Time to change

During the course of this year I have had the pleasure of meeting dozens of CEO’s who are leading successful enterprises to talk about how to create long term value. I have been surprised by the number of times the HR executive is not invited in the room. That got me thinking! Why is it that so many HR leaders are not at the table? So I started to listen to HR, read HR articles, and asked HR leaders what keeps them up at night? What I found is that HR is talking to HR about HR.

Each year the Henley Centre for Human Resources Excellence, Henley Business School, University of Reading, completes two pieces of original research. The key messages from their most recent research, What CEOs Want from HR, sets the table for a different dialogue between CEO’s and their Human Resources Executive. The key messages for HR leaders are:

1. CEOs expect you and your team to deliver the core HR processes really well, but they don’t care about these processes beyond the fact they are done.

2. What they really want from the function and care about is your support in enabling the business strategy, building the people and organizational capability to deliver the business strategy.

3. They also expect a more personal element to your position. They are under huge pressure in what is often a lonely role. They need someone they can trust, whom they can turn to for confidential advice or just to be a sounding board. For Human Resources to fulfill this personal role, integrity is the key.

After many years working across North America and internationally leading organization challenges in multiple startups, strategic business transformations, exit strategies and M&A transactions the one thing that doesn’t change is change. Tomorrow can be the start of a different conversation between business leaders and the Human Resources leader. The common ground is aligning processes with business goals and outcomes to deliver the business strategy.