Nowadays, the executive suite does not want to listen to Human Resources theory, nor do they have patience with employee advocacy. It is not that executive stakeholders are indifferent. They just accept that there is a labor burden including employee relations, benefits, compensation structure, and all those personnel administrative tasks delegated to Personnel.
They do not necessarily consider these tasks as management issues any more. If management means taking, sorting, and archiving, HR software should be handling that. However, if management means identifying, developing, and strategically placing talent, the C-suite has new demands and expectations for HR.
They call it Immersion.
Corporate leadership expects Human Resources to immerse itself fully in the business’s operations. They expect senior HR personnel to learn and understand every job function in the operation. They want them to understand each job description, to analyze functions and the talents required, and to understand process and measure performance.
Immersion takes time and talent. It is one tool that exposes leadership to all aspects of the business’s operations, but it is not the only one:
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software integrates the product planning, manufacturing flow, and sales/marketing – usually in manufacturing operations.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to the software and technology that support corporate values in customer relationships. Direct contacts – in person, on phone, or online – are integrated to forecast trends, needs, performance, and budgets.
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) are software applications implemented to plan and assess a specific learning process often preferred by the Department of Defense as a SCORM model (don’t ask).
So many tools, so many decisions!
Executive leadership drives HR leadership in an increasing number of mid-sized companies to build and develop personal and departmental strengths in:
- Revenue growth
- Productivity improvement
- Quality improvement
- Customer satisfaction
- Employee and customer retention
Human Resources has, for the most part, been a relatively closed system. Having been assigned to keep trouble away, it did its best to harness its data and harvest the low-hanging fruit. No one asked their opinion about how HR could affect significant performance change, so they did not volunteer.
A new accountability
Now, HR has a new accountability if it wants to sit at the table with the rest of the leadership at news conferences and stakeholder meetings to explain what it has done to add to business outcomes. The audience and inquisitors have gotten a lot smarter about Human Capital Management and want answers.
What Operations has always known is what HR is learning. That is, productivity measurement is not merely an outcome; it is also a cost. And, until HR analytics integrates archival data with cost accounting, it is not a player at the executive table.
- Learning must have a measurable Return on Investment (ROI).
- Human Capital must show some depreciation.
- Lower the cost of training and raise the ROI on knowledge acquisition by bringing learning inside.
- Develop scalable metrics that measure recruiting, learning, and talent management as tangible assets.
It is not fair for HR to dismiss executives as simply number crunchers when HR cannot measure the tangible in the intangible assets of human capital. HR is not positioned to tell colleagues that theory and compliance issues trump performance outcomes. HR will be sent back to the shop to figure out a way of doing what their colleagues want.
HR professionals have valued strict compliance, and they have been taught to color inside the lines or face the fatal consequence of litigation. But, in business operations, change is good. And, with change occurring at meta-speed, HR will need to get ahead of the curve or die.
The software that integrates all these needs is out there. It is customizable and scalable, and it easily shares with the front and back rooms, the top floor and the work floor. However, the Human Resource professional needs the education, experience, and open-mindedness to find and embrace it.
