In the last of our series of blogs looking at the concept of business management in the people function we’ll be focusing on analytics. If you missed our previous blogs we looked at the overall principle, including finance. We’ve also looked at strategy & planning, projects, risk and supplier management. This blog won’t be looking at why you should generate insight and data. Let’s face it, there has already been enough written on the why. Instead we will focus on the how. By that we mean what are your options for generating analytics.
Tag: #peoplefunction
Focusing on supplier management
In our penultimate blog looking at business management in the people function we’ll be taking a look at supplier (or vendor) management. If you missed the previous blogs we talked about the overall principle, including a look at finance. We’ve also looked at strategy & planning, projects and risk management and thanks for all your comments to date! Choosing a supplier or negotiating a contract will not be covered here, instead we’ll focus on what needs to be in place after the contract has been signed.
Focusing on managing risk
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.
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!
Plan, Do, Review… or just planning?
We should all be familiar with the concept of plan, do, review. Yes? Certainly from our experience at InFocus HR, people teams are spending more time on planning. We’ve facilitated the delivery of our first people plan back in 2010 for the Asian businesses of a large global bank. At the time it wasn’t new for the bank but it was certainly new for the people team in the region, and of surprise to Business and Finance colleagues!
Since then we’ve facilitated, supported and delivered countless People plans and we know from various discussions with peers in other organisations that people leadership teams are planning more frequently. So that’s all good, right?