Strong HR Managers?

Today, Human Resources is challenged. It is not just the support function anymore. It is the support function for the business success, decreasing the operational costs and bringing the solutions for the long term and sustainable competitive advantage. The people in Human Resources have to change themselves to become the real contributors to the overall success of the company on the market. Not just the job market, but the market in general. HR needs strong managers, who understand the organization, they understand the business and they understand the people. Wow, mission impossible.

HR under top management’s pressure

Human Resources was a sleeping part of the organization, it was doing its job right. It was hiring the new employees as the managers requested them, it was sending employees for specialized training courses as the managers requested and it was developing the top talents as the top management requested. It was not bringing too many enhancements into the daily managerial job. Yeah, it was running the Performance Appraisals as the bonuses and salary reviews could be distributed “fairly”.

This is changing quickly. The reactive Human Resources is not welcome anymore, the top management asks for the proactive Human Resources management as the costs are allocated correctly, the organization does the right things with its human capital and the shareholders can be sure about their investments in the company. This needs different profile of the HR Manager.

Best HR Managers. Where?

Human Resources is not full of strong and excellent managers. They have many other opportunities to influence the business and the other departments usually pay better. No one was interested in the pure HR career, when the job was not challenging. Human Resources has to advertise the challenges it faces today to attract the best talents available in the organization and on the job market.

Human Resources has to sell its weakness as the advantage for the best talents. When HR is open and it honestly communicates the challenges it faces, it has no issues to attract and retain the best talents from the organization.

Human Resources has to change its career paths as they are not set as the career in Human Resources, but they act as the people management and people related issues management improvement area. Human Resources has to start accepting the rotations from the organization and it has to send the HR employees for the short term and long term rotations to the business units as the employees fully understand the full picture of the organization and they can become the real and useful participant in discussions in the workshops.

The best HR managers are currently in different business units. HR has to learn how to attract them to build a really strong HR Function in the organization.