Value your HR Manager should deliver to the CEO

A Human Resources (HR) team and the C-Suite leadership team are inexorably linked. As the CEO or member of the C-suite team, your responsibility lies not just in leading the business and generation of company profits, but also in nurturing a growth culture.  An HR Manager’s focus is on people and culture, bringing together the roles of CEO and HR professional in natural cohesion, both working towards a common purpose.

HR teams actively touch every employee in an organisation across the complete employee lifecycle, their role is far more than just operational at a transactional level. With their finger on the pulse of the organisation, a strong HR practitioner is worth their weight in gold as your eyes and ears to connect you to your employees.

Whilst a component of an HR team’s responsibilities will be transactional and compliance based, (the benefits of which should not be underestimated, to help an organisation run smoothly) much of a senior HR Practitioner or Manager’s role extends beyond these critical elements, to a more strategic and growth mindset function. HR Managers should and do form a part of many C-suite teams as a strategic partner, to both build and deliver on commercial goals and aspirations, bringing with them an invaluable link into the company’s social system.

This critical link into a company’s social network, will allow your HR professional to highlight any existing tensions and to flag projects which are experiencing friction or in which lack of resource is causing a bottleneck. Early diagnosis of issues prevents challenges from reaching a critical level, from affecting team morale and eventually creating further cultural issues. Such issues many be the early trigger for your HR professional to recommend transformational organisation change – restructuring or reallocating talent to the places where those individuals can be most effective and add maximum value.

Using these social networks internally can be seen as a valuable part of any HR Manager’s role – the ability to tap into their own networks and connections, particularly in larger organisations to create (not just add) value by connecting team members who can build one another’s capacity and delivery capability.

The huge shift and focus on ‘people’ over the last decade since the 2008 financial crisis and with the surge in popularity of social media, has ensured we need to adapt to a much faster, demand driven environment.  Increasing diversity, standards and values present fresh challenges and opportunities each year. In today’s digital world, your HR Manager must not only be prepared for quick moving social or people-based scandals and online discussions but should be proactively setting strategies to manage such situations. Of course, HR’s role is not just about managing the behaviour and performance of existing talent – much of their role is in fact forecasting talent pipelines and looking at the future state of the organisation from a people perspective. As your strategic partner, you should be replying on HR to provide data driven insights about market trends and innovation – for example, how to attract and retain the right talent, gender balance in your organisation or how to become leaders in the exciting new wellness programs expected by many employees today.

An HR professional is your strategic enabler for your biggest asset – your people. Their input and advice will play a large role in determining the company’s success or failure. Their ability to translate data driven decisions into a uniquely human culture and be your confidante as the CEO will be a marker of your success, or your struggle.

For guidance in how to strengthen the leadership qualities of your team, call or message Susan at Red Wagon Workplace Solutions for an initial consult.