What is +1 HR Anyway?

What is +1 HR and How to Become a +1 Leader

^{NJ Pesci: Former CHRO Scripps Networks Interactive}

It's a common dilemma that most human resources professionals run into at one time or another. The dilemma has to do with how you answer a specific question. “What do you do in human resources?” I never answered that question without asking them first, what do you think I do as a Human Resources professional? We all know the answer they give every time, they always say, “well, if you’re in HR, you hire and fire people.”

Imagine if that was all we did every day in HR, hire and fire people. It’s not even possible for HR professionals to do that all day, every day. Their answer to that questions is at the heart of the issue for most, if not all, HR professionals. The issue is this, can HR professionals be taken seriously as business professionals and not just administrative overhead?

Unfortunately, the answer to the question above stems from the fact that most business professionals don't see Human Resources professionals as businesspeople. They see them as administrators, people who are supposed to work on their payroll or work on their training or work on their talent acquisition. All of that's true, but that's just a portion of what it is we do as human resources professionals. The expectations of most business leaders are not that high with respect to HR, outside of organizational and administrative issues. That doesn’t mean they don’t like their HR manager; it just means they don’t look to them to solve real business problems or issues.

These thoughts and feelings about HR are compounded by the fact that HR is often portrayed as silly, or the enemy, and certainly not helpful beyond enforcing policy and rules. This portrayal has stood the test of time.

In 2005 the Fast Company article, “Why I hate HR” got everyone’s attention in the HR community. Here is a paragraph from that article:

“Because let’s face it: After close to 20 years of hopeful rhetoric about becoming “strategic partners” with a “seat at the table” where the business decisions that matter are made, most human-resources professionals aren’t nearly there. They have no seat, and the table is locked inside a conference room to which they have no key. HR people are, for most practical purposes, neither strategic nor leaders.”

Author and leadership consultant, Ram Charan, in a 2014 HBR article said the following as it relates to HR:

“I talk with CEOs across the globe who are disappointed in their HR people. They would like to be able to use their chief human resource officers (CHROs) the way they use their CFOs—as sounding boards and trusted partners—and rely on their skills in linking people and numbers to diagnose weaknesses and strengths in the organization, find the right fit between employees and jobs, and advise on the talent implications of the company’s strategy.”

“But it’s a rare CHRO who can serve in such an active role. Most of them are process-oriented generalists who have expertise in personnel benefits, compensation, and labor relations. They are focused on internal matters such as engagement, empowerment, and managing cultural issues. What they can’t do very well is relate HR to real-world business needs. They don’t know how key decisions are made, and they have great difficulty analyzing why people—or whole parts of the organization—aren’t meeting the business’s performance goals.”

Let's talk about the “seat at the table” issue for a moment. For most HR professionals being at the table isn't the problem it once was. There is a table, and you have a seat at it. However, being seen at the table is a problem and how you are seen at that table is even more of a problem.

This is where the concept of +1HR comes into focus. It is a rather simple concept, and it is based on the belief that HR professionals are businesspeople who have technical competencies in a number of areas that cover organization, strategy, leadership, HR administration, etc. They are no different than Finance professionals, who are businesspeople with technical competencies in finance.

When a business leader, a CEO, the President, sits down at the table and looks around that table at their team, they see the finance person, and they have an expectation. They see the marketing person and they have an expectation. When they see the HR person, they have an expectation for them as well, but those expectations just aren't very high. Those expectations are more around administrivia and the tasks the HR person might preform. The business leader doesn't necessarily see the HR person as solving a problem outside of HR, a business problem.

The +1 HR concept argues that the HR person can bring something to the table the leader did not expect to get from them to help the business. That extra something is not focused on HR. When the HR person does that, they become a +1 HR Leader. It's like having an additional person identifying problems, an additional person solving problems and additional person broadly thinking about the organization and its success. A +1 HR leader is a gift for any leader to have. They are an extra set of hands to do the work, an extra set of eyes, and most importantly, an extra mind that understands the business.

We believe HR professionals are more than capable of adding +1 value where they work today if we can work on developing the right capability.

In addition to the development of the right capability, it will require HR professionals to see themselves differently and believe that others will see them that way too. When this happens we will unlock the full potential of each HR Professional and enable the business to achieve its objectives.

Thank You

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