Is HR a part of your board’s winning strategy?

Too often boards aren’t able to carve out enough time for the HR Committee. It’s easy to forget. And boards know this. On average, boards spend about 11% of their time on talent management, but 53% of directors want to increase that number. So, what’s stopping them?

The challenge is that board directors need to better understand issues such as talent management and succession planning to appreciate how they can add value to the HR Committee.  Board directors also need to know how to speak the same language as HR executives so they can collaborate together.

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So, what do directors need to know to make their HR Committees more effective?

  1. Understand current trends and practices in executive compensation
    Executive compensation practices change frequently. Board members need to have cross-functional expertise and stay abreast of the latest industry trends to stay competitive.
  2. Effectively manage CEO succession planning
    Succession planning sometimes gets pushed aside until it is suddenly very urgent. Creating smart succession planning strategies not only improves the quality of talent acquisition, it also makes boards more effective.
  3. Leverage HR Executives
    Your HR executive has expertise and insights that can dramatically change outcomes if you know how to work together. Building a strong relationship with your HR executive is key.
  4. Better understand talent management
    Every day, organizations lose talent because there is no clear path to career advancement. The board should engage in talent management strategies that will retain star players who will deliver strong value to shareholders.
  5. Create a culture at the board level that promotes transparency
    Lack of culture or bad culture on boards can be not just toxic to the organization, but deadly. While culture is hard to pin down or define quantitatively, it’s one of the most important factors for board success. Directors must exemplify the values of the organization and increasingly work to improve transparency, which is the best way to communicate values across business units.

And lastly, it’s helpful for board directors to learn more about each of these items, but they can have a much greater impact if they learn them alongside their HR executive. That’s one great step towards building a better relationship and being on the same page, working with the same context on challenges throughout the year. We recommend directors and HR executives pair up to attend Rotman’s Board Human Resources Committee program to learn together how they can better deliver HR strategy.

Getting HR a Seat at the Leadership Table

Human Resources is often the department that people don’t think about until they need something, and then they need it immediately. But HR professionals know that great HR work requires long-term strategy and planning, a year-round set of tactics for talent development and succession planning, and being recognized as a valued partner in the organization. ­­

And that last item is a key factor for HR success. So how do you get HR a seat at the leadership table as a valued business partner?

Link HR to business strategy

You know that HR is a key element of the overall strategy for your organization, but you also need to make sure that your counterparts in other departments or divisions understand the value of HR and how they can work with you to achieve strategic goals.

Think about how pieces of the HR portfolio such as succession planning, culture change, or even compensation impact other key strategic priorities. As a senior member of the HR team you need to not just be aware of what other areas of the organization are focused on but how HR can contribute to their success. By breaking down silos, you can position yourself and HR as a valuable resource, allowing them to rely on you for insights.

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Integrate leadership development and succession planning

When a senior member of the leadership team leaves, organizations can be left scrambling for a replacement. It can be difficult to get your board of directors or leadership team to commit to long-term strategies for leadership development or succession planning, but the pay-off is more than worth it.

In helping the board plan for the future, you will again gain valuable insights into the larger organization, as well as information you can use for other projects such as culture building and change, talent management, performance alignment, and more.

Make HR strategy part of organizational strategy

The more closely you work with and contribute to other areas of the organization the better you can incorporate pieces of the bigger picture into your own long-term strategy and other pieces of your HR toolbox. The relationships you build across the organization should be like a feedback loop: your work on talent management, culture and performance alignment and compensation should have a direct impact on larger strategic objectives. And the outcomes of that larger strategy work as well as those priorities should feed back into your priorities.

The reason HR often isn’t seen as a key partner of the organization is because it is siloed or not considered a contributor to overall success. Your challenge is to remind people that HR is more than hiring, firing, and benefits. HR is a key factor in strategy, in the longevity of the organization, and can drive innovation and change by embracing formal strategies and frameworks. Over time you need to better incorporate elements like workforce planning, leadership development, strategy alignment, and employee engagement in new ways that are more meaningful to the larger organization.

It’s up to you to learn how you can best effect the perceptual shift in your organization that will make HR a valued partner at the table, truly seen as not a cost centre but a profit engine.  Rotman’s Strategic Human Resource Management program allows for the exploration of latest research, best practices and thinking in areas such as business and human resource strategy, leadership development, talent management and succession planning.

5 Questions to ask as a leader

“Be curious, be lazy, be often,” says Michael Bungay Stanier, one of the world’s top three leadership coaches.

Yesterday, I attended a Rotman Speaker Series sponsored by our Executive Programs featuring Michael Stainer, Partner and Co-Founder of Box of Crayons. Michael wants everyone to do less good work (what’s in your job description) and more great work (the kind of work you can’t stop talking about). And coaching teams to help them do just that should be a regular part of any leader’s day.

Combining research based in neuroscience and behavioural economics, Michael led a packed house at the Rotman School of Management in a highly-interactive and highly-entertaining one-hour session.

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Between laughs and a-ha moments, he shared five of his seven essential coaching questions and got the entire room talking and practicing proven coaching methods.

1.      First, he had us practice The Kickstart Question: What’s on your mind?

He paired us up and the person with the longest hair asked the other ‘What’s on your mind?’ We had to listen without interrupting or trying to add value or give advice. If you are too quick to offer possible solutions, you might solve a problem, but it probably won’t be the most important problem or even the real problem one.

2.      Next, we took turns asking The Focus Question: What’s the real challenge…for you?

He asked us to nominate the best looking person in the pair to go first. I went second.

The ‘for you’ pulls away from the problem and gets to what’s really affecting the individual.

3.      Then, we asked The AWE Question which, according to Michael, is the most important question in the world: And what else?

This question helps us stay curious. Michael said the first answer given is rarely the only answer or the best answer so asking ‘And what else?’ helps your team dig deeper for the real problem or the heart of the challenge.

4.      So, what do you want? This is Michael’s Focus Question.

This helps you be a good lazy coach by enabling your counterpart to work out the solution on their own.  The insights my partner and I gained simply by answering this question were surprising!

5.      Finally, we wrapped up the session with The Learning Question:What was the most useful part of the session’?

We were surprised to learn each of us came away with a unique take away from the talk.

Learn more with Michael’s short book The Coaching Habit.

For upcoming Rotman events, check out our Speaker Series

For more Executive Education, check out our portfolio of high-impact programs or contact me at any time at 416.946.0722.