LinkedIn Pulse: Where does Development sit on your list of priorities?

An extract from another interesting article from the team at "LinkedIn Pulse". Click on the link to find our more or register for their regular updates:    

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-does-development-sit-your-list-priorities-jo-skipper/

In his valuable book, The New HR Leaders First 100 Days, Alan Collins provides a road map for success as a new HR Leader. Not surprisingly, there are chapters on knowing the business, turning clients into raving fans and clarifying expectations up, down and all round!

Also not surprising, there is a chapter on what HR team leaders will manage. Its title is “Cut the Fat and Muscle Up Your Team”. In this chapter he quotes that other lightweight of HR strategy, David Ulrich who in his book, The Victory by Organisation, Ulrich says that 60% of team members are open to learning and progress towards making even bigger impacts.  I would say in HR that % is much larger – almost by definition. People go into HR to support organisations to be the best they can be – and they definitely are open to being supported to do this.

So what has been my own experience? Over the last 6 months, I have had an interesting and at times surprising journey as I expanded my role to lead our HR development initiatives under The HR Space. This business partners with organisations who are looking at ways to BUILD the capability of their HR teams in areas such as Business Partnering, Coaching and Business & Data Analytics.

The HR Space customer profile is extremely broad as they provide in-house bespoke capability solutions as well as public programmes. The HR Space uses the Net Promotor Score and time and time again the programmes delivered receive an NPS of 100! Yes, you read that correctly +100.

What has been so interesting?

When I have my ‘Talent Acquisition/Executive Search Hat’ on and ask customers about their teams, often a robust conversation about the mixed capability of the team ensues. Invariably the conversation goes along the lines of “Capability is mixed, there is a need for increased skills to navigate the complexity currently being experienced. Business acumen could always be improved and as well as an understanding of how to tackle the evolving role of the Business Partner.”

So what does this conversation play out like when I have my ‘BUILD Capability Hat’ on and talk about programmes that are available to support the above challenges often a conversation like this is had…

“Sounds interesting Jo. We are thinking about HR development BUT… I am not sure we have the budget / I’d love to, but don’t have the time / that isn’t a priority just now / we are so busy in transformation we can’t focus on ourselves.”

Why am I surprised?

With our profession so critical to organizational success, the HR team should be one of the most knowledgeable current and insightful teams.

Why does the HR profession not demand more of itself though increasing their knowledge and focusing on continued development? We support AHRI Certification, we support HR Leaders working with external or internal resources to develop their teams but from personal experience, which is reflected by my colleagues across the profession, the actual number of HR teams that are focused on developing their own capability is a depressingly small %.

Let’s start making development a priority!