In 2001, the great David Maister published the results of a research study of 139 offices of 29 firms in 15 countries in 15 different lines of business. His book, “Practice What You Preach: What Managers Must Do to Create a High Achievement Culture” became a huge global bestseller and it it he demonstrates very clearly that it’s employee attitudes that drive financial results, and not the other way around. From this premise, Maister went on to develop his Causal Model and we write about this in our book, “Creating & Delivering your Value Proposition”, which David kindly contributed to. In it, we highlight the importance of employee engagement in bringing your value proposition to the whole organisation – and that includes your customers.

The other perspective being the lack of ‘strategic support’ by business leaders for all HR related matters. As you stated in the post, business leaders readily provide incentives for those members of staff working in Finance or Marketing and leave those in HR to fend for themselves, as they have to struggle to gain relevance. In my opinion, one way of pushing for building a better human resources team would be to give Strategic Human Resources relevance right from the very top of the organisation, from the Board of Directors through to the Senior Executive Management team, and then cascade the relevance down throughout the entire organisation.

To build a better Human Resources Team, there must be a deliberate and conscious effort by everyone concerned to always push HR matters to the forefront of strategic management discourse.

The issue can be viewed from two perspectives; on the one hand HR practitioners can be blamed for the lack of a strategic push for HR matters. As some lack the vision to see HR from a wholistic perspective and would merely concern themselves with operational matters. Or there is always the excuse that there isn’t time to deal with HR strategic matters. Some others do not possess the capacity to key into the overall strategic vision of their organisations and cannot translate strategic initiatives into operational targets to enhance the overall perception of HR.

The other perspective being the lack of ‘strategic support’ by business leaders for all HR related matters. As you stated in the post, business leaders readily provide incentives for those members of staff working in Finance or Marketing and leave those in HR to fend for themselves, as they have to struggle to gain relevance. In my opinion, one way of pushing for building a better human resources team would be to give Strategic Human Resources relevance right from the very top of the organisation, from the Board of Directors through to the Senior Executive Management team, and then cascade the relevance down throughout the entire organisation.

To build a better Human Resources Team, there must be a deliberate and conscious effort by everyone concerned to always push HR matters to the forefront of strategic management discourse.