Dean Carter
April 27th, 2023
HR leaders are taking on more visible, high-impact work today than ever before.
Whether spearheading responses to COVID-19, planning remote work structures practically overnight, or navigating talent strategies through our current macroeconomic challenges and a tight labor market, HR pros are acting more like superheroes.
If I’m being honest, though, that analogy probably wouldn’t resonate outside the HR community itself.
While there has been enough progress that not everyone conjures up images of The Office or Up in the Air when they think of HR, we have a long way to go to close the perception gap.
One thing is clear: it’s time for an HR reboot.
As noted previously when it comes to CHRO representation on boards, HR executives have specific skills and strategic insight that can help companies through the talent challenges that are sure to continue.
If you have ideas about how HR can effectively reboot, or maybe you’ve successfully changed up the role and perception of HR within your company, speak up and share your experience to encourage more people to think along these lines. I’m adding some of my own thoughts below, and I invite you to join in the discussion I’m starting on LinkedIn.
Ideas for rebooting HR to elevate its strategic value
The following are three practical ways CHROs can add more strategic value to their roles.
1) Your piece of the table
In their March CEO Outlook, BCG found that 75% of surveyed leaders identified “talent retention and development” as an area of “significant investment” this year.
CEOs are going to be leaning on HR executives to help navigate ambiguity and change as we’ve seen during major challenges over the past several years, and that presents an opportunity.
HR leaders can and should step outside the executive team to address the whole company more frequently and demonstrate their influence on key company strategic initiatives. We no longer just have a seat at the table – we have several seats and a significant piece of the table.
2) Center on purpose
HR often gets reduced to processes and details that employees see regularly in their work lives: performance reviews, legally required trainings, new hire onboarding, and benefits enrollment.
HR leaders can tie more of these things together and elevate the “why” behind what they do.
In my case, I added “Purpose” to my title so that people inside and outside of Guild can see that I’m the Chief People and Purpose Officer. Helping people grow in line with their purpose is one of the most rewarding parts of the job, and it also happens to generate enormous business value.
3) Prioritize people over process
Terms like Employee Experience have grown to be much more common in the workplace, and it’s about time.
People are by far the biggest assets at a company, regardless of your industry, and HR is shaping every aspect of an employee’s experience with a company.
Even in tough times when companies need to face things like layoffs, evidence shows that the approach a company takes can have an enormous impact on how the news is received — by both employees and the public!
I’m looking forward to seeing what other ideas surface from all of you.
Until next time, be well and be seen.
Dean’s list
- 59% of leaders surveyed by BCG said they plan to take action related to “talent, people, and organization” in response to macro uncertainties — and the top two levers were employee value proposition enhancements and upskilling or reskilling
- Guild’s Chief Marketing Officer on the connection between the company’s rebrand and driving a movement around opportunity
- The new Green Flags podcast explores ideas for developing a more humanized approach to business that works for everyone while driving greater profitability
