Making the CEO's Business the HR Business

Interview with: Jacky Wearn, Global Head of Organisational Effectiveness, British American Tobacco

Human Resource (HR) directors should be genuinely connected to the business agenda and making the CEO's business their business, advises Jacky Wearn, Global Head of Organisational Effectiveness at British American Tobacco. Aligning HR with the business needs to ensure that time, energy and effort spent, deliver value to the organisation. A keynote speaker at the marcus evans HR Talent Summit 2010 taking place in Switzerland, 14 - 16 June 2010, Wearn discusses long-term strategies for HR directors and the criticality of HR engagement with senior management.

What should be on HR directors' agendas today?

Jacky Wearn: Europe is still at various stages of the recession with some of its economies still struggling, which has consequently filtered through to the HR functions within businesses. This translates to various issues for HR directors to deal with - ensuring that the business retains top talent, keeping the business lean and agile, not only surviving the economic conditions but also thriving.

It is important that HR executives stay engaged and very connected with wow items the business leaders throughout this process. There is a tendency for HR people to retreat to their offices in such times, but it is exactly the time when they should be more engaged with the business.

If HR directors are genuinely connected to where the business leaders are at, in terms of their thoughts, concerns around the business and their people agenda, it will be easier for them to influence the corporate strategies and drive the appropriate talent processes forward in what is a pretty tough economic time. HR directors should continue to make the CEO's business their own business. It would be interesting to know how much time they are spending with senior business partners and the level of dialogue that is taking place on the talent management agenda. We pay a lot of lip service to it, but certainly in our organisation, our top HR team does not believe that it is spending as much time with top directors discussing business challenges and the talent agenda of the company as it would like.

Which HR programmes have proved successful at British American Tobacco?

Jacky Wearn: We are embarking on a transformation of our HR function and pretty much an organisational transformation. We recognise that we are in wow gold a position of competitive strength, but there is absolutely no room for complacency. We have developed a pilot programme around engagement and consulting skills, to ensure what is needed to deliver projects on time and on budget, influence clients and really drive the change agenda of the business. The feedback we have so far is that these are exactly the sort of skills needed in order to be strong business partners at this time.

We are trying to be much more efficient and effective in the way that we deliver our HR agenda to the business; we are reviewing the processes we need to deliver HR in line with BAT's business strategy. What capabilities do we need to deliver those processes? Which skills and competencies? It is a process-led piece of work, showing once again that the starting point is understanding what the business drivers are and aligning the HR strategy to the business strategy. Thus, what we spend time, energy and effort on delivering, is what the business actually needs.

What long-term strategies buy wow gear would you recommend to HR directors in Europe?

Jacky Wearn: The smart organisations, irrespective of the market positions of the last 18 months to two years, continued to proactively attract top talent into their organisations. The organisations that have continued to make bets into those areas, even though they have not always had the future profit stream to be able to justify that investment, will be the winners as we emerge from this economic period.

HR directors should continue to be courageous with talent acquisition, wow items and not settle with non-fitting, low- or mid-range talent just because they lack the courage or because it is difficult to release some people and hire new people into the organisation.

In this increasingly networked world, it is very important for HR directors to spend time with peers and colleagues from other environments - sharing best practices, understanding what works well and what does not, and appreciating other companies' cultures and coming back and seeding in some of those new ideas into their own organisation, in order to keep that external perspective. Offering much more than any conference, seminar or trade show, this exclusive meeting will bring together esteemed industry thought leaders and solution providers to a highly focused and interactive networking event. The summit includes presentations on attaining ultimate employee performance, talent scouting and organisational transformation.

Please note that the summit is a closed business event and the number of participants strictly limited.
source:http://www.wowgoldpo.fr