How the CHRO moved to the top of the table

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has giv­en the chief human resources offi­cer (CHRO) a voice and influ­ence like nev­er before.

With the cri­sis ini­tial­ly play­ing out as a work­place or peo­ple chal­lenge, and now a human­i­tar­i­an emer­gency, HR lead­ers have been offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove their worth to the exec­u­tive team by help­ing steer their organ­i­sa­tion through wide­spread uncer­tain­ty. And sig­nif­i­cant num­bers have seized the chance.

Jo Tay­lor, man­ag­ing direc­tor of HR con­sul­tan­cy Let’s Talk Tal­ent, explains: “There has to be a ship’s cap­tain and it has tend­ed to be HR mak­ing sense of the chaos, hand in hand with the chief exec­u­tive. CEOs have been rely­ing on their guid­ance while try­ing to keep the lights on, so HR has embraced the adage ‘it’s our time to shine’ and done so.”

Chris Under­wood, man­ag­ing direc­tor of exec­u­tive search and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy Adas­trum Con­sult­ing, agrees, point­ing out that the cur­rent CHRO role as cri­sis man­ag­er may be a new one, but on the whole the pro­fes­sion has risen to the chal­lenge.

“As a col­lec­tive, HR lead­ers have done real­ly well, so they now have a voice and their stock is high at senior lev­el and among col­leagues,” he says. “While in the past, they were often seen as either the ‘fun police’ or ‘a bit fluffy’, their influ­ence on how the organ­i­sa­tion should oper­ate has been front and cen­tre this time.”

In oth­er words, the CHRO role has, almost overnight, become less tac­ti­cal and more strate­gic, not least as the cri­sis has “giv­en peo­ple the abil­i­ty to rip up the HR rule­book and rewrite it”, says Tay­lor.

This sce­nario has result­ed in those HR lead­ers who have embraced the oppor­tu­ni­ty becom­ing “more like the con­duc­tor of an orches­tra by tak­ing a more holis­tic view and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er func­tions to make things hap­pen”.

Shifting the balance from operations to strategy

Anoth­er cen­tral con­sid­er­a­tion for HR lead­ers, mean­while, has been in find­ing an appro­pri­ate bal­ance between under­tak­ing oper­a­tional and strate­gic activ­i­ties. In prac­tice, this has meant ensur­ing the right team is in place to deal with day-to-day issues, while HR lead­ers pro­vide not only over­sight, but also insight and influ­ence at the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee lev­el.

The sin­gle biggest dif­fer­en­tial between those whose star is now shin­ing, or not, is atti­tude, says Tay­lor. “Those with a growth mind­set have flour­ished, while those with a fixed mind­set have strug­gled,” she says.

The impor­tance of hav­ing a growth mind­set can most clear­ly be seen in the new­ly adopt­ed CHRO role of change man­ag­er. While HR lead­ers were tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as risk averse with a focus on “keep­ing peo­ple out of trou­ble and the organ­i­sa­tion out of court”, through­out the pan­dem­ic they have had to act with “pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able flex­i­bil­i­ty, agili­ty and speed”, says Under­wood.

As a result, not only have HR lead­ers facil­i­tat­ed and dri­ven work­place change, rang­ing from sup­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion around remote work­ing to dig­i­tal skills devel­op­ment, they have also changed the rules of engage­ment to ensure they are now more based around peo­ple.

One exam­ple is the shift from a tra­di­tion­al one-size-fits-all approach to poli­cies and pro­ce­dures towards a more nuanced, per­son­alised way of deal­ing with things to cope with the inher­ent com­plex­i­ty of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

Put anoth­er way, the human­i­tar­i­an nature of the cri­sis has led to “the ‘human’ being put back into HR” as a result of the grow­ing real­i­sa­tion that “work­ers are human beings rather than just employ­ees”, says Bri­an Kropp, head of research for ana­lyst firm Gartner’s HR prac­tice. This means the CHRO role has increas­ing­ly become that of a guardian of well­be­ing.

“There’s an increas­ing sense that employ­ees are now stake­hold­ers in run­ning their com­pa­nies rather than just share­hold­ers, which is lead­ing to more humane ways of work­ing,” he points out. “ESG [envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance] was build­ing before COVID hit, but the pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which organ­i­sa­tions are being test­ed to see if they’re true to their val­ues and those that are will thrive post-pan­dem­ic.”

