Since 2005, when CEO rhetoric “our people are our greatest assets” peaked, senior execs have been demonstrating a more sincere conviction that talent is indeed the only source of differentiation and competitive advantage in knowledge-economy firms.
It’s been only a few years since this great shift in mindset. Booming economies, globalization, and an aging workforce throughout most of the world have made access to talent the number one issue in organizations. HR is starting to give way to human capital and talent management, at least as labels. But how much progress is the profession making as a strategic driver of the business? How is HR transforming itself and organizations toward a place where people are viewed as talent, and talent is truly managed as the most important competitive lever?
To help answer those questions, HCI and Vurv Technologies launched a survey and research initiative last month to provide both a benchmark for future studies and, most importantly, to gauge the current state of the HR/talent-management profession.
Overall, based on preliminary results that include input from 136 C-level execs the news is generally good. In response to our first question: “Who does the head of HR report to in your organization?” a surprising, 43% of respondents, across all sizes of companies, said they report to the CEO.
It follows that where an organization’s head of HR reports directly to the CEO, HR is taken very seriously in that company. In fact, one quarter of respondents said that HR is “very important, highly respected and consulted with frequently on corporate strategy.” Encouraging indeed!
In 2005, Fast Company article, Why We Hate HR, author Keith Hammonds wrote, “The human-resources trade long ago proved itself, at best, a necessary evil — and at worst, a dark bureaucratic force that blindly enforces nonsensical rules, resists creativity, and impedes constructive change.” It is, he says, “A career graveyard for people who can’t make it in other parts of the business.”
Our findings suggest otherwise. While only 2 percent believe HR is a fast track to senior management and career growth, at least 80 percent appear to have chosen the profession as a career as opposed to being transferred into it without consent . Most encouragingly, a solid majority not only believe it is a good career fit for them, they also want to be part of a profession that they believe is dynamic and changing.
