Improving the capability, impact and voice of HR - output from breakout group, HR Transformation Network meeting London June 2009

1. Mortlake Business Centre 20 Mortlake High Street London SW14 8JN 02 3178 2034 enquiries@catfishconsulting.com HR TRANSFORMATION NETWORKING MEETING 4 JUNE 2009 Ensuring HR has the Rights Skills, Experience and Voice Facilitated by Anton Fishman, Catfish Solutions Ltd Notes from Group 4’s discussion and debate Catfish Solutions Ltd

2. Overview Increasingly HR is leading change and CEOs and Boards are demanding more of it. As a consequence HR needs to innovate and support their organisations at all levels of the function. HR people now have to be change agents regardless of their role or seniority. These requirements over the last few years have demanded significant changes from HR, with an increasing call to ‘professionalise’ the function. But the concern expressed by many HR Directors is that they don’t have enough quality people, people who can demonstrably add value to the business to fulfil these critical demands from the business. The group debated these topics, illustrated how they and their organisations addressed them, identified best practice and left open a number of critical questions for debate and discussion by the wider HR Transformation Network. CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

3. Professionalising HR Professionalising meaning more than obtaining professional qualifications through the CIPD and other routes. It is essentially about the demonstration of a core set of professional skills, traits and attitudes: understanding the business active engagement with the line and operations knowing the core business issues and drivers having a well developed commercial understanding and business knowledge having well developed investigative and analytical skills being innovative having the capacity to engage people and take them with them a strong delivery orientation a capacity to understand and navigate oneself around organisational, practical and psychological barriers to progress CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

4. Professionalising HR These are seen as skills core to all functional professionals – not distinct to HR. But too few in HR seem have possess the full breadth of these professional skills. And why might that be? Is it because HR remains too insular in businesses? Is it that there is now less career flexibility within HR with fewer opportunities for job and functional rotation? Is it because those who start in HR generally stay in HR? Are more centres of excellence leading to deep but narrow expertise, not grounded in the business nor broad in its view? As a consequence are HR specialist too insular, too intellectual, too abstract in their analysis, and too inflexible in the design and implementation of practical HR processes? Has HR cracked the challenge of ensuring that HR Business partners drawn from within the HR community have the business credibility necessary for the role? Are they too often ‘rebadged procedural HR people’ slotted into the role rather than carefully selected people brought in from wherever appropriate from the business as a whole? CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

5. Leading Transformation from the front Where HR has gained the respect of organisations, proven their value added and earned their voice at the top table it has been because HR has transformed itself first. It has: demonstrated the courage to do so cleared out those who do not fit the requirements of the value-added, change agent HR function carefully selected a new team invested in the development of its own people given everyone the opportunity to grow to their next level of experience used very rigorous performance management linked functional performance measures to those of its customers and their business performance criteria and has lead change from the front CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

6. Developing the HR professional Best practice HR Professional development has included: the identification exceptional HR people, observing and learning from what they do and selecting, training and developing in their image giving people early and practical experience providing challenge and support, feedback and space to model, practice, role play and become more proficient allowing mistake and encouraging the learning from them creating best practice forums creating effective channels for knowledge transfer fostering a learning culture across HR and encouraging them to take the lead in their engagement with the business, rather than be responsive only, and so generate respect and be valued CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

7. Is HR attractive enough to the right sort of talent? The perception of HR has moved on greatly in the last 3 – 5 years to the benefit of the transformation agenda, but we must still work on being clear about ourselves to our businesses and in developing and strengthening the HR brand. The continuing challenge is one of supply, with perceptions of limitations on the number of people of the right calibre in the marketplace – a issue that is true for most functions, not just HR. CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD

8. In conclusion: The lean HR organisations that emerge from this functionally led deep transformation demand and generate the highest levels of capability, competence and impact. The constraints of resources ensuring that the function stops doing marginal activity to focuses on the ‘vital few’ - only on those things that truly make the difference. If there are issues, themes, and topics addressed here that you’d like to respond to further then please take the opportunity to post these on the HR Transformation Network’s Linked In Group Discussion Board. CATFISH SOLUTIONS LTD