The ABC’s of HR: Analytical? Behavioral? Collaborative?

With all the talk about HR needing to develop programs that contribute to the bottom line, one might think that the corporate HR professional of the future needs to be a financial analyst first, an HR pro second.
Of course, in order to take on that more strategic role, many experts believe that more and more HR functions will be outsourced to a network of external suppliers. In that case, the corporate HR professional of the future needs to be a guru at coordination first, an HR pro second.
Still other experts speak of the organization of the future as being a network of dynamic teams that form, disband and reform as needed. And, in that scenario, the corporate HR professional of the future may need to be a behavioral psychologist first, an HR pro second.
So which is it? On what skill sets should HR professionals focus to ensure their future viability? Or are all three career paths valid options for today’s HR generalist? Let’s consider outsourcing first and its connection with strategic planning.
The Human Resource Institute’s (HRI) 2002 Survey on the Role and Structure of HR found that 70% of the respondents expected the overall outsourcing of HR activities to increase over the next five years. Other experts point to increased collaboration between firms and their suppliers, their customers, or even their competitors in order to leverage performance. With an increasing number of external relationships to manage, the HR professional will likely need to become adept at being an HR strategist/planner. In fact, the HRI survey found that over 80% of respondents indicated that the HR strategist/planner role was very or extremely important for HR professionals in corporate headquarters.
From a different perspective, HR professionals are expected to be capable of building programs within their organizations that deliver financial results; this role also demands more than HR expertise. Business literacy, strategic vision, and the ability to develop metrics and build a business case were among those skills mentioned as necessary for success by a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study of eight leading consulting firms. In addition, performing their roles with “speed and agility” will be crucial to staying on top of rapidly changing market conditions, according to a Hewitt study. The study found that 72% of CEOs had business plans with explicit speed and agility strategies and 62% had established specific speed and agility performance measures. Hewitt’s business leader, Suzanne Kenney, said, “As more leaders realize the importance of creating a fast and agile culture to drive organizational success, the bigger the role HR will have the potential to play.” One of the most troublesome obstacles to improving speed and agility, however, according to 74% of the Hewitt survey respondents, was people issues, such as lack of teamwork.
Which brings us to the question of social dynamics and HR’s role in facilitating working relationships. If the vision of the fluid organization of the future comes to pass, HR professionals will have their hands full with understanding the psychology of group and individual behavior and enhancing team dynamics. Key responsibilities might include helping managers get the most out of short-term project teams, reducing or eliminating dysfunctional group behavior, dealing with the adjustments required to transition from one project to the next, and becoming sensitive to the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce.
So it appears that the roster of duties appearing on the HR professional’s plate and the inherent skill set that those duties require might take any number of forms. In fact, a SHRM/Fisher survey found that a third of the respondents said that actual job duties are shaped more by the employee than by a specific job description. Perhaps the innate skills one brings to the table are the best determinant of each HR professional’s eventual role.


Phase one of the SHRM study of consulting firms is presented in The Future of the HR Profession, by the Society for Human Resource Management, 2002. A summary of the study is available at
http://shrm.org/hrnews/articles/default.asp?page=031802a.htm.
For a press release discussing how HR can help lead organizational efforts, see "CEOs Set Speed and Agility Strategies as Part of Business Plan, Hewitt Study Shows" at
http://was.hewitt.com/hewitt/resource/newsroom/pressrel/2002/04-17-02.htm.
A discussion of HR practices is presented in HR in the New Economy: Trends and Leading Practices in Human Resources Management, by PeopleSoft, March 2001.
The SHRM/Fisher study is presented in their research report Human Resource Strategies, Stages of Development and Organization Size Survey, by the Society for Human Resource Management and Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, 2002.