HR professionals will have to adapt to survive

It’s a great time to be in human resources. CEOs finally understand the value of people management. But that doesn’t mean HR professionals can sit back and rest on their laurels. In fact, it’s now, when all eyes are on the HR department, that professionals need to prove their mettle.

There’s a distinction to be made between the human resource department as it currently exists and the human resource functions it provides, as noted by SHRM president and CEO Johnny C. Taylor in his opening address at this year’s conference. “The question is whether our profession is the right people to manage and deliver that function,” he said. Those functions all could be divvied up between other departments: payroll issues under the finance umbrella, diversity and equity under the purview of legal–even talent management and recruitment could be taken up by marketing.

Related: 6 predictions for the benefits and HR industry in 2018

HR professionals finally have their CEO’s attention, but to make the most use of it, they need to act less like an HR professional and more like a CEO.

This was the message delivered by Michele M. Smith, vice president of marketing for O.C. Tanner, to a room full of HR professionals at the SHRM 2018 Conference in Chicago. “The number one thing I hear from CEOs is that they want HR to be bolder,” Smith said. “They want you to challenge them. They want you to come to them with ideas.”

That doesn’t mean they’ll listen, however. While CEOs want to hear more ideas from their CHRO, Smith says what they don’t want to hear is HR speak. “This is a big issue for CEOs and a lot of senior leadership. You come into a meeting and tell them everything about a survey. They do not want to hear the details. They want to hear what’s important, what the actionable item we should take.”

To survive, Smith says, CHROs (and everyone else) need to adopt a more business- and enterprise-oriented mindset. “Forty percent of CHROs are not coming from human resources,” she told the crowd. “Our leaders want us to raise our head and look out over the entire organization and be more enterprise driven, not quite so focused on traditional responsibilities.”

CEOs want an HR department that anticipates challenges and trends and offers actionable solutions. This means looking beyond the functions and processes of the HR department and understanding how all the parts of the company work together. “Business issues are people issues,” Smith said. “CEOs right now are looking for growth and innovation from finance and HR. They’re realizing this whole idea of talent and culture and creating a workplace that lasts and can attract the kind of employees and contract workers they need to sustain their business. They want you to work with finance/accounting. They want that fiduciary oversight.”

There’s a similar synergy between marketing and HR, Smith notes. Engaged employees directly correlate to happy customers. “Get to know your marketing colleagues and start to have these conversations,” she says. “Your marketing colleagues have seen this data, as well.”

Smith noted that this is all part of a global shift in how company success is measured; the triple bottom line, which includes profits, planet and people. “Wall Street boards and investors are asking about culture and talent,” Smith says, noting that there are now brokers who will not recommend the stock a company that doesn’t have a formal recognition program for talent acquisition.

And the bottom line for HR professionals: to survive as a profession will require looking beyond the functions of HR and thinking more like a strategic business professional.