HR Career Mosaic

When diagnosing choices that make up an HR career, there has been an evolution from a career stages (stage 1, 2, 3) logic to a career mosaic based on two questions:

1. Where do you work? There are four choices where HR professionals can work (generalist, specialist, geography commitment, or outside HR).
2. What level or type of work do you do? There are three levels, each with increasing scope for HR work (individual contributor, manager, or leader).

These two questions shape an HR mosaic so that HR professionals may create a personal career path that works for them (see Figure F.1).

Within this mosaic, HR professionals may embark on a number of career paths as evidenced in the options in Figure F.1. Three examples of HR career paths are:

1. Functional specialist (1, 2, 3, 4)

   These HR professionals take increasingly senior jobs within a functional expertise (e.g., compensation, training, organization development, labor relations). With each career move (1, 2, 3, 4), they expand their scope within their chosen functional expertise.

1. Specialist to generalist (A, B, C, D, E)

   These HR professionals move from specialist to generalist world and back again (with a stint in geography). As they move back and forth, they gain awareness of the types of HR work.

1. Broad-based experience (a, b, c, d, e)

   These HR professionals have careers that offer broad exposure and experience, including work outside the HR function (e.g., in operations, marketing, or consulting). They are likely to be seen as business experts who happen to work in HR.

Obviously, within this mosaic a host of other career paths exist. The HR career mosaic reflects choices HR professionals make about how to manage their careers.

HR Certification and Competencies

HR certification ensures that HR professionals know the body of knowledge (theory and research) that underlies HR. Certification validates base knowledge and ensures that HR professionals are legitimate. This volume offers exceptional insights into the certification requirements in six areas of HR functional expertise:

1. Business management and strategy
2. Workforce planning and employment
3. Human resource development
4. Compensation and benefits
5. Employee and labor relations
6. Risk management

Becoming certified in these areas enables HR professionals to deliver insights that will have impact.

In addition, HR professionals need to be competent. There are an increasing number of HR competency models created by HR associations and by organizations working to upgrade their HR professionals. Having researched and published on HR competencies for 30 years (primarily with Professor Wayne Brockbank from the University of Michigan, but also with many exceptional colleagues), we have identified four principles of defining the right HR competencies.¹

1. HR competence definition is not the goal; defining HR competencies that create positive outcomes is the goal. Most competency models ask the question “What are the competencies of HR professionals?” This is the wrong question. The question should be: “What are the competencies of HR professionals that have greatest impact on business performance?” We have shown that different HR competencies have differential impact on three outcomes: personal effectiveness of the HR professional, impact on key stakeholders, and business results. HR is not about HR, and HR competencies are not about the competencies, but about how they deliver key outcomes.
2. HR competencies are determined less by self-report and more by how those competencies are perceived by others. HR competencies should be assessed not only by the HR professional but by those who observe the HR professional. People generally judge themselves by their intent; others judge them by their behavior, so it is important to evaluate both intent and behavior.
3. Global HR competencies exist, but they also may vary by geography, industry, size of organization, level in the organization, role in the organization, gender, time in role, and so forth. We empirically show that 50 to 60 percent of HR competences are essential to all circumstances, and then 40 to 50 percent vary by setting.
4. Key HR competencies change over time. Having done seven rounds of major studies over 30 years with a total of more than 100,000 respondents, we can say with some certainty that every four to five years, 30 to 40 percent of HR competencies evolve. For example, in recent rounds of our research, we have seen a rise in the importance of HR technology and HR analytics.

In our most recent research, we identified nine competencies for being an effective HR professional, as shown in Figure F.2.²

Table F.1 summarizes the key questions and our findings from this recent research.

In brief, we know what it takes to be successful in HR. Regardless of career path, HR professionals require a combination of certification and competence. Certification gives one a license to act; competence ensures the right actions.

Third, HR professionals can rise to their opportunities. Through hundreds of HR interventions, we have learned how to be a better HR professional and how to build better HR professionals. In both cases, there are four steps to upgrading HR professionals.

First, create a theory or standard of what it means to be effective. The six domains of certification in this volume and the example of HR competencies cited earlier suggest a standard of what it means to be or build effective HR. The “be, know, and do” of these expectations may become a standard for effective HR.

Second, assess HR professionals against the standards and behaviors. Some of this assessment may come from personal profiling, and some may come from 360-degree assessments. These assessments highlight strengths that can be built on and weaknesses that can be overcome. People are more likely to change when they have clarity about what to improve.

