Will HR Become More Effective?

HR has the unfortunate tendency to be inward focused; rather than collaboratively engaging cross functional colleagues in HR project design and implementation, they garner sources of information from other HR practitioners to inform their project process. Successful HR projects that drive business goals require the expertise, input and engagement of the rest of the organization. Therefore the CHRP should include a significant requirement to develop a high level of competency in cross functional collaboration, project management and systems thinking. Business acumen is all well and good but of little value if you are unable to discern the need to engage others appropriately.

Of all members of an organization, the HR practitioner should be the role model of collaborative effort and show leadership in the practice of engaging others in business oriented projects. Yet too often, HR is seen as a department that is somewhat isolated and out of touch from the rest of the organization.

If HR associations took a different approach to the surveys they send out regarding the value of services offered by association to practitioners, they would gather radically different input. Send out a survey regarding the effectiveness of HR in their organization, to the non-HR employees and you will gather a very different perception of what needs to be done if HR is ever to begin to garner the respect they claim to want. To get the ‘seat at the table’, a stated desire that gets tossed out there so often will be attained by radical change. Is HR up to that challenge?

Competency Development: Collaboration

Perhaps the most important competency HR professionals can develop is the ability to show leadership in collaboration. Collaboration is often defined as a problem solving competency, another way to look at it is for goal accomplishment.

Rather than viewing collaboration as a means to only solve problems, consider it as a way to develop a business case for a program that you see as innovative and important to the future success of the business. Working collaboratively means access to greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

For the HR professional, this means engaging subject matter experts across the organization to develop the best practice approach to accomplishing a goal. Perhaps your goal is to launch Social Media/Web 2.0 applications in the organization. In order to develop a comprehensive business case for the project you need to access expertise in IT, Marketing, Communications, and Learning and Development.

Engaging others to share their expertise requires that while you are taking a leadership role in developing a collaborative effort, you must ensure that all participants are committed to the success of the project. This requires that you use well developed leadership skills, especially in the competency areas of Emotional Intelligence.

When you are researching information related to the project through the internet Google searches are a very useful tool. A key resource via internet research however is the use of Social Media groups where you can access a vast scope of expertise; join groups that are not specific to HR as you will develop comprehensive and useful information resources by inviting knowledge that is diverse.

To start the discussion of what you ‘see’ as the goal(s) for the project, summarize the information you gather through online research. Ask the participants that you have engaged in your project for their thoughts on that information in relation to integration in your organization and what else needs to be considered.