This is called a strategic partner, you are just logistical support!
My friend's company wants to recruit an HR manager, because none of their leaders have HR backgrounds, so they invited me to make a cameo for the interview.
One of the candidates who has worked in HR for ten years, I asked him: "What role do you think should be played in the company as an HR manager?"
He replied: "Strategic partners, management experts..."
I asked again, "Can you give an example of how you are a good strategic partner?"
He replied: "My understanding of a strategic partner is that the important things in the company are indispensable to me. For example, leaders usually ask me to take part in the meeting to make minutes; I am also responsible for uploading and issuing internal rules and regulations; and planning the annual meeting... "
As you can imagine, although this candidate has ten years of HR experience, the company still did not admit him, because he doesn't seem to understand what strategy is all about, let alone how HR can become a strategic partner.
This is called a strategic partner, you are just logistical support!
01 What is a strategic partner
It is the consensus of human resource managers that HR should become a strategic partner of the enterprise. However, I found that the value and role positioning of the human resources department of many companies will make all parties feel very troubled:
The boss attaches great importance to it, but always feels that his performance is not as good as he expected;
The business department complains that it does not understand technology and business, and the systems and measures introduced are not grounded;
The employees are also full of doubts, besides paying wages, doing assessments and occasional training, what else do they do?
How to change the role positioning, from a single service provider in the past to a strategic partner of the boss and business, is an important task for HR in this era.
First of all, we have to figure out what is a "strategic partner"?
"Strategic partner" is understood separately, including two key words: strategy and partner.
What does strategy mean? It means that HR should know the goal of enterprise development planning, and must look at this goal from the perspective of the boss, which requires HR to have a profound understanding of the development of the industry, the relationship between the industry and talents, and the characteristics of industry talents. learn. Therefore, the corresponding requirement of the strategy is "insight of the industry".
What does partner mean? It means effective cooperation between human resources and business, so HR must understand the job responsibilities, business processes, work characteristics of the business side, and provide the required resource support to the business. Therefore, the corresponding requirement of the partner is to "provide effective assistance to the business".
To sum up, the connotation of "strategic partner" is that HR provides professional support and assistance for partners in the organization on the basis of insight, understanding and focusing on the strategic goals, business processes and talent characteristics of the enterprise.
This is called a strategic partner, you are just logistical support!
02 Challenges facing HR as a strategic partner
In this era of rapid change, HR still faces many challenges at the operational level in order to become a strategic partner of an organization. From the perspective of HR itself, I think there are three main points:
Challenge 1: Cognitive dissonance of roles and positioning
I know an HR colleague, Mr. S. Last year, he was parachuted into a private enterprise with a high salary as the manager of the human resources department.
This company is in a period of rapid development. After Mr. S is in place, he is ready to make a big effort. He emphasized that the positioning of human resources should be transformed from service-oriented to management-oriented, so he vigorously promoted special work such as strategic performance management and quality model development. Although these special tasks are in full swing, there is no substantial progress in the basic work such as talent introduction and cadre training, which are most urgently needed by the company.
In the past few months, only half of the company's recruitment plan for more than 50 people has been implemented. The employing department complained for a while, complaining that Mr. S was "too immature", always focusing on high-end issues such as strategy, and did not help the company solve practical problems .
From this case, we can find that although Mr. S has a sense of strategic management, he has a mismatch between roles and positioning. Just imagine how he can get the approval of the business department if he can't even complete the most basic HR functions.
Challenge 2: Constraints of Modular Thinking
I don't know when it started, many HRs equate the "six modules" with "human resource management", and the modular thinking has been solidified in their minds.
From the perspective of HR's own career planning, modular thinking is easy to solidify the work to a certain point or line, so it is difficult to cultivate a strategic height and overall view. If you want to be promoted from a low-level position to a high-level position from the perspective of several career development paths such as specialist, supervisor, manager, director, and chief human resource officer, then your personal advantage must be upgraded from "professional" to "professional". At the level of "generalist", the way of thinking has to rise from traditional modular thinking to systematic strategic thinking.
Challenge 3: Misunderstanding of business
Ren Zhengfei's requirements for the human resources department are translated into one sentence: "If HR does not understand business, is not close to business, does not focus on business, does not support business, and does not serve business, then HR can be laid off."
It can be seen that if HR wants to become a strategic partner, it is really hard to understand the business.
For example, a company has set up a new business unit. How to build an initial team? How to find and attract relevant talents in the market? If you were the HR of this business unit, what advice would you give to the business boss?
I think that if you come up with a complex human resources system, the business boss will definitely alienate you, because these are perfect, but they are useless. And an HR who understands business must first understand how the business boss thinks about this new business unit? What is the goal? What is the product and market positioning... You can only help the business if you fully get this information and then come up with a smooth landing plan.
This is called a strategic partner, you are just logistical support!
03 How are excellent HR strategic partners made?
Although the role of human resource management in modern enterprises is becoming more and more important, in fact, too many HRs do not see their own future, just like being locked in a glass bottle with a bright future and no way out.
Therefore, if HR wants to realize its own value in the organization and become a strategic partner, first of all, the boss is very critical to the role of HR, that is, whether it will provide you with a stage; secondly, the boss has expectations, whether HR can do it on its own, that is, it will give you a You also have to be able to dance on stage to show value.
A truly excellent HR is always ready, and once given to the stage by the boss, he can dance to the sound.
To train such superb dance skills and establish and cultivate the status of strategic partners, HR needs to do the following:
- Fully communicate and understand the management requirements of the company's strategy for HR
I think one of the important reasons why the boss always says that the human resources department "works behind closed doors" is that the specific work of HR is out of touch with the company's strategy and cannot reflect the value contribution of HR to the company's strategy.
If HR wants to become a real strategic partner, it must be strategy-oriented and performance-driven. We can use a "Deming circle" to understand this process.