leadership matters
Strong HR Capabilities
and Flawless Execution
are Good for Business
RAISING THE BAR FOR THE PROFESSION
Strong HR capabilities and flawless
execution are good for business –
and raise the bar for the profession.
The recent Boston Consulting
Group’s report entitled Creating People
Advantage confirmed two things for me
recently.
The correlation is very clear: companies
that have strong HR capabilities enjoy
higher financial performance over those
that don’t.
And secondly, the Human Resources
Professionals Association (HRPA) is definitely
on the right track with its updated
HR certification framework: the survey
found the most important HR capabilities
(and the ones most heavily invested
in by high-performing organizations) included
talent management, culture, HR
strategy and engagement. These are
precisely the kinds of capabilities that
HRPA’s new framework defines via 213
functional competencies and 15 enabling
competencies at each of the three levels
of HR practice – Entry; Professional;
and Executive.
Let’s examine what the survey found regarding
high performance organizations.
BCG’s 2014-15 survey (its eighth
since 2007) was produced in partnership
with the World Federation of People
Management Associations (WFPMA). It
analyzed data from more than 3,500 online
respondents from around the world,
plus 64 in-depth interviews with both HR
and non-HR executives.
A central finding was the clear correlation
between HR capabilities and financial
performance. Among the highest performers
were organizations that were strongest
in people management – and who were
confident in their capabilities across all HR
subtopics (everything from international
HR, social media and recruiting to onboarding,
HR processes and metrics). By
contrast, the organizations reporting the
worst financial performance also showed a
need to bolster their HR capability across
the board.
BCG’s analysis also found the strongest
performers were more strategic in
the efforts they invested in their HR capabilities
– notably how they accurately
distinguished high-priority capabilities
from lower priorities and directed their resources
accordingly.
HRPA COMPETENCY
FRAMEWORK
As I mentioned above, I was pleased to see
how closely HRPA’s updated competency
framework mirrored the HR capabilities
noted in the BCG survey – particularly the
By Phil Wilson, CHRL, CHRE
capabilities noted above that are considered
to be most important by high performing organizations
around the world.
HRPA’s Competency Framework provides
a template for these capabilities.
Take, for example, “HR internationalization”
(which, in the BCG survey, was among
a few HR subtopics ranked significantly
more important in high performers than in
low performers). In HRPA’s Competency
Framework, this competency is defined as
“Develop an overall HR strategy that can be
adapted to various national contexts” and is
further defined as to how it should be demonstrated
at each level of practice:
■■ CHRP: Gathers relevant information upon
request on HR management across various
national contexts
■■ CHRL: Works with others to develop an
overall HR strategy that can be adapted to
various national contexts
■■ CHRE: Influences the overall multinational
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HRPATODAY.CA ❚ MAY/JUNE 2015 ❚ 5