Thursday, August 25, 2016

Week 1 Learning Log - Part 1

 


Section 1 Exploration - Focus on 1 of the 6 paradoxes of HR and a personal success story.
 

This week, we are learning about the six paradoxes facing HR.  I chose to focus on Inside and Outside (Ulrich et al, 2012).  As a consumer of HR products, I had never thought to measure success by both inside and outside measures.  I have always worked for organizations that were good at measuring things internally.  When faced with the task of looking to investors and customers to measure success, I find that being able to measure success is not so simple.  Not knowing that we would be studying these paradoxes, I have been dealing with the Inside and Outside paradox in my small business.
 As way of background, in addition to working for a large money manager, my husband and I also own a small business, Sears Hometown Store in Lancaster, SC.  One of our largest hurdles has been attracting and retaining great employees.  We have had almost 100% turnover in our first year.  We pay commissions and our base wage is 30% more than the required minimum wage. 

Because of this turnover, we chose to do intense strategic planning and to put our HR policies in writing.  We completed this task in June 2016.  Since then, we have been asking our customers what type of service they would like.  We have chosen to gauge success from the outside in and further have asked customers for employee referrals.  Because of this, we have hired 2 full-time sales people based on customer referrals.  Surprisingly, we are exceeding our sales goal in August 2016 for the first time. 

Reference:

Ulrich, D., W., Younger, J., Brockbank, & Ulrich,M . (2012). HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources. McGraw-Hill.

Section 2- Additional References:

Some of the sources that I used during my initial discussion posts and subsequent responses included:


Antoine, R. (2015, June 18). The Key to Strategic HR: You Must Be a Strong, Capable Business Partner. Retrieved on August 25, 2016 from: http://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/the-key-to-strategic-hr-you-must-be-a-strong-capable-business-partner/
Antoine outlines the four steps to becoming a valued HR business partner.  These steps include: a. building credibility, b. coming up with business solutions, c. providing advice and counsel, and d. being a change agent.  I found this article helpful when developing a plan to become a valued business partner, step by step.

 

Davenport, T., Iyer, B. (2016, June 28). A New Way for Entrepreneurs to Think About IT.  Retrieved August 22, 2016, from: https://hbr.org/2016/06/a-new-way-for-entrepreneurs-to-think-about-it (Links to an external site.)
Davenport et al (2016)'s article defines the importance of IT in developing business plans and further bolstered my argument that IT and non-revenue generating functions must be involved with strategic business processes.

 

Groysberg, B., Kelly, L. MacDonald, B (March 2011). The New Path to the C-Suite.  Retrieved August 23, 2016 from:  www.https://hbr/2011/03/the-new-path-to-the-c-suite
Groysberg et al(2011)'s study around the c-suite was very helpful in understanding current corporate business structure.  Simply, HR now has a senior executive sitting at the decision making table of most corporations.  The HR executive sits along side of a CEO, CIO, and CMO.  Even twenty years ago, these non-revenue generating functions were marginalized.

 

Mayhew, R. (2016). Why is it important for HR Management to be a Strategic Business Partner? Retrieved August 23, 2016 from: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/important-hr-management-strategic-business-partner-11079.html 
Mayhew (2016) provided the most thought provoking article of all, this week.  She suggested that HR is ultimately involved in safety, compensation, recruiting, training, and employee relations.  HR has evolved and will continue to evolve.

 
Section 3: SHRM Connect:   I joined SHRM Connect the week of August 22, 2016.  For the first few days, I was a lurker.  On August 25, 2016, I posted my first question:

HR From the Outside In - How do you measure success?                                                            




Posted an hour ago

REPLY Options Dropdown


This week, we are studying the six competencies for the future of human resources.  In particular, I have learned that an evolved organization judges the value of HR based on the receiver.  To help me better understand HR from the outside in, I have a few questions:

How have your organizations enabled a measurement of HR value through the eyes of your customers? 

Further, how do you involve customers in positioning HR in a strategic way?

Thank you, in advance, for your insight.

Kris Radel 

 

 

 

 

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