Are you fed up with not being heard?

Some business leaders ‘get’ what it takes to attract and keep talent, and some don’t. If you’re in HR, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

This plays out both strategically, and tactically. Let’s look at some familiar examples.

Strategically, let’s say you want to make the case for improving leaders’ behaviours. You have the evidence to prove the impact on performance, productivity and therefore profit and you request the budget for some leadership development.

You might be told that this is ‘soft stuff’ that has no impact on sales, and growth is the priority right now. Your totally logical explanation about the relationship between retention and improved sales falls on stony ground.

On the other hand, let’s imagine that you did win the strategic case – the board agreed that leadership is a priority and gave you the budget. Whoop whoop!

Then you experience the tactical challenge. One of the senior leaders in the room who nodded sagely in approval of your budget is the subject of a complaint about their behaviour.

Intellectually, they agreed to your business case. But this is different. This is about their own behaviour. One of the joys of being a leader in HR is that it falls to you to give them the feedback.

In either case, success depends on having established HR’s credibility as a strategic partner.

This means that we have to turn HR’s traditional approach upside down.

For some ideas on this, you can catch the recording of our recent webinar ‘What is strategic business partnering – and how do we ensure it delivers value?’ here

Following this webinar several HR leaders wanted to continue the discussion.

Join our roundtable discussion on 7th December at 13.00.