Well, now…don’t just stand there, pull up a seat! HR, we are happy to have you at the table.
Now, more than ever, we need Human Resources to successfully guide organizations. Recently, businesses have struggled to overcome the health, economic and cultural ramifications of the pandemic. Through it all, HR has been the change navigator. HR Leaders proved to us they are the key in holding it all together as the world changed, then changed back differently. Businesses are depending on HR now more than ever to take the lead and reimagine the way the future will work. HR as a result needs to develop new capabilities to effectively address these changes and maintain their strategic foothold of a seat at the table.
HR is not a back-office function and a cost center.
CEOs are beginning to understand they can no longer consider HR as just a back-office function and a cost center. Executives are taking notice that, in order to better impact their bottom line, they must invest in their people. After all, salaries, the cost of employee turnover, legal employment liability, and damaged reputations are the highest cost to an organization. They can no longer create budgets without including the cost of employees. With humans being your highest expense already, why not ensure you’re getting a return on investment by providing your employees a happy place to work? If we took a magnifying glass and looked closely at today’s most successful companies, we see the one thing in common: happy people!
The Great value in having HR at the table.
Organizations stand to gain a lot of value from having HR at the table. Having a seat at the table allows deep insight into the minds of the leadership team and the expectations of the business strategy. After all, HR needs to be given the strategic vision by the Executive team to assist with budgets, training plans, and talent sourcing. Oftentimes, messages get tied up at the highest level and never make it down the line to managers. This leads to wasted resources with an operations team out of sync with its Leadership. However, when your HR team is viewed as a strategic partner of the business, HR can bridge the communication lines and align the vision.
As the Hiring Shortage Increases, Talent is King!
Do you want your customers to love your brand? Then they need to love your company and the people within it. If this is the case, finding, attracting, recruiting, engaging, and developing this talent is mission-critical work. As the talent shortage heats up, elite performers are increasingly scarce and acquiring and retaining top talent is as paramount as capital allocation.
HR needs to talk the talk
To bring the executive level of strategic vision and business acumen to the company and eventually earn that coveted seat at the C-suite table, many HR leaders will need to reinvent themselves and gather more expertise in business operations. Where we talk about “feelings” in HR, Executives talk about “ROI” or “investments”. A modern, strategic HR leader who is trusted at the table by business executives must have a keen understanding of how the business works, the key drivers of profitability, and how to effectively communicate this knowledge to everyone else. The strategic HR leader must be intimately familiar with how the organization earns a profit, the people who empower it, and what those leaders need to be successful. Executives, in turn, need to respect that humans don’t operate like a machine. Unlike a software program, they make choices very opposite of how you program them. No matter how much you try to have things go perfect in your employees, they are humans. That is where mitigating risk and the human strategy of your HR team can make a huge impact to your bottom line.
HR needs to Know the Employment Economy
Your CFO should know the health of the current stock market at all times. HR needs to know the current unemployment rate, the ETI composite Index and your current turnover rate. They should at all times be watchful of market impacts as it pertains to employment. One great place to start in this endeavor is to leverage the knowledge of your TA agency partners. Most executive search firms, for example, are deeply invested not only in the success of an individual recruiting project but also in gathering vital industry data and conveying insights to their clients. The key is to treat your agencies as true partners and talent advisors. Tell them your business needs, and request this important information. When you do, you’ll be more empowered than ever to propose solutions to your recruiting organization.
Let Agency 8 be your ally for Recruiting insights, talent shortage preparation, hiring tools and your hiring needs. From running salary surveys to training Managers, how to interview, we got you covered. Reach out to us today at team@agency8recruiting.com