Ouch! Memo to CFOs: Don't Trust HR - Careers - CFO.com

Memo to CFOs: Don't Trust HR - Careers - CFO.com

Memo to CFOs: Don't Trust HR
A professor says most human resources professionals are ill-equipped to carry out value-added workforce planning and transformation.
David McCann - CFO.com US
March 10, 2009

Excerpts:

Addressing a crowd of about 300 financial executives this morning, a professor of human resources [Rutgers University's Richard Beatty] soundly denounced the corporate HR profession for being mostly unable to provide analytics that are useful in making workforce decisions that build economic value.

Most companies today spend too little effort on attracting and retaining top strategic talent and too much on satisfying the rest of the employee base, asserted Rutgers University's Richard Beatty, who spoke at a general session during the CFO Rising conference in Orlando. In fact, he claimed that typical human resources activities have no relevance to an organization's success. "HR people try to perpetuate the idea that job satisfaction is critical," Beatty said. "But there is no evidence that engaging employees impacts financial returns."

Beatty said that it is most important to think outside the HR department box when it comes to filling the strategic positions that create the bulk of a company's value. To that end, he suggested that companies might be better off appointing someone from outside the HR department to manage strategic talent. He pointed to Precision Castparts Corp., a $7 billion machine-parts manufacturer, as one company that has bypassed HR in several situations. For one, it reassigned an operations executive who ran a third of the company's 150 plants to take control of scouting for and retaining strategic talent.

Such tactics are warranted because while "the language of organizations is numbers, HR isn't very good at data analytics," Beatty said. "They don't think like business people. Many of them entered human resources because they wanted to help people, which I'm all for, but I'm also for building winning organizations."

It's the CFO's job to make sure that the work of analyzing and, as necessary, reconstituting the work force gets done by someone qualified to do the job, added Beatty, and there has never been more at stake than there is now.

"The labor market is in a position to provide you with better talent than you have ever had," said Beatty, co-author of the new book, The Differentiated Workforce. "If you don't emerge from this market with better talent in the roles that really make a difference, I don't think you're trying."

Read full article:http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13270251?f=AlsoOn031309
***********************************************************************
This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.