Third, improve HR professionals through a host of development experiences. We have organized these development experiences into three categories. First, work experiences come when HR professionals take on new and demanding assignments, work on special projects, and/or receive coaching. Most learning comes from personal experience with trial and error. Second, training and development experiences come from learning in more structured education settings. Training is more effective when it emphasizes learning solutions, adapts to different learning styles, is focused on specific business challenges and personal behaviors, and is measured by accountable impact. Third, people learn from life experience. Some of life experience can be structured, such as using corporate philanthropy as a leadership development opportunity (e.g., IBM service corps offers aspiring leaders a way to learn by participating in IBM's community service). But many life experiences create incredible forums for learning, such as raising children, participating in community organizations, traveling to new countries, reading and exploring new ideas, representing one's organization to public audiences, and simply being an active observer of one's world.

Each HR professional should have an individual development program that lays out a road map to becoming a better HR professional. Each HR department should be investing in HR professional development either through HR career management (see previous discussion), through HR academies for HR professionals, or through other HR development opportunities.

Fourth, evaluate HR improvement. Wanting to change indicates a desire, but without measures to track change, desires often languish. To rise to their opportunities, HR professionals should track not only their personal improvements, but the impact of these improvements on desired outcomes. Personal change can be monitored through sequential 360-degree assessments that track how others perceive change. Organization change can be tracked through the impact of HR on desired outcomes. For example, we have created the leadership capital index that offers investors a way to measure how HR impacts investor value.

These four steps essentially propose HR for HR. Often HR encourages leaders and others to define, assess, improve, and evaluate in order to grow. When HR professionals apply the same logic to themselves, they can make real progress.

Conclusion

What is the hope for the ideas in this book? To help HR practitioners, academics, and thought leaders deliver more value from a shared set of best practices and benchmarks. Whether you are a student of HR, an international HR professional, a seasoned practitioner, or a professional influencer, it is indeed a great time to be in HR. We know what it takes to be successful, and because of this, HR professionals can be valued business partners by rising to the opportunities.

The Building Blocks

The inconsistencies in the ways companies use their HR competencies mirror nearly perfectly the evolution of the profession. As the business landscape has changed, the HR industry has changed as well, and some businesses and industries have been better at keeping the two aligned than others.

The early twentieth century was characterized by enormous growth in industrialization and the country's labor pool. Large factories in the northern states expanded beyond textiles and into the middle states, creating a boom of work and many lifetime jobs. This industrialization required more workers, and the European immigrant population from countries such as Italy and Hungary grew as a result. Railroads expanded, decreasing the cost of transportation. Workers continued to organize for better working conditions. Human resources had a new job, and it was the industrial relations manager—relations with labor unions and interactions between humans and processes, and between humans and machines.

Automating manufacturing processes fostered the development of mass production, bringing a whole new perspective to the workplace. For the first time, U.S. businesses had to think about managing full-scale operations and the people it took to perform them. How should large companies be structured? How should the work be organized? How should people be managed? Personnel became a staff unit, an independent department whose job was to advise all line management functions.

It wasn't just businesses that were seeking answers. The government took a keen interest in the way these taxpaying giants were behaving, and began influencing how businesses would be run through laws. HR added new responsibilities to its job description: policy maker and compliance officer.

As companies evolved and thought leaders of the day discovered that businesses could significantly influence individual employee behavior to achieve strategic goals, the transactional nature of HR work was not enough. Everything was in motion, with a mix of moving targets made up of the competitive and the resource management needs of the business (financial, physical, and knowledge). HR began to address the interpersonal skills of the workforce, applying principles of communication, leadership, and team-building skills. The human relations role of HR came to be. As the market deepened into international waters and competition increased, it became essential to employers that they find, develop, and retain key talent, adding the development and management of a human capital strategy to HR's increasingly important role.

The academic and scientific communities were experiencing momentum similar to that of other industries. As technological and economic progress was made in the workplace, psychology and the social sciences were creating a bank of empirical evidence on how best to manage organizational, individual, and group performance through systematic interventions. This work formed the basis for industry best practices around organizational development. Enter HR as the behavioral scientist.