HR leaders become guardians of wellbeing

Tong­wen Zhao, who joined Quorn Foods as direc­tor of peo­ple and plan­et in July, agrees. The com­pa­ny has brought HR and sus­tain­abil­i­ty togeth­er under a sin­gle remit to ensure envi­ron­men­tal val­ues are both embed­ded into its cul­ture and reflect­ed in its employ­er brand. Zhao expects this approach to become more wide­spread as cli­mate con­cerns among inter­nal and exter­nal tal­ent pools con­tin­ue to mount.

“The abil­i­ty to inte­grate your peo­ple respon­si­bil­i­ties with oth­er areas of the busi­ness is an essen­tial weapon in the arse­nal of the mod­ern HR leader,” she says.

Anoth­er essen­tial skill, in a world in which tech­nol­o­gy is increas­ing­ly dis­rupt­ing and chang­ing every­thing, is being tech savvy. On the one hand, this means HR lead­ers have to under­stand which tasks and process­es the organ­i­sa­tion would ben­e­fit most from automat­ing, not least to free line man­agers’ time up to focus on sup­port­ing their team’s needs.

On the oth­er, it is about know­ing how to use data insights and analy­sis effec­tive­ly to plan, exert suit­able influ­ence over senior exec­u­tive deci­sion-mak­ing and make appro­pri­ate busi­ness cas­es for action in key peo­ple areas, rang­ing from recruit­ment to tal­ent man­age­ment.

In fact, Kropp says, although it may seem counter-intu­itive, the effec­tive use of data actu­al­ly helps HR lead­ers to “sup­port employ­ees in a more humane way” by enabling them to com­bine empa­thy with busi­ness acu­men.

Lin­da Mount­ford, HR direc­tor at canned fish brand John West, says it is essen­tial to “recog­nise the pow­er of data and tech­nol­o­gy in trans­form­ing the entire employ­ee expe­ri­ence”.

Technology is the cornerstone of HR success

Tay­lor agrees. “Tech­nol­o­gy is the cor­ner­stone. You don’t have to be a whiz at IT – you have a team for that – but know­ing what’s pos­si­ble with tech­nol­o­gy and data is impor­tant now and will be even more vital in future,” she says.

To illus­trate the point, Tay­lor cites an arti­cle pub­lished in the Har­vard Busi­ness Review in August enti­tled 21 HR Jobs of the Future. The study con­tends that of 60 new roles that are like­ly to be cre­at­ed in the field over the next ten years, 21 will have high lev­els of organ­i­sa­tion­al impact. Of this 21, more than half (12) will include a mid-to-high tech com­po­nent, while the rest, which con­sist main­ly of employ­ee well­be­ing and expe­ri­ence roles, will have a low-to-mid tech ele­ment.

But as part of this shift to a more auto­mat­ed world, Kropp also expects the CHRO role to morph cor­re­spond­ing­ly, adopt­ing a much stronger ven­dor man­age­ment ele­ment. While roles, such as HR busi­ness part­ner, will remain and new­ly cre­at­ed posi­tions will come about, he antic­i­pates oth­er jobs in areas like recruit­ment and learn­ing and devel­op­ment will increas­ing­ly be out­sourced.

“There’ll be few­er solu­tions devel­oped in-house and more part­ner­ing will take place,” he fore­casts. “We’re already see­ing a shift due to the cur­rent eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment as peo­ple look to get rid of fixed costs, so the future is com­ing at us now.”

Nonethe­less, Tay­lor does not expect to see the demise of the HR func­tion or a drop in the sta­tus of its leader, any time soon, even if the oper­a­tions side of the equa­tion does con­tract due to automa­tion.

“The human-cen­tric­i­ty of HR won’t dis­ap­pear, so while the oper­a­tions side may shrink, the peo­ple side, which deals with things like diver­si­ty and inclu­sion and employ­ee expe­ri­ence, will grow. And suc­cess­ful HR lead­ers will become increas­ing­ly adap­tive, imag­i­na­tive and think vir­tu­al first,” she con­cludes.