The route to the top in HR is fairly standard – you work your way up from HR adviser, spend some time in an HR specialism like comp and bens, acquire line management experience and impress the big bosses while doing it all.
The shortage of HR representation at board level is well documented. But what’s the reason? Is it because HRDs don’t want these roles, or do they lack the required commercial and financial know-how?
If your route to a top job is blocked by a perceived lack of business knowledge, a few years as a business unit leader or a secondment to another department could equip you better for HR and overall business leadership roles.
1. Getting out of HR
Lorna Clarkson, HR programme manager at RBS, held a variety of different functional roles within Royal Mail including senior marketing, innovation and HR.
According to Lorna: “a broader background allows you to understand problems from more than one angle. It encourages a breadth of thinking and enables people to understand how to get things done more effectively.”
Richard Burdon, HR director – corporate at the BBC, whose background includes business systems and marketing, adds: “It’s not just about doing a non-HR role; you need to perform a line management position. Don’t get involved in a stand-alone role or project-based work. It’s when you move into a line management role outside of HR that this wider exposure becomes really valuable, when you need HR’s support as a manager.”
Moving from HR to another business function caused Richard to see the value in internal secondments. He thought his HR function was doing a great job, but the perception from outside HR wasn’t the same.
He says: “It’s important to work in a line management role and go and be a client of HR. You can’t perceive the real issues unless you’re a client.”
2. The benefits of cross-functional exposure
- Better HR understanding: Spending time in HR allows other line managers to understand the value the function brings to the organisation.
- New perspectives: HR professionals have first-hand insight of the complexities of the whole organisation. You can add a valuable viewpoint to the new departments you operate in.
- Potential future leaders: For businesses whose main asset is people and the knowledge and intellectual capital that come with them, appointing a CEO who can combine the necessary commercial and strategic influence with the proven people skills of an HR background can be of great value.
- Succession planning: If an organisation grows rapidly or faces challenges, there should be a group of employees able to turn their hand to more than one function, allowing risk to be managed more effectively.
- Commercial awareness: HR functions best operate when the business is their first priority and HR is second. When those in HR leadership roles gain hands-on exposure to P&L, financial processes etc, they develop their own commercial skill set and develop first-hand knowledge of the broader business agenda.
3. Introducing formal development programmes
Richard feels that many businesses haven’t yet developed programmes that deal with internal secondments in a formal, sustained manner. He says that for development initiatives to be successful, they must be part of your business philosophy. Behaviours, rather than functional skills, should be recognised.
For Lorna, it’s vital to ensure this development is part of the company culture and doesn’t offend those in other functions when someone from HR assumes a leadership position. Staff should be aware that this is a formal growth programme for everyone’s benefit and as part of this, ensure people are seconded to a variety of departments.
From a practical point of view, Richard suggests starting small: “Look at your top 5% talent pool and then focus on a fifth of that. Make sure that there’s a clear, defined plan in place for individuals and that it’s planned and executed properly. Sell the benefits for the overall business.”
Paul McNamara is director of Michael Page Executive Search‘s HR practice.
This article was first published by our partner, online jobs board, Changeboard.
2 Responses
So Sad you feel
I fail to see how revitilaising any department with such adegree of enthusiasm, positivity and nodoubt sucsess would leave you feeling unemployable.
There are many organisations out there (several publically owned health care related) who would benifit massively from a the skill set and experience you now have.
Crossing the line
I swapped my role as Creative Director for that of HR Director around three years ago. This was because my company wanted to effectively rebrand HR and drive engagement within the business. My commercial days were all about branding, communication and engagement so my skills fitted perfectly. But now, loving HR, I fear I may be a misfit, a freak of nature. This is because I crossed the Line. That is, I crossed from the line and into HR in a move I was to discover that was all the rage but rarely actually seemed to happen. When I accepted the role of HR Operations Director in late 2009 my excitement was matched in equal measure by my friends’ incredulity. I had said goodbye to the glamour of being a creative director, part of the daily cut and thrust of the business, and stepped into the apparently sedate waters of Human Resources. WTF? became a regular Facebook refrain from friends. But the reality is the two roles are more closely aligned that you might first think because my entire career has been based on branding, communication and engagement. So, while before I had helped to create a campaign to excite the public about, say, a niche brand of shampoo, now my audience had become our employees and the product the company itself. I was, in effect, helping to rebrand HR to meet the rapidly changing business and employee needs of the 21st Century. I like to think I gave a fresh perspective on the projects I worked on – flexible working, innovation, revenue generation, employee engagement, diversity, etc and dealt with staff and senior management in a new and engaging way. My move was certainly welcomed by the business as a fresh approach at all levels and used as an example as exactly the sort of lateral move more companies should consider. It was heralded as a new and valuable sort of career development – a new model to replace the traditional vertical route. At conferences I could present first hand our innovative approach to HR, showing the value of taking the pragmatism and commercial acumen from the line and using it to improve the way HR does business. I heard other HR Directors, managers, HR recruitment specialists CEOs rave about the idea. In fact, they still do. But next month my tenure as an Interim HR Director is set to come to a close and with it, apparently, any hope of landing a new job. I took the role, a maternity cover, to see where it might lead. Sadly, it seems it is about to lead me straight into unemployment because I am now neither one thing or the other!