Finally, the globalization of the workforce and business structures created a need for HR practices across geographic borders. Decreased trade barriers, the search for new markets, the rapid development of technology, and the rise of e-commerce platforms have all contributed to the internationalization of business. HR was tasked with international human resource management (IHRM) strategies—adapting home country practices to global conditions.

It was and continues to be clear that the evolved HR role of industrial relations, compliance, human relations, strategy, organizational development, and IHRM has formed a powerful discipline from which organizations could push their competitive performance.

The HR Profession

In the late 1960s, a study by Cornell University found that a profession is defined by five main characteristics.¹ They were:

1. A profession must be full-time.
2. A profession must have a national professional association.
3. A profession must have a certification program.
4. A profession must have a code of ethics.
5. Schools and curricula must be aimed specifically at teaching the basic ideas of the profession, and there must be a defined common body of knowledge.

Based on this, the American Society of Personnel Administration (ASPA) began to design a formal human resource profession, seeking to frame the context from which the practice would be performed. These activities included organizing the existing academic principles into a formal program to teach human resources. It gave influence to the formal association of the ASPA, which morphed eventually into what is now the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). A code of ethics was adopted, serving to guide the highest standards of professional behaviors. In 1973, the ASPA Accreditation Institute (AAI) was formed to meet the professional certification requirements. The first certification exams were given in 1976. The AAI as we know it today is called the Human Resource Certification Institute® (HRCI®).

All of these efforts served to create the six domains of human resource management (HRM). The foundation of human resources is built upon the human resource body of knowledge—the HRBoK™.

The Six Domains

This book is organized according to the six domains of human resources that are rooted in HR's origins, but have evolved to reflect current conditions. These domains are reviewed in more detail next.

Business Management and Strategy

The domain of business management and strategy (BMS) is the area where HR experts look at the organization as a whole while establishing goals and outcomes for its parts. It is the foundation for all other HR activities, providing macro-level direction through strategy development and operational direction through business management.

The goal of this domain is to develop and support the company's mission, vision, and values. HR is expected to shape policies and HR programs around the company identity and employer brand while supporting the behaviors that achieve strategic goals and objectives.

All of the aforementioned outcomes are served when HR professionals are adept at managing change on a local and global scale, and being accepted as organizational leaders (see Figure 1.2).

Workforce Planning and Employment

If BMS is strategically focused, the domain of workforce planning and employment (WPE) is operationally focused. This is where HR practitioners are experts in recruitment, selection, and employee separation. These two practices are the bookends of the life cycle of the employee; the other domains address all areas in between (see Figure 1.3).

Key to all the activities of HR in this domain is alignment:

• Aligning jobs to company goals and activities. Using the principles of job design, HR supports productivity outcomes through work flow analysis.
• Aligning jobs to people and people to organizations. This is known as fit. HR uses both job and company data to predict the success of new hires and separate those with poor fit.
• Aligning resources to strategy. By systematically reviewing company business plans and strategies, HR determines the human capital requirements to achieve business goals. This includes both staffing up and downsizing.

Human Resource Development

In the domain of human resource development (HRD), HR supports organizational strategies through managing performance. It begins with conducting needs assessments to identify gaps between current performance and the desired state. This is followed by building programs that address the gaps. These programs may be people oriented, such as performance management systems and leadership development, or process oriented, such as through quality initiatives.

Additionally, the management of individuals requires expertise in motivating adults to do the work, developing tools beyond the paycheck. Understanding how employees learn and paying attention to what employees need form the basis for employee training and development activities.

Compensation and Benefits

While compensation and benefits (CAB) are not the sole motivating factors for workers, poor management of the programs results in highly dissatisfied workers. CAB programs are heavily influenced by the concepts of equity and loyalty:

• Perceptions of justice are very closely linked to CAB programs.
• Compensation and benefits programs increase employee loyalty.

Both of these concepts are linked with the psychological contract: the mutual expectation of an exchange of fair behaviors, implied and codified over time through experience. Employers expect employees to do their best work, remain loyal, and stay until work is completed. Employees expect fair pay, promotions, and job security.

The reception other HR programs receive in terms of employee engagement and responsiveness must pass first through the psychological veil of CAB programs. Additionally, employers need their CAB programs to remain competitive while dealing with increasing labor and health care costs. Employers pay a cost above and beyond employee base wages, and this burden must be factored into the design of all CAB programs to deliver a return on investment (ROI) and retain the company's value (see Figure 1.4).