Finally My Place at The Table: OOPS Someone Took My Chair

For all you aspiring Vice Presidents of Human Resources I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that CEOs are recognizing the importance of HR. The bad news is that they are tapping non-HR executives to fill those roles. According to an article in the June 23rd issue of The Wall Street Journal more and more large companies are opting to fill the head HR position with executives who "know the business" as opposed to an HR professional who "... can get hung up in the process and forget what the goal is." These large companies that have tapped non-HR execs to head HR include Microsoft, Qwest, Avnet and athenahealth. (A side note to yesterday's post on Aggressive Recruiting. Microsoft is aggressively going after Yahoo employees. Perhaps this is because Microsoft's chief HR person was running a business unit and took this competitive approach to HR.)

The article said this trend reflects "... a perception that some traditional HR professionals lack the deep understanding of business and financial issues that CEOs increasingly want." The article quoted a headhunter saying "Many organizations are looking for their HR leader to be able to understand in great detail the business and the challenges of the business." Well this as always been a complaint about HR and the self-admitted shortcoming of many people in HR.

So how do you keep this from happening to you? Here are my recommendations:

1. Get out of human resources! No not permanently, but try to take on some other responsible role in your organization in order to learn the operational side of the business.


2. Learn the financials of your business, of business in general. If you skipped those finance classes in school go get the education.


3. If you can't move within your company, take on a responsibile role on a volunteer board. Take a leadership role. (I posted about this earlier here.)


4. Pay attention to your industry beyond the HR aspects. Read industry periodicals. Read the marketing and operations stuff.


5. Track trends. Become a futurist.


6. Speak up! Make observations, make suggestions. Get paid attention to. Be a resource for solutions in general.


7. Take on the hard assignments. Volunteer.


8. Lastly, do what you are currently doing VERY WELL. If you don't know your own craft and you do slip-shod work no one is going to care what else you do.

Well those are just a few suggestions. What else should be on this list?

Measures and Metrics: What Is Your Discernable Impact?

Today's issue of the Staffing.org newsletter had an article entitled
Beware of Death By Metrics. The folks at Staffing.org are all about metrics.
In this case, as they relate to staffing. (Good site by the way.) But in this article they point out that getting caught up in measurements and metrics for the sake of measurements and metrics will get you nowhere. It will not get you the attention that you desire from the C-Suite. Many departments use, or over use, measurement to increase department efficiency. However, as they state: "...if you happen to be wearing all these additional measurements like merit badges and hoping senior management will notice, we have some bad news. They aren't, they won't, and career-wise you will eventually suffer death by metrics." There are two reasons according to Staffing.org "...first, the modest-at-best interest that C-level staff have in your efficiency; and second, the poor financial correlation between the efficiency implied by your staffing department's measurements and the success of the enterprise as a whole."

As the article points out "At the highest level of a well-run company, departmental efficiency is a management given. Decent managers are expected to be efficient. It's the low bar to staying employed." So being efficient, measuring what needs to be measured is important, not because it makes an impact, because it is how you keep your job. "C-Level staffs spend most of their time focused on the things that will have the biggest impact on the organization's success as a whole."

The author of the article then states, "The high bar for being recognized as a star manager is making a discernible impact on the annual report." What a great statement. For the people at Staffing.org that discernible impact for a staffing department would be "...focusing relentlessly on staffing's core functions: locating and hiring splendid people, at a reasonable cost, as quickly as possible. "

DISCERNIBLE IMPACT! What a strong and succinct statement. Spend some time today and think about what you are measuring in your HR department. Is it to make you more efficient? Good thing, you need that to keep your job. But are you measuring the one thing that will make that discernible impact on the bottom line of the organization?

If you truly want that ever-sought "place at the table" that is what you will have to do to get there.