HR and Beer - Good Call?

Most of us look for cutting-edge HR practices in the usual places - the tech companies like Google, Fortune's Annual List of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, etc. 

Me?  I'm going to start following Beer Companies.  The greatest asset at SABMiller (Miller High Life, Miller Lite)?  Hops... and of course... uh, people.  And one other thing - HR pros with business chops and even responsibility for other parts of the business. 

From the rarely cited, but always respected, Procurement Leaders:

"Brewing giant SABMiller has appointed Tony van Kralingen as the company’s new director of human resources and supply chain.

The new man, who is currently the managing director and chairman of SABMiller’s South African division, will begin his role on October 1, and will assume the position vacated by the company’s current HR director Johann Nel.

The group currently employ 70,000 staff worldwide and van Kralingen will take on an extension of the role carried out by Nel since 2002.

"Tony's career began in human resources and he has extensive experience of the discipline from his subsequent functional and line management roles" said Graham MacKay, chief executive, SABMiller.

Couple of reasons this seems significant to me.  First, you've got a major HR post that has responsibility for a core part of the business, in addition to HR.  That's a good thing.  Next, the additional part of the business is supply chain management.  If you caught the buzz surrounding Peter Cappelli's book, "Talent On Demand", you know there's a movement afoot to move away from traditional succession planning and take on a pure supply chain management approach to human capital.  Can there be a better example of the two competencies joining together?

Finally, it's important to note that the press release cites van Kralingen as starting his career in HR, then moving to manage a line business.  While the core competencies will also be a part of the HR role, the true players in the HR world, moving forward, are going to have to have some line experience, OR be able to demonstrate competence that they "get" how business works.  We don't have enough of those types in our world...

So, pop one open, kick up your feet and think about how you're going to be able to show you've got competence in how the business world works.  Got a plan?   Good call...

Hat tip to Meg Bear at TalentedApps....    

Comments

[Wally Bock]

Hi Kris. I agree that supply chain management thinking can help manage all sorts of situations besides parts inventory for the factory, especially in the area of substituting agility for forecast accuracy. I see it as another one of those ways we treat people like interchangeable parts and try to engineer the error out of human situations. It all sounds so swell on paper, but this kind of thinking is a bit like Dr. Frankenstein mated with Frederick Taylor.

[Thomas]

I think the real message is that HR needs to understand the business and you cannot learn that through being in HR your whole career.

As far as supply chain management for talent acquisition, isn't this the same thinking that has created RPO? So, is this RPO version 2.0?

[Jean]

I haven't read Cappelli's book, but his Harvard Business Review article (Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century, March 2008) fell short for me because it failed to note that the talent companies need might not be there when they demand it. How does the supply chain approach deal with the shortages in leadership talent, for example, and the expected growing mismatch between required skills and available skills in the labor market overall?

And his contention that succession plans are a waste of time because they have to be updated annually...well, so does the business's strategic plan. Understanding why high potential successors leave, and what will keep them in place--that's succession management and it pays off in retention.

[KD]

Hi Gang -

Wally - agree with you that you can't let the supply chain focus mutate into something the people management gamem is not, but like Thomas, I think (as I know you do) the primary lesson is that you have to know the business as a HR person. Gotta get that focus any way you can, and we don't have enough of it right now.

Jean - good point about the limitations of Cappelli's book. I, like you, don't believe that you should forgo the traditional succession planning route. The big thing I got from Cappelli was that with the breakdown of the loyalty equation between companies and employees, you can't do what companies two and three decades ago did - plow training dollars into lower level talent - because your investment is likely to walk out the door. With that reality, I like to have one foot in traditional activies like successon planning and then see if folks like Cappelli can give us fresh ideas we can use....

Thanks - KD