HR Director as organisational leader: HR Directors’ Retreat 2013

Network News Issue 3

Paul Fairhurst, Principal Consultant

Being an HR Director, or indeed any other senior HR role, is not just about heading up the HR function it is also about being a leader of the organisation. In July, we welcomed around thirty delegates to this year’s HR Directors’ Retreat (held for the first time at Wotton house near Dorking) where we explored what it means to be an organisational leader and delved into some of the specific challenges that it raises for HR people.

First, we began by hearing from Penny Tamkin of IES what the research tells us about the HR Director’s role as an organisational leader, including the usual evidence that HR people can be too rule bound, not business focused and perhaps not of the right calibre. However, we also heard that over three quarters of CEOs valued the special relationship they have with their HRD which in part comes from the possible two-edged sword that HRDs aren’t a rival for their jobs.

Sir Dennis O’Connor, recently retired as Chief Inspector of Constabulary, talked about the importance of organisational values and his experience of them both in the police and at IBM. He described how strongly they can guide people’s behaviour at all levels in the organisation, providing an important lever for senior executives.

Bringing an outside perspective to the discussion, Aine Hurley, Head of the HR Practice at executive search firm Odgers Berndtson, provided a very clear description of what CEOs are looking for when they recruit HR Directors to their team. She summarised the key issues under the headings of service delivery, strategic talent management, stakeholder management and remuneration planning, underlining the importance of being able to operate and influence at the right level.

As a final session on the first afternoon, three of the delegates shared their own personal stories of how they had stepped beyond their HR role, from leading the crisis response during the oil tanker drivers’ strike, to reconfiguring the way policing was delivered to reduce costs, to improving the productivity of franchise operations using multiple regression (yes!).

Over an excellent and informal dinner, entertainment was provided in the form of an inter-table quiz with delegates showing that HR people are not only knowledgeable (about a whole range of odd subjects from London tube stations to childhood celebrities) but that they are also very competitive!

On the morning of day two we started by hearing from Mike Cooke, Chief Executive of the London Borough of Camden, about what a CEO needs in their HR Director. Mike described the unfolding story of change in his local government organisation, driven by community needs through a clear set of principles and well-defined outcomes. This was all underpinned by a mindset of systems thinking and the creation of an organic, values-driven organisation.

After some time to reflect in pairs, we then heard from Jane Cotton, HR Director of Oxfam, on her journey to influencing the business agenda and making a real difference to the organisation and its communities. For her, it started with building a strong team in HR so that she could really focus on working with the other senior leaders (especially the CEO) to understand the business and focus her time on the critical issues. To have real impact beyond HR, she talked about offering to lead (‘take the space’) non-HR business critical initiatives but to do this by playing to your own individual strengths.

Once again, a stimulating 24 hours although, unsurprisingly, there was no silver bullet for standing out as an organisational leader though there were some strong pointers given by all our speakers. This is just a flavour of the event and as always presentations and other documentation can be found on the HR Network web pages.

Download the presentations and notes here