CIPD held its Irish HR Conference on 22nd May 2018 in Croke Park – the keynote speaker was Dave Ulrich – an outstanding Guru of HR, international speaker, Professor of Business at the University of Michigan, prodigious author.
Dave has fundamentally changed the way HR works over the last 30 plus years. Dave’s speech was about ‘enabling actions for HR to lead the delivery of the people agenda’. He also talked about the 7 things that create more value for HR:
1.Value is itself defined more by the receiver than the giver.
Good leadership is not about the leader, it’s about what the leader creates by listening, and ‘listening is not that you understand, it’s that the other person feels understood’. Find out from your business leader what they are worried about, and then decide how HR can add value.
2.The value we create is outside as well as inside.
Challenge the thinking that HR is internal, it’s both! Employee experience without customer experience is only partial HR, look at the customers, investors, the wider community, regulators and partners. Engage the customer, don’t do a 360-performance review, do a 720.
3.Three questions HR should ask:
- Do we have the right talent?
- Do we have the right leadership?
- Do we have the right culture?
Organisational culture is extremely important. Do our people have a sense of wellbeing and growth so that they can be agile? With all the talk of culture in HR discourse, for me, Dave gave a great definition: culture is the ability to shift from an event to a pattern and ultimately to an identity. Culture is not who we are as a company, but what we want to be known for by our customers.
4.Use digital HR
Utilise digital data to win! We need to be innovative in the digital space.
5.Design a great HR department
Focus on relationships more than roles.
6.Build the right HR competencies. Focus on outcomes.
7.Make line managers owners; support them in doing so, ‘line managers are CRITICAL in delivery of value’.
Voltedge Management
