Questions about research
Q Who was surveyed in this latest research?
A The survey was targeted at individuals from either HR or the Business who had an active role or accountability in the recruitment process. Over half of the respondents were from financial, legal or professional service organizations with an even spread across organisations of different sizes.
Q What do you think is the biggest issue highlighted by this research?
A One of the key findings from this survey is that many HR departments are targeting areas for strategic growth which the rest of the business doesn’t value. To compound the issue, the business does not even see the HR function as effective when they are wrongly focussing on these areas deemed to be of relatively low importance. Obtaining a level of awareness and acceptance about the gulf between themselves and the rest of the business is the first step HR need to take in closing this gap.
Q What was the most unexpected finding that this research threw up?
A Another potential and surprising reason why the gap between HR and the business continues to be felt was highlighted in the research. Worryingly the findings indicated that a 2 tier HR function is unfortunately on the rise with HR Directors being in tune with the business but with HR managers and business partners being worryingly off key. This difference of priorities between HR Directors and the rest of the HR team can only indicate a concerning lack of communication within HR teams. Unless HR can face off to all parts of the business with consistent messaging, the credibility of the HR function is always going to be undermined, making that leap from store room to board room that much more difficult.
Q You could argue that the HR function unlike the rest of the business didn’t deem aligning resourcing and talent management strategies to business strategy a top priority as they already felt there was full alignment. Do you think this is possible?
A It would be nice to think this was the case but unfortunately this theory doesn’t hold water when you see that the discrepancy of priorities between HR and the business leaders tumbles down further into specific human capital management issues such as the war for the talent and recruitment. For example of the organisations surveyed, 72% of HR respondents assigned a high priority to the statement ‘Anything that gets vacancies filled more quickly, while only 28% of business leaders felt this was relevant. This mismatch of priorities between HR and the business is confirmed again when the issue of attrition is put under the spotlight. Whilst HR placed a high importance on decreasing staff turnover in employees with service less than 12 months, business managers were more interested in cutting the cost of bringing staff on board.