In our discovery sessions with company executives, we blueprint their enterprise value chain across all business functions: Sales, Marketing, Operations, HR, Finance, and so on. We’ve noticed in many cases that the head of Human Resources tends to be very tactical and administrative (benefits administration, EEO and other regulatory compliance, policy, etc.) and not very strategic and transformative (change champion, learning & knowledge advocate, performance accountability, productivity czar).
There is an enormous opportunity for the HR function to make a significant difference in the business.
I happened to read several articles over the last few days that call for HR to take a more strategic role in the business:
From the WSJ: How HR works with R&D to build on an innovation strategy
From Harvard Business School: HR’s new Mandate: be a strategic player
And I’d like to point out that our top most-visited blog articles are HR related! They are:
So what’s the call to action? Help your organization see the entire value chain across all business functions, through all layers of the business. You’ll find most roads lead back to people-related value drivers and you’ll quickly show just how strategic HR can be. From there you can see how better visibility, alignment, and focus on performance and value creation will impact both the top and bottom lines.
