This is the fourth in a series of blogs looking at the concept of business management in the people function and this week we’ll be looking at managing risk. We will look at managing risks within the function, not the wider people risks. If you missed the first couple of blogs we talked about the overall principle, including a look at finance. We’ve also focused on strategy and planning as well as project delivery.
Month: February 2021
Focusing on project delivery
This is the third in a series of blogs looking at the concept of business management in the people function and this week we’ll be looking at project delivery. If you missed the first two blogs we talked about the overall principle, including a look at finance. Last week we focused on strategy and planning.
Focusing on people strategy & planning
This is the second in a series of blogs looking at the concept of business management in the people function and this week we’ll be looking at strategy and planning. If you missed the first blog we talked about the overall principle, and had a look at finance within the people function.
A business savvy people function?
How often have we as a function talked about needing to be business savvy?
It’s certainly a conversation we’ve heard frequently as we’ve moved to the Ulrich model i.e., Business Partner, Centres of Excellence and Shared Services. The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) view is that as people professionals we should understand our organisations purpose, future direction, priorities and performance, as well as understanding external influences and trends. To reflect this the CIPD’s professional map has an entire area on business acumen. This covers topics such as financial literacy, business planning and supplier management.
At InFocus HR we would fully agree. As a profession, understanding what the organisation is trying to achieve and performance against goals and budgets is critical, as it supports our engagement with stakeholders. As a profession though the question we need to ask is whether we run our function in the way that we expect our organisational managers to operate theirs? A Gartner article from May 2020 referenced an emerging trend for HR Chief Operating Officer roles. They specifically call out a need to focus on the operation of the function itself i.e. being business savvy!