HR career management: Practising what we preach?

Changes to the structure and responsibilities of the HR function in many large organisations have created issues regarding career paths and staff development, according to a new report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Paradoxically, the creation of higher level, more strategic and demonstrably value adding roles in the function has increased the challenges in developing staff to fill them.

HR is increasingly characterised by a division between:

Shared service centres (in-house or outsourced), handling many of the day to day administrative functions of HR

Centres of expertise, made up of technical specialists in, for example, reward, resourcing and learning and development

HR business partners, working at a strategic level with managers in different parts of the business.

But the report shows that while structures have been changed in line with Dave Ulrichís three-legged model of HR, sufficient thought has not always been given to the consequences for HR career paths. It argues that shared services and outsourcing have led to dispersed HR units, dealing with their client base in a more remote and transactional way, while high level business partners seek to get closer to the organisation and are making a strategic contribution.

Duncan Brown, CIPD Assistant Director General, said:

ìFragmented careers are arising as a result of the separation of service centres, centres of expertise and business partner roles. The majority of HR staff in our research already have experience outside of the function and are positive about its increasing business impact. But we need to think through how the different parts of the function work together effectively and how we enable staff to develop a broad enough perspective of all that the function does.

ìNew models of HR are helping to clarify the role and demonstrate the contribution of the function. But we need to ask whether we are clear where the HR business partners, senior managers and highly specialised technical experts of the future are coming from.

ìIt seems that organisations have sometimes put changes in structure in place before fully considering the implications for the skills development and career paths of their staff. HR people are making more ìzigzagî moves to gain a mix of operational experience and real know-how in specialist areas. And there still appears to be a valuable role for the HR generalist to play.

ìIf we do not address these questions as a profession, in the way that companies like Prudential (profiled in the report) are doing, then the gap between the aspirations of the function to deliver strategic and specialist roles and its ability to develop individuals into them will grow. HR is responsible for talent management and career development policy within the wider organisation, and when it comes to our own profession we have to practise what we preach.î

Graduates

The report also highlights the conundrum of HR executives worried about the shortage of talent coming into the function, yet graduates and those new to it perceiving a lack of opportunity to develop the high levels of experience and expertise necessary to perform more senior strategic and specialist roles.

Brown says:

ìWe have to think more about how we provide the progressive development roles and experiences for those at all levels in the function, rather than just assuming we can buy-in the talent from outside into senior roles, in what is already a very tight labour market, with growing demand.î

CIPD is working with a number of major UK organisations to help create a more effective ëtalentí pipeline for their HR function, as well as providing a range of training programmes to support the development of specialist expertise in areas such as reward and OD, as well as strategic business partnering.