Recently, I attended a meeting put on by an HR tech consultancy.  I featured two of their clients.  Giving credit where due, both of the ladies presenting showed themselves to be smarter than the average bear.  They even showed a sense of strategic needs as they described their tactical responses to certain needs.  However, I ached to be asked for my views so that I could raise the level of discussion from the tactical to the strategic.

 
I would have asked for some details around how they do strategic human capital planning.  Both said that their planning and performance management systems were manually driven.  That was a red flag.  How could a very large company believe that strategic planning was essential and then consign it to an HR supported manual program?  Resources are allocated to functions based on their perceived value.  That is the way it should be.  Sell value when you describe new ideas or ask for funds.

The second thing that caught my ear was a statement by one of them that the Sales function had come up with a competency model and wanted HR to manage it.  The question I would like to ask, in private because I didn’t want to embarrass the lady, was why didn’t HR come up with a competency model or at least lead Sales in that direction?  I wanted to ask, how often do you see the Sales VP, how much time do you spend with him/her, what is the nature of your conversations?  I had a sense that the CHRO and the Sales VP were not in frequent peer level discussions.

The final point made by one of the presenters had to do with what she described as “an executive level group” that made decisions on major expenditures.  The way it was posed indicated that HR was not in the group.

My Conclusions
The following is what I came away with:

1. It was an interesting show and tell of HR programs.
2. The presenters seemed to be smart, competent and perhaps wanting to move HR in the right direction.
3. The focus on programs and the technology underpinning them is precisely HR’s problem.

Personal growth and contribution to your organization comes from executing on strategic issues, not in delivering expensive programs.  When you show that, you will be invited to sit at the table with the rest of the big kids.