What Your Personal Board of Directors (PBOD) Thinks HR Should Do to Become Rockstars....

Who's tired of hearing about HR taking the seat at the table? 

So, you’re tired of the game. You’re not alone, as even former SHRM chief executive Sue Meisinger grew grumpy about it, encouraging HR professionals in her goodbye speech to "stop asking, and start taking" the proverbial seat at the table.

Hearing a SHRM chief say that, as I pull my monthly copy of HR Magazine out of the mailbox, is surreal. Think about it. The magazine’s cover tells me I should focus on the subtleties of background checks. Then SHRM implores us to take the seat. It’s like going to the community center for a zoning meeting and ending up at a Hells Angels convention.

Don’t ask! Take!   Surreal...

High-performing HR pros understand there’s no sense waiting for SHRM to tell you what to do. With that reality in mind, I’m going to share some thoughts on the subject. Here’s the catch—they aren’t my thoughts. Rather than give you the usual "blah, blah, blah" from me, I’ve commissioned my own personal board of directors to tell us what HR should do to take the seat. The voices include a CEO, a CFO, a VP of marketing, a director of customer service, a general counsel and a VP of sales—all of whom I have enjoyed working with and for in the past.

The exercise was simple, as I posed the following question to them: "What should an HR manager/director/VP do within the business to gain your trust, be viewed as a valued partner and become a star on your team?"

Here are some things my personal board of directors (or the PBOD, for short) told me HR pros should focus on to become stars, ranked according to frequency and intensity across the assembled group. I’m assuming your PBOD would give you similar feedback:

10. Eliminate every piece of paper I see from your department. Every time your PBOD sees a form from you, it thinks bureaucracy. Automate everything you can to raise your stock in the board’s eyes and banish paper—even if it means documents through e-mail.

9. Know the company numbers as well as you know the policies in the employee handbook. Your PBOD wants you to have a grasp on how the company makes money, and the challenges the company faces in growing both revenue and profit. The key signs that you "get" that as an HR pro are your observations in conversations your PBOD has with you, as well as the little things the board sees from your practice. One executive pointed to the example of candidates for open positions having a firm understanding of the business, based on their initial conversations with you—the talent agent/recruiter.

8. Be a cheerleader, but figure out the ROI of your rewards and recognition efforts. Your directors want you to lead the charge with rewards and recognition because they don’t have the time for it. However, they want more than a cheerleader. They want you to understand the ROI of the programs you have in place, which leads to constant tweaking of the programs based on effectiveness in driving cultural items like engagement.

7. Have your meat hooks deep in talent pools that are important to the business. Your directors want you active in the talent pools they’ll need to tap before they have an opening. That means being an active member of the talent community in their functional areas, or being a facilitator for their involvement. The test of effectiveness in this area is whether you have names of candidates in mind when the next opening occurs on their team.

6. Have your own set of metrics, and do more with it than simply read from your slides in monotone. Monotone was good for Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but it’s bad for an HR pro. Your PBOD will think it’s cute if you have your own deck of metrics that you report on. The board members will look at you with respect if you can tie your metrics to their operating results in a way that makes sense. You’ll know you’ve arrived in this area if they talk to you proactively about what their departments can do to improve, based on the metrics you report.

See the top 5 ways my PBOD told me HR Pros can become rockstars by clicking here and reading the rest of my column at Workforce...

Comments

[Richard Parker]

This is not the time for these cutesy headlines over well-worn topics. How about some substance, such as what the bailout means to workers in each tax category or quotes from the major retirement plan investment houses on the impact of the bailout on ret. plans, such as Fidelity, Vanguard,American Funds and TIAA?

[Sandi Mays]

I am impressed, this is an excellent post!

Here's my 2 cents:
* If HR understands what their customers want, then they can have a seat at the table.
* If HR fails to understand the company and its needs, then why should a company continue to insource the function? The real value in having an insourced HR function is that HR can act independently while being trusted to do what is best for the company. Too often, HR doesn't know what "best for the company" means. If this is the case, then the rational decision is to outsource. Outsourcing can be less expensive, less emotional, and it certainly carries less liability.

[Matt Barney]

I'd like to add a precursor to #10 - how about eliminate non-value added HR processes before you automate them. I fear that government regulations are a major reason HR's inward myopia is loathed by the line. Most of the paperwork has, at it's root, a government bureaucrat at it's root. Governments have distracted HR from what matters.

To take the seat at the table means influencing strategy, (e.g. what talent pools enable us to provide competitive advantage in a way competitors couldn't handle); and executing (e.g. where are our bottlenecks - what part of them is due to human performance).

We have to model ourselves after physicians - diagnosing and resolving business gaps as the way to "take our seat". It's worked that way for me in my various leadership roles, and your mileage may vary.

[KD]

Richard - I know you've commented here before and the comment isn't spam, so work with me here - what's the article on a HR pro getting where they need to be have to do with the bailout?

Sandi and Matt - good points and additions, thanks for checking in...

Thanks - KD

[Jennifer McClure]

Kris - I think that this post/the article over on Workforce is one of your best, and that's a pretty big statement for someone who consistently puts out great content on two blogs daily! I love the way you think, and appreciate you sharing the information you received from your PBOD. Surely a book deal on this subject is in the works! :) You and your advisors have said what HR leaders need to do to be seen as strategic partners concisely and very well.

[KD]

Jennifer -

That's high praise from you. Thanks for the props - keep reading...

KD