Creating alignment between HR and your company’s business requirements is the first step towards developing valuable HR best practice, writes Wayne Brockbank
Through myriad books, journals, consultants and professional associations, HR is on a continual drive to identify best practices.
In the midst of our drive for HR best practices, it may be useful for us to recall the basic goal of high value-added HR is to drive business results. Thus, the starting point for best practice HR logic and process is not HR logic and process; rather, HR’s starting point should be business logic and business results. However, three considerations might express that this goal may not be as deeply embedded as we would hope.
Best practice considerations
The first consideration comes from our patterns of conference attendance. Suppose that HR executive #1 returns from a HR conference and announces, “I have just returned from my favourite HR conference and I saw this wonderful HR best practice from XYZ Company. It was a powerful presentation, and I am really enthusiastic about what I saw. Therefore, this is something that we should consider doing.” Compare this to HR executive #2 who works for an oil company and says, “I just returned from annual meetings of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. I came to understand the major trends in the industry. Therefore, these are some of the things we should consider doing in HR to position our company ahead of our competitors.” The former starts with a focus on HR best practices; the latter focuses on the strategic requirements of the business. What percentage of our HR development budget is spent on conferences where we learn about the core of our business, and what percentage is spent on HR conferences where we learn more about HR “best” practices?
Second, the CEO in one of the world’s most renowned fast-moving consumer products corporations recently spoke with his top 60 global HR leaders. The HR community in this company had an international reputation for innovative “best” HR practices. With a wry smile, the CEO stated, “You folks are really quite clever. My fear is that some of you may think that how smart you are is more important than the results that you deliver.” Point well taken.
“To what extent do we in HR love and focus on business or do we love and focus on HR and its best practices?”
Third, several years ago a truly outstanding young man asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him to a leading master’s degree program in HR. After a lengthy discussion, I said to the young man, “Your background is spectacular. Your intellectual and emotional maturity combined with your leadership experience may position you to one day be an important leader in the HR field. But… if you really want to be outstanding, don’t get a master’s degree in HR. Get an MBA. Work in line management for two or three years and then go into HR. You will be spectacular.” His response was a bit disheartening. He stated, “But I don’t want to go into business. I want to go into HR.” I am not arguing against graduate studies in HR, but this episode raises an important issue – to what extent do we in HR love and focus on business or do we love and focus on HR and its best practices? Where are our hearts and minds?
The goal revisited
If we begin with the premise that HR should start with business logic and not with HR logic, then there is most certainly a set of HR best practices which we should fully understand and focus on. And those are the best practices that help us to align – with discipline and intensity – all that we do in HR with the most important requirements of the business.
4 action items
- Understand the fundamental trends in the external market environment of your industry that determine future potential revenue growth for your company.
- Understand how your company creates unique value for your customers.
- Understand the logic and processes through which HR adds significantly to the revenue growth of your company.
- Create the best alignment between HR and your company’s business requirements in your industry.
- Then you will have created a fundamentally valuable HR best practice.
Wayne Brockbank is clinical professor of business at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan
