suggesting it was the fault of previous HR leadership. My response to this common excuse is to quote Edmund Burke who said “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

www.linkedin.com/pub/graham-white/a/230/508

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