Preparing HR for future business role

Today, when top management speak about their expectations of human resource (HR) roles, or when HR departments themselves speak of their goals, buzzwords like “business partner” or “strategic partner” commonly pop up. So what are the key skills and tools that will help HR professionals meet these expectations faster?
The idea of HR as a “business partner” is not new. HR professionals, both external consultants and internal HR, have been on this journey, moving from a functional role to a more strategic role, for some time now. To speed the journey, self-strategising is required. HR staff need to position, plan and prep themselves well.

Positioning
HR need to interpret what their chief executives really mean when they say they expect HR to be their business partners. In the big picture, this means a combination of two things: HR professional knowledge and business acumen.
First, HR professionals need expertise and to be very well-informed about concepts and trends in their fields, whether it is organisational development, human resource management, human resource development or something else. Modern HR professionals must be prepared to deal with hot (becoming warm) topics such as talent management, succession planning, talent engagement and retention.
Second, HR need to be able to understand and translate business issues into recommendations that add value to the organisation. Be careful about this position. This doesn’t mean HR need to be business experts and know every detail of the business. What they need to be able to understand is the organisation’s business model, and how to “draw” the HR world to meet the business model and business needs.

Tips: It is not too hard to understand a business model if you can pinpoint the elements that matter. For a simple yet powerful business model, visit http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com; or read “Business Model Generation” by Alex Osterwalder; or download Business Model Toolbox, which is also available as an iPad application.

Planning
Talking as human-resource experts is not a challenge for HR, but leading and taking a stance in the business area, which is generally an area of non-expertise, can be a real challenge. This takes planning; HR need to come up with a strategy for communicating their combined knowledge and understanding in conversations with management. This is when the new tools and skills come into play, as they will act as bridges between the knowledge (input) and the recommendations (outcome).
The most important new skill is facilitation, which enables a person to moderate a conversation and draw, integrate and formulate innovative ideas based on information owned by persons involved in the discussion, without needing to know everything that comes up in that conversation in depth.

Tips: Facilitation techniques and skills are being taught widely, and there are many groups of facilitation masters all over the world to share their expertise and help build skills. Officially, facilitation is referred to as “technology of participation”.
Check out http://www.icab.be/top/index.html

In modern times, HR professionals – mostly HR consultants – learn and adapt new skills to facilitate discussions with top and senior management, using a wide array of tools to enhance facilitation. The up-and-coming innovative method of business-facilitative-discussion uses visual tools or graphic facilitation. These visual tools are touted as “brain-friendly”. They enhance quality of thought, help people to speak the same language – picture language – and don’t force management to use “HR-speak”. Today, HR consultancy firms have acquired considerable knowledge, experience and skills in graphic facilitation, and have been using these new tools and techniques to help management shape their business and personnel directions.

Tips:
See it and get inspired at http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/
See graphic a facilitation guru at http://store.grove.com
The Grove is a San Francisco-based consultancy and publisher that offers services and tools to help organisations, teams and individuals successfully envision and implement change.
Also check out http://sunnybrown.com. Sunni Brown owns an information-design firm and is a speaker and co-author of “GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-breakers, Innovators and Changemakers”. She was recently included in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business list and was on the 10 Most Creative People on Twitter list. And read the book “Gamestorming” by Sunni Brown.

Prepping
To prepare themselves, HR need to step out and try these tools/skills, which will help create an impact. These skills and tools can be practised and mastered. The links provided in the previous section lead you to helpful resources where workshops, training and even instructional “webinars” are offered. All you need to do is to be open to the new possibilities out there, and do as much practice as possible. Time and experience will help integrate your knowledge, skills and techniques in using these tools and techniques.
In summary, HR practitioners in the 2010s are required to help executives and senior management create strategic people moves that make a difference to the business through their HR insights and business acumen. To do this, HR need to explore and find ways to create an impact in the new world, using the best available new knowledge and concepts (both in HR and the business field), skills (especially facilitation skills that will enable HR to take a significant place in the strategic business conversation), and tools (such as visuals and graphics).

Story by Orapun Parapob, senior strategic human resource and organisational development consultant at APMGroup. You can send your comments and feedback to
[email protected].