When I worked at Sony Ericsson, I spent a lot of time in Japan and became familiar with some of the practices of Japanese HR, which, I discovered, is very different from the way it’s practiced in western companies.
Over there, HR is responsible, amongst other things, for career development; managers who show signs of progressing further up the career ladder are given assignments by HR to give them a rounded experience of working in different operational environments and in international situations. My boss was on such a programme – so he was given a three-year assignment in Sweden to contribute to and understand more about western business culture. His performance wasn’t really measured while he was in Sweden; the long-view nature of his career progression was more important to his HR masters, who were his effective boss. He then returned to Japan with that experience under his belt and took up another more senior business position as the next step on his career ladder.
I like the idea of career development in that way, so long as everyone gets a shot at it, not just the lucky few. It also means that things like succession planning are an automatic and integral part of the HR function, because people move about in different jobs and need to be backfilled. Over here, it’s pretty much up to the individual to develop their own career, with HR mostly dumbed-down as a recruitment consultant, pseudo-counsellor, and salary payer.
Time to step up! In my mind the head of HR in any size of business has three key functions:
Recruitment & onboarding – key to recruitment is to make sure the recruiting manager, who will conduct the interviews, is up to the task. In my team I made sure the hiring manager was recruiting people who were more skilled than they were. That didn’t undermine their position, it enhanced the capability of his or her team. I also like interviewing by creating interview scenarios that can be played out. Ask your prospective marketing manager to spend an imaginary £1m promoting your presence at the next COP meeting, or anything and see how they handle it. The onboarding process should also always include meeting members of the senior team and other key players so the newbie knows what’s keeping them awake.
Retention or off-boarding – people stick around when there is a well-considered combination of remuneration, challenge, recognition and opportunity. It’s a big subject – see the butts on retention and the enthusiastic incompetent. Reward structures need to be fit for the group being rewarded. Salespeople respond well to commission, engineers don’t. Senior managers should have specific, achievable objectives and a matching bonus program. Share options can be useful, too, because they encourage the high performers to stay longer. Off-boarding is a skill that needs to be learned so that it’s done quickly, with dignity and within the constraints of employment law.
Career development & succession planning – everyone should be given training hours and should agree with their line manager how to use them. Rather than hiring people for a specific role (although that’s how they may initially onboard), they should be considered as valuable resources for the whole company, and a career plan can be developed around that. For some it may never happen, but others may broaden out. In my experience, current practice in succession planning is a catastrophe, with no or very little planning given to it. Often when someone leaves the job they’ve done is divvied up around those who remain. Key staff must have a succession plan; in the past I’ve agreed with key members of my team that if they plan to leave, we fill their role before they go. Seems logical to me.
This holy trinity of HR has never been more relevant than it is today; when people will often choose to leave a company to progress their careers, rather than agree with their current managers on a forward development plan.
When you're recruiting your head of HR, make sure you are clear that they have real experience in each of these areas.
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