• Increasing competition in the job market
  


• The coming talent shortage and brain drain as baby boomers retire
  


• The innovation imperative
  


• Stepped up M&A and restructuring activity
  


• Increased scrutiny on publicly-held companies in the post Sarbanes-Oxley environment
  

Strategic asset; strategic imperative
The most strategic asset any company has today—whether you think of this as the Age of Information, the Digital Age, or the Age of Innovation—is talent. And HR is the caretaker of this most critical, and costly, investment.

So it’s a time of both challenge and opportunity for our HR colleagues. However negative Keith Hammonds may have been in his Fast Company article, he was dead on about one thing: “HR is the corporate function with the greatest potential—the key driver, in theory, of business performance...” The questions being raised in his and other articles pertain to what HR is doing with its proverbial seat at the table, what it’s doing to seize the strategic imperative, and how it’s demonstrating real value.

Although every client company we work with has pockets of excellence in dealing with critical HR issues, the challenge they run into is consistently achieving excellence across the board. Over the course of the past year, my colleagues and I have talked in these pages about the issues most likely to be on your front burner: retention, talent management, succession planning, and diversity. Are you reevaluating these in light of the changing business environment and, particularly, the coming demographic shift?.

It’s not a time for HR to be a follower; it’s a time to be a leader. To be a true partner to senior management, you have to be a businessperson who also happens to be an HR professional. Nanette Byrnes observed in the BusinessWeek cover story that HR “can be a fast route to the top at companies that care about talent.” We’ve seen it happen for HR professionals who have made it their business to.

• Understand the organization and its business environment. What drives the business? Who are the core customers? Who is the competition? What are the challenges? Opportunities? How does the company achieve growth? Create value for shareholders? What are the goals and objectives?
  


• Be strategic. Understand the role of human assets in achieving the organization’s goals and objectives so you can align HR objectives with corporate objectives.
  


• Be future focused. Your organization’s long-term health depends on understanding how the business environment is changing and preparing for that change. You need to keep one eye focused on the present and the other on the road ahead.
  


• Be open, flexible and adaptable. It’s not a time for people who are complacent or wedded to one way of doing things. In a world of change organizations need to be agile. As corporate strategy changes, HR strategy needs to change with or even be ahead of it.
  


• Take ownership. Like all other parts of the business, you have to deliver real results that have an impact on growth, profitability, and value creation.
  


• Take responsibility for developing the HR leaders of tomorrow. What development initiatives do you have in place for creating depth of bench in your own discipline? Who is responsible for growing tomorrow’s HR leaders if not you?

I firmly believe the real value of HR will become increasingly apparent as you undertake the critical succession-planning initiative the retirement wave has necessitated. And we’re here to partner with you in any way we can. You can always reach me at bill.ayers@ayers.com.  Δ