HR vs. the Line Manager

There is often an elephant in the room when we talk to our clients. They want to improve their delivery of People Strategy, to create change in their HR functions, and to deliver better services and greater value to their businesses. But any change that is made, any new plans in any of these areas have a direct impact, and place specific demands on line managers. Yet we find they are hardly talked about other than to say ‘and we’ll need to communicate this to the line’ or ‘there will be technical training for the line’. There is an underlying assumption that people management is part of the line manager’s role (true) and that the business understands and agrees with this (not necessarily). And here’s our elephant; how can HR deliver any form of change without fully engaging with the line manager question?

Let’s make something clear though. This isn’t about training line managers on how to complete performance review forms, or even how to give feedback (important as this is). It’s about a culture of people management, not form filling. A mindset that not only is people management part of the role but that doing it effectively is critical to business performance. Not a one off programme, but a way of being.

So how to start? Put the elephant at the heart of the discussion. It’s not an HR programme to deliver the People Strategy, it’s a business programme. Ask the business what they think, work with line managers to define a standard of people management for your business that everyone buys in to. Map what good looks like in the delivery of this so that you can see where people’s gaps in capability are and help them fill them. Go back over the data you gather and reframe it so it tells you how well you are doing as an organisation at managing people and the impact this is having on your bottom line. And use all of this to decide what kind of HR service you need to deliver, without once having to hear ‘you’re just pushing activity to the line’.

Line manager and HR harmony? Possible.

What can HR learn from Google?

A whole bunch of internal discussions at Orion Partners around our research on People Strategy development,a post from KI on Demand, and The Economist, and a pretty dull book on Google lead me to ask this question.

In the simplest of terms Google helps its users find better and faster answers to problems in places users did not even know to look. Could HR do the same for CEOs?

Google is an advertising company that captures the information on the web, analyses it in a unique way, and presents users with fast clear insight into their problems / questions. Through complex data mining programmes it interrogates the seemingly impenetrable www, and uses its knowledge of how the web works to offer more relevant and insightful answers.

In many ways organisations are like the www. It can be hard to really know what is going on, and what new solutions and opportunities to grow might be buried within. Over the last 5-10 years HR functions have gained access to mountains of employee data, and new ways of capturing people metrics. If the function developed the right data mining skills could it identify new capabilities and strategic opportunities that business leaders could harness? Our work looking at how the best businesses develop their people strategies and use people data to shape the business strategy suggest they could.

The rise of fields like social network analysis in companies, and the recent takeover of InfoHRM by Success Factors suggest the HR profession might be taking baby steps in this direction.
So what are these ‘baby steps’ that the leaders in this field are taking? We are finding that the functions doing this have:

• Explicit approaches and tools to manage and assess the knowledge that drives execution of their business strategy (e.g customer and market awareness, or codified approaches to change)
• HR leaders who participate in the formal and informal processes around business strategy development
• Skills like statistical analysis and research embedded in the HR team, often in centres of expertise or central people strategy teams
• HR professionals who see part of their role as to actively network both across the business units they support, across HR, and outside HR with business leaders in the industries they work in
• They support innovation in strategy development and across the business (more on that in a later blog)

Our research on this area will be published in late September 2010.

What’s the story behind your data?

In our recent research on metrics and strategy we had several debates about the old, old question of how HR gains influence and a “ seat at the table”. Now like me, you are probably sick of having this debate but a couple of interesting snippets came out that I thought would be worth sharing with you.

Part of the discussion focused on how we present data in a way that resonates with the client. In our research, I remember one interviewee from an Investment Bank commenting that for the Corporate Financiers they would always go along with a detailed power point pack. Mirroring the pitch books that the managers themselves would use when persuading an external client. However, with the traders they took one sheet of paper with the key facts and benefits. These ideas are not new but are often neglected.

As a result of the research we have taken this concept a step further; our idea is to articulate the story behind the date. Rather than just presenting the data what is the story? And how do you tell that story in a way that is relevant and engaging to the client? What is the data actually telling the manager in their terms NOT in HR terms? This is putting yourself in the client’s shoes. Not only presenting the data in a way that makes sense to them but also ensuring the data leads them to the “right” conclusion. Obviously not to manipulate but to take the client along the path to make decisions that meet business goals. The idea of data telling a story is a way of tapping into both the right and left-brain functions. Opening the way to deeper more holistic decision-making.

It’s easy to get caught up in our own needs and style when presenting ideas. Matching the client is much more likely to get you the result you want.

`Great People Strategy – it’s not just the ‘what’, it’s the ‘how’?

There’s ‘our strategy’ and then there’s ‘what we do around here’. In theory these should be one and the same, so why is that there is so often a gaping chasm between what’s captured and communicated as the People vision for an organisation and the reality of what actually happens on the ground. In our experience , those organisations that succeed in making their strategy a reality are as focused on the way in which they formulate their plans, bring them to life and ensure they stay relevant as they are on the content itself.

