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The Future Human Resource Professionals Career Model KATHLEEN BARCLAY AND THOMAS THIVIERGE If you are about to graduate from an excellent undergraduate business school program with a specialization in HR, you are probably thinking, Where do I go from here? Should I go straight to an MBA program, since general business acumen is an essential HR skill? Or, should I try to get a job in a line position where I can gain a better understanding of the business? Perhaps you have considered joining a large company that can provide you with the quality and breadth of specialized experiences that will develop two other key HR competenciesfunctional expertise and talent management. Or, you could work for a smaller firm, where you could gain more experience earlier in your career in the areas of change leadership and employee problem resolution and advocacy. And, where can you best get experience with the latest technology that is changing the delivery of HR services? Just when you think that you have identified an answer to these important questions, you cannot help but wonder about the future of the HR function. Can you just skip the basic HR work that is increasingly being performed by outsourced service providers and go straight to being a strategic HR partner? Perhaps you should just get an MBA and wait until the future is more clearly defined. These are all natural reactions to the dramatically changing role of the HR function. For an aspiring HR professional, dealing with the ambiguity and the constant change is the only constant! Over the past few years, I have been hearing these questions when I visit with students either in the classroom or when I host them here in Detroit. 58 Human Resource Professionalism Many of my HR executivesand many of my peers at other great companiesshare my passion for the need to widely communicate the changing expectations of the HR profession and to provide some career development guidance to aspiring HR professionals. Our operating line executives who have relationships with our key recruiting schools have also been including perspectives on the strategic role of HR in the business whenever they meet with students. The operational leader is often the best communicator of the skills that an HR professional needs to demonstrate. Therefore, this HR transformation message is also being conveyed to the next generation of operational leadersthe future customers for our strategic HR services. For our existing workforce at General Motors (GM), we are trying to reduce this expectations ambiguity by redefining the HR career path model based on the emerging role of the HR professional. The following success profile is based not only on the research of academic thought leaders, but also on the input of my most senior HR professionals who have been living this transformation every day. We also interviewed our senior leaders in the company and asked them the following question: What capabilities should your HR professionals demonstrate to meet your business objectives? As a result of this discovery process, we determined that our future HR employeesand our existing HR professionalsneed to develop business acumen, functional expertise, talent management skills, change leadership, and partnership/relationship skills, while also learning how to use and implement technology. Our customers expect all these abilities to be put to use while performing both the employee advocacy and the strategic HR partnership roles. Making this skill transformation has not been an easy taskand the job is not done. At GM, we have over 2,500 HR professionals supporting 341,000 employees in 58 countries around the world. Our annual HR budget is $900 million to support our $180 billon company. While our HR expenditures as a percentage of revenue have remained constant, our 2,500-employee infrastructure is 30 percent lower than it was just four years ago. More HR work is being performed in partnership with outsourcing service providers all around the world. Another skill transformation challenge is that we must develop business acumen and drive common processes in the many industries and disciplines The Future Professionals Career Model 59 Table 6.1 The Experiences That Matter Experience Area Primary Skills Developed Talent management (includes compensation, staffing, performance management, succession planning, change management, learning, and development) Developing human capital, strategic line leader partnerships, and functional expertise (primarily a specific specialization area as well as customer service, leading change, and problem solving) Labor relations (includes contract negotiation and administration, manufacturing supervision, and safety) Employee advocacy, business acumen (primarily manufacturing), Union partnerships and functional expertise (primarily negotiating, conflict resolution, and lean thinking/TQM) Operations (includes HR information technology, HR planning, health care/pension, policy, employment/payroll training, and contract services administration) Third-party vendor partnerships, technology applications, and functional expertise (primarily data analysis/ modeling, process knowledge, negotiating, and project management) that reside under our one companyautomotive, financial services such as insurance, commercial or mortgage lending and auto financing, marketing and advertising, satellite telecommunications, legal, government relations, real estate, and e-commerce. Complexity often results in process and skill variation. Therefore, how has GM focused on developing this future HR professional in this complex and challenging environment? Since development is primarily through experiences, but also supported by training, what are the experiences and training that matter for the new HR professional? We have separated HR into three (3) distinct experience categories: talent management HR, manufacturing and labor relations, and operations HR. We have also implemented a three- (3) stage training process for all HR professionals. Tables 6.1 and 6.2 depict the primary HR skills that will be developed with this experience and training approach. This approach is intended to help our current employees successfully make this transition. Most have enthusiastically embraced the challenge and are providing world-class HR processes and services to their customers. Not every current HR employee can clear the higher bar that has been established. Many simply do not have the experiences that could have 60 Human Resource Professionalism Table 6.2 The Training That Matters Training Area Primary Skills Developed Vision Root Map Exercise (outlines the HR transformation vision, from transactional to strategic, twothree hours) Trained every HR professional, and most key line customers, relative to HRs transformation vision. Exercise provided an interactive walk from the past to the future, with a focus on the barriers and enablers. Skills for SuccessPhases I/II/III (e-learning training in the core competencies required for success as an HR professional, 40 hours for phases I/II and approx. 