12/12/2005
Convincing superiors of your human resources plan
What would you include in a proposal to convince the board of directors about the relevance of a human resources plan?
This all boils down to one thing: the strategic role of HR as a business partner in ensuring that the company executes its goals and strategies and achieves results. If HR is going to move from the back room to the boardroom, it is time to elevate its role strategically. When HR elevates its role it can demonstrate its efficacy as a business partner to the CEO and the board of directors. As former GE Chairman Jack Welch says in his book Winning, "Without a doubt, the head of HR should be the second most important person in any organization. From the point-of-view of the CEO, the Director of HR should be at least equal to the CFO." The HR plan should reflect this.
The HR plan should focus on, and be aligned with, the strategic and business context of the company. That provides relevance in the eyes of the CEO and board of directors. The core purpose of HR should be to help the company achieve success in the marketplace. An HR plan should be relevant because it focuses on the following three major areas:
-
The company's marketplace challenges and industry forces
-
Corporate goals and strategic imperatives
-
HR strategies and contribution to the business
The last of these, HR strategies, are what will enable the company to execute its overall strategy to accomplish its goals and achieve the desired business performance. They include:
-
Organizational capabilities to leverage and improve (or outsource)
-
Talent strategies - acquisition, retention, development, succession planning
-
Cultural priorities - aligned with the corporate mission, vision and strategy
-
Efficiency initiatives around structure, systems, processes, rewards and recognition, etc.
-
Alignment of the various divisions and business units
-
HR balanced scorecard - as it relates to the corporate balanced scorecard (the "scorecard" augments traditional financial measures of performance by including statistics on customer satisfaction, internal business processes, and learning and growth, which are all related to building the relevant organizational capabilities)
-
ROI and financial effect on business results.
Finally, as a business partner, HR should play a vital role in ensuring that the company executes its strategy and achieves its business goals. Specifically, the focus of the HR plan is ensuring that the company develops and leverages the necessary organizational capabilities to execute its strategies and business objectives. Organizational capabilities, according to David Ulrich, are "the collective skills, abilities, and expertise of an organization." As intangible assets, they are directly related to effective execution. Duplicating a company's human assets and capabilities is a lot more difficult for competitors to copy than product or marketing strategy or technology.
-- MICHAEL ANDREW
Back to top
Professional HR certification training
What are the best Professional Human Resources Certification training programs?
I would refer to the local professional HR associations for that information. In the New England area, I would contact:
-
Northeast Human Resources Association (NEHRA) in Wellesley, Massachusetts. NEHRA offers an HR Certificate Program through which you can earn a Certificate in Human Resources by completing seven day-long seminars within two years of beginning the program.
-
The Society of Human Resource Management, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. The local NEHRA website has information about the different SHRM certificate programs, which include:
-
PHR - Professional in Human Resources
-
SPHR - Senior Professional in Human Resources
-
GPHR - Global Professional in Human Resources
Each program includes a qualification process, examination, and recertification or continuing education requirements.
Ed. note: The authors of this article are members of NEHRA.
I also recommend that HR professionals augment their HR certificates with business degrees or certificates. Remember, the language of business is finance. To be viewed as a credible business partner, good HR professionals should be as comfortable having finance discussions as they are having Organizational Development or general HR discussions.
-- MICHAEL ANDREW
Back to top
Sexual harassment training for multiple locations
Do you have any ideas on the most effective and efficient way to provide sexual harassment compliance training to 5,000 employees at approximately 90 different sites in Massachusetts, without going to each site?
One of the easiest and most effective ways to provide sexual harassment training to a large number of employees in multiple locations is through an Internet-based online program. These programs can cover a number of workplace issues and provide real-life situations that test an individual's awareness and sensitivity to a company's culture, diversity policies, and expectations.
In a typical course, each employee goes through a series of situational modules and then is asked to choose the correct action that should be taken. If an employee chooses the wrong answer, the program tells him why it is wrong and walks him through the correct answer. At the end of the training, each person is awarded a certificate acknowledging that they successfully completed the program. This program can take up to 2 hours per employee, allowing him or her to pause whenever necessary as well as to save, end, and return to the last exercise. Managers have an additional training module.
To find the best online training resource in this area for your company, start your search through the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD). You can also search for "online sexual harassment training" through a web search tool, but be selective as the results are not filtered for quality but ranked strictly by relevance to your search terms. From there you can then research different e-learning vendors and their respective course offerings.
-- JUDY FEUERHERM
Back to top
Dress policies for casual Fridays
Is there any local data or information regarding casual dress policies, or more specifically jeans on Fridays?
Casual dress policies remain a moving target, but there are some practical rules of thumb that may be helpful in determining your dress code policy.
If you are a small or start-up company or have little if any interface with customers or external clients, casual dress, including jeans on Fridays, may be appropriate. Conversely, if you are a professional company and/or have interface with customers or external clients, you may want to consider a more strictly enforced "Casual Friday" requirement or you may want to disregard making Fridays an exception to your normal dress code.
So much depends on the culture of the company and the type of industry. We see companies relaxing their dress code until employees become too informal in their dress, especially on the renowned Casual Friday. At that point, the dress code policy is reissued and occasionally edited to more formal attire requirements.
-- JUDY FEUERHERM
Back to top
Do you have a question for our panel of NEHRA HR experts? Submit it here.