Relevance – it starts with a deep understanding of the business you’re in, how it is changing and evolving and the ability to articulate the key people imperatives and levers you need to pull to drive improvements in business performance. There needs to be a clear line of sight between the what an organisation needs to achieve and the tangible activities that make up its people agenda. If the line cannot see these connections then the commitment to making it happen won’t be there either.

Relationships – the business knowledge and understanding we’ve cited as critical are not just a function of business acumen. It’s about HR having the right quality of relationships, types of conversations and the credibility to influence and shape business stakeholder’s thinking. The way in which individuals engage with their business colleagues and the level of challenge they can provide plays a key role in ensuring that HR is an active contributor rather than passive recipient in the process.

Balance – in our experience successful people strategies get the balance right between the need to address the challenges of the here and now with a focus on those elements that sustain the organisation. We all know that horizons are ever shortening and that the unpredictable nature of the future organisations face drives a need for pace and agility. However there are a number of distinguishing characteristics which lie at the heart of an organisation’s success. Call it culture , call it organisational DNA – but ensuring that these elements continue to be strengthened and built upon whilst having the flex to meet shorter term requirements is important.

Measurement – we’ve seen organisations who would score reasonably well against the elements we’ve mentioned above . However, where the best of intentions often falter is the lack of discipline in monitoring progress and in measuring success. The old adage of what gets measured gets done ..... We’ve certainly seen organisations getting beyond the hygiene factor of tracking activity – but relatively few who are able to combine human capital metrics and other business performance data ( eg sales, productivity) to create powerful insights. ( for more detail see our recent www.orion-partners.com/essential-guides)

These are just some of the prerequisites we believe need to be in place to believe make a great people strategy – but it’s a view that we want to test further. So , we’re conducting a piece of research to really get to the heart of what the best organisations do to make their strategies live and breathe and how they ensure they have capability within their HR function to deliver.

We already have a number of high profile participants – but if you’re interested in getting involved – see the following link for more details www.orion-partners.com/research-overview

Transforming HR – what’s next?

I hear that question quite a bit from HR quarters these days. It’s as if.. now we’ve done the Ulrich model, what’s the next big idea?

Is this fuel on the fire for those who consider HR folks too fond of fads, inwardly focused or bored by getting on with their jobs? Not for me - I hear a great question, even if the apparently boring answer is: “It depends...”

That’s simply because the best HR functions are rightly determining what’s next by understanding and responding to the specific needs of their businesses. This contrasts with two decades of HR transformation efforts that have largely centred on the adoption of a generic Service Delivery model. Not that there’s anything wrong with a generic model when it is both broadly applicable and promises benefits that are widely needed – such as the improvements in service quality and efficiency, and the bolstering of strategic HR capability, that have been prime goals of Ulrich-inspired transformations.

Right now, however, it is time to make the model really work in practice, and in a specific organisational context – and that is not a matter for a common template. So what does it look like? Among our clients and in our research, I see three stand-out features these days...

HR is without doubt working its strategic muscle harder, shaping with business leaders the People Strategy that will support achievement of business strategy and goals. HR’s role here is much about ensuring that business strategy is not just “ink on paper” - after all, it’s people that implement strategy so the right capabilities, climate and mindsets must be in place – and people’s efforts aligned - to vouchsafe its execution. HR is becoming recognised as the steward of this thoroughly strategic agenda.

Increased innovation in the creation of HR Solutions to deliver the People Strategy - be it solutions to engage employees, attract and nurture key talent, build a collaborative enterprise, develop tomorrow’s leaders, grow globally and... well, It depends. By its very nature, an organisation’s People Strategy is a distinctive and specific enabler of its own business goals in its own context. There is no single big idea here no matter what the proponents of various solutions might want HR to believe.

A targeted approach to enhancing HR’s Execution Capability. While there’s been some Ulrich-bashing – and organisations have not always reaped the benefits promised – this is not the time to dump the model or seek another panacea. But it’s no time to rest on one’s laurels either. The pressure to improve HR’s execution capability is mounting – not least because there’s that People Strategy to deliver. We find organisations addressing this in different ways depending again on their business needs – as well as on how the implementation of a transformed Service Delivery model has panned out so far in their context. Many are focusing on building their HR leadership and business partnering capability; others are automating more and in different ways. For some, there are opportunities and drivers to leverage HR operations from one region into other parts of the globe; others are adjusting the mix of in-house and outsource solutions. Quite a few are re-thinking the role and scope of Centres of Expertise; and there’s more...

...In this blog, we aim to explore the rich variety of transformational activity that is going on, and what will make the next big difference in HR’s contribution to the business agenda. We know there is no single “big idea” here. What’s right for one organisation is not necessarily so for another – “it depends”. But that’s far from a boring answer to the “what’s next?” question. It’s exciting evidence that HR functions are now tuning in better to the specific needs of their businesses, and worrying less about what a chorus of gurus might be saying. Which was sort of the point of the “Ulrich model” in the first place, wasn’t it?