120 hours over 8 weeks for phase III, with e-learning and group/individual project learning) Curriculum provided by a university, first two phases taken over a two-year period for all HR employees (covers areas such as financial acumen, consulting skills, strategic partnerships, change leadership). Phase III is an MBA level course offered to higher performing/high potential HR talent, with a primary emphasis on global collaboration and consulting skills. Mastery Level Training (includes intensive certification training in these core areas, with an average of three days training per expertise area) Skill-building training, with certification criteria post-training, in areas such as talent management, leading change, value stream mapping, coaching, performance intervention, and providing candid, constructive feedback. prepared them for this new role. Therefore, when training and coaching fail, the only remaining choice is to help the individual to transition to another company or career option. At GM, we believe that optimizing employee performance is the reason that HR exists. That old clich practice what you preach applies here. To be a credible HR partner for line leaders, HR must be willing to address its own lower performers. We all know that the only sustainable competitive advantage in the future is the firms human capital. The best HR talent must be assigned to this important human capital management task. What about the next generation of HR professionals? Because of this shift, GMs hiring model has also begun to shift. In the past, GM would primarily source talent among interns and college graduates with BA degrees. Then, by providing assignments throughout the organization, GM The Future Professionals Career Model 61 would teach them all the functional basics and grow the best talent into managerial and executive positions. This HR generalist, developmental approach of the past will not serve GM well in the future. Therefore, we are trying to adjust our hiring profile. First, most new college graduates will be sourced from MBA or Industrial Relations programs, with individuals who have both relevant job experience and a specialization in either human resources or labor relations. If other large employers adopt the same approach, most business schools will need to adjust their curriculum. Currently, both finance and marketing concentrations continue to dominate the MBA curriculum while HR concentration options are rarely offered. In addition, some undergraduate specialization programs, such as Safety, will also be excellent sources for functional expertise talent. Our second-best source will be experienced HR professionals working for firms that are providing third-party services to major companies like GM. In the future, with their cash balance pension and health care accounts in hand, these early career individuals with operations HR experience will be in the best position to move from a service provider to a third-party service manager role for companies like GM. It may become common for companies with strong supplier partnership relationships to encourage the development of their employees by moving them back and forth between HR service providers and the main customer firm. This may be the only way that successful HR professionals can obtain both the operations and strategic partnership experiences that matter. Our third-best source for talent will be from our own line employees who have successfully worked in functional areas that depend on the same skill set as HR. Current examples are finance and information technology (for talent management and operations roles) and manufacturing (for labor relations and safety roles). This cross-functional partnership model means that many finance, manufacturing, and information technology (IT) functional experts will also view an HR assignment as a critical experience in their developmental plan. New college graduates might consider the following perspective: First, hold off on earning that masters degree until you have had some initial career success in either internship or full-time positions. Simply be successful in every job that you perform, whether you are working for a small, 62 Human Resource Professionalism midsize, or large company or whether you work in HR or some other functional area. Such success usually means that you get results, that you are smart and know the business, and that you can work well with others. With a track record of success, you are in a much better position to obtain the experiences that matter. These are experiences that can really affect business results. They are not only good for the business but they are also good for your development. It is a proven fact that we tend to learn and grow the most when we are in new, high-pressure situations. HR is a high-pressure function, with a significant impact on the bottomline performance of the company. In the past, we used to view company success in three primary areas: operation efficiency, financial performance, and customer satisfaction. The workforce was a secondary consideration and linking its capability to operational, financial, and customer satisfaction business results required an intuitive leap of faith. Now, most operational leaders recognize that a workforces ability to execute the business objectives is really the core element that will determine their companys success. Every HR process and practice must directly link to, support, and measure an employees ability to achieve the companys business objectives. HR is all about building workforce capability and optimizing the performance of every employee. With the experiences and the training that matter the most, the HR professional function will meet this challenge. It really is a great time to join the HR function.