Are HR Projects Like IT Projects?
The McKinsey Quarterly article on “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” has spawned a lot of reaction on my part. One statement seemed to lay the talent management function firmly in the lap of HR:
“Only HR can translate a business strategy into a detailed talent strategy: for instance, how many people does the company need in order to execute its business strategy, where does it need them, and what skills should they have?”
This got me thinking about how IT interacts with the organization on it’s projects. I’m not a fan of expanding the role of a CIO to be CEO-like. The same thing holds true with HR. I’ve personally gone through the cycle of having an HR VP suddenly gain power and importance because of this logic- it was more disruptive than helpful because the HR VP wasn’t equipped to handle CEO level issues.
Rather, ALL executives need to become more HR/talent management savvy in order to translate business strategies to talent management strategies. To simply put the burden on HR to do this is similar to the move toward having the CIO attempt to prioritize projects across many departments without a PMO and executive governance board- very difficult, if not impossible, to do.
The question of where and what skills are required is deeply ingrained in the hiring manager- the task of HR should be to collaborate with the hiring manager to determine and fulfill the hiring manager’s needs, much as an excellent IT developer collaborates with users to fully understand what they need.
Do you see parallels between how IT and HR projects are handled in an organization? What is an HR “project”? Does a VP of HR and CIO have to have CEO-like capabilities related to determining and executing strategies? Can a PMO and governance board arrangement play the same role in HR talent management projects and IT projects? Frankly, I’m new to the HR discussion- those experienced with HR functions, help us out!
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I am not a fan of HR assuming a role that reaches beyond the behavioral sciences. That is, HR is best equipped for talent acquisition that aligns to fulfilling the goals of the strategy, and can help people acquire some skills, but in the end the talent has to be judged by business unit’s management.
It has been my experience that HR can help with determining the number of staff to fill the ranks, but in the end the department themselves best know what they need. They live it everyday.
Sensei- the more I think about this the more I see parallels with HR and IT in terms of the service orientation they must have towards the rest of the organization. Also there are similarities in terms of understanding the mind of the “served” as much as possible in order to do the best job they can.
That has to be the stupidest statement that ever came out of McKinsey! I spent 25 years as a recruiter and another decade teaching line managers better hiring skills and in most instances HR has neither the knowledge nor the business acumen to detail staffing needs for any project, tech or not. HR’s preference for controlling staffing budgets has more to do with amassing organizational power than with its ability to translate strategic initiatives into action. Staffing needs and talent acquisition, motivation and retention is the province of line management at every level.
There is an irony here in that in many cases, HR and IS are lumped into “overhead” in terms of accounting.
Certainly HR has evolved away from the traditional approach of “helping employees fill out forms”. For companies going international HR is indispensable in regards to working with other cultures. Generally they become the focal for training people how to communicate with new team members with not only different backgrounds but with different cultural frameworks.
However, the PMO should still be the focal point that communicates the constraints of the operating environment for the business. Too many times the disparate cultures become the excuse for dysfunction.
Miki- I can always count on you to tell it like it is. I agree completely as you might have noticed. Glad to hear someone chime in who has direct experience with this. What do you think of Sensei’s remarks about “HR is indispensable in regards to working with other cultures”?
Sensei- the “indispensable in regards to working with other cultures” is something I wish my HR department helped us out with on my Korea project in 1997. Turns out they knew nothing about Korean culture, business or otherwise. We had to stubb out toes quite a bit before realizing how important it was to understand historical, cultural, and language issues related to getting out work done.
I think that Sensei is right given an HR organization of the caliber of IBM’s. I also think that that quality of HR can be counted on two hands and MAYBE a foot. I certainly don’t believe that it applies to the majority of companies.