Modern HR must take on many roles to demonstrate competence and effectiveness, according to Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank and Mike Ulrich who this year are celebrating 25 years of research together. In today’s world, HR effectiveness has become more important than ever because leaders have increasingly recognised the importance of individual abilities (talent), organisation capabilities (culture), and leadership as the key to the success of their organisations. Since 1987, these people have chronicled what it means to be an effective HR professional. The 2012 data set marks six waves of data collection that trace the evolution of the HR profession. The research has been indispensable in clearly defining what it means to be an effective HR professional: not just knowing the body of knowledge that defines the profession, but more importantly being able to apply that knowledge to the challenges facing businesses today.

The 2012 Human Resource Competency Study identified six domains of competencies HR professionals must demonstrate to be personally effective and to have an impact on business performance. These competencies respond to a number of themes facing global business today:

Outside/in: HR must turn outside business trends and stakeholder expectations into internal actions

Business/people: HR should focus on both business results and human capital improvement

Individual/organisational: HR should target both individual ability and organisation capabilities

Event/sustainability: HR is not about an isolated activity (a training, communication, staffing, or compensation programme) but sustainable and integrated solutions

Past/future: respect HR’s heritage, but shape a future

Administrative/strategic: HR must attend to both day-to-day administrative processes and long-term strategic practices.

The HRCS 2012 study has found that by upgrading their competencies in six domains, HR professionals can respond to these business themes and create sustainable value. These six HR competence domains stem from an assessment by HR professionals and line associates conducted on more than 20,000 global respondents of 139 specific competency-stated survey items. The six competencies are:

Strategic positioner

High-performing HR professionals think and act from the outside/in. They are highly knowledgeable about external business trends and are able to translate these into internal decisions and actions. They have a very good understanding of the general business conditions that affect their industry and geography. What is more, they target and serve key customers of their business by identifying customer segments, knowing customer expectations and aligning organisation actions to meet their customer’s needs. Finally, they co-create their organisations’ strategic responses to business conditions and customer expectations by helping frame and make strategic and organisation choices.

Credible activist

Effective HR professionals are ‘credible activists’ because they build their personal trust through business acumen. HR professionals earn credibility when do what they promise, build personal relationships of trust and can be relied on. It helps HR professionals have positive personal relationships. Being a credible activist also means being able to communicate clear and consistent messages with integrity. What is more, as activists, HR professionals have a position, not only with regards to HR activities, but also when it comes to business demands. By having this competency, HR professionals learn how to influence others in a positive way through clear, consistent and high-impact communications. Some have called this ‘HR with an attitude’. HR professionals who are credible but not activists are admired but unfortunately do not have much impact. Those who are activists but not credible may have very good ideas, but unfortunately not much attention will be given to them. To be credible activists, HR professionals need to be self-aware and committed to building their profession.

Capability builder

An effective HR professional combines individual abilities into an effective and strong organisation by helping to define and build its organisation capabilities. An organisation is a distinct set of capabilities and not a structure or a process. In simple terms, capability represents what the organisation is good at and known for. HR professionals should be able to audit and invest in the creation of organisational capabilities. These capabilities outlast the behaviour or performance of any individual manager or system. Capabilities have been referred to as a company’s culture, process, or identity. HR professionals should facilitate capability audits to determine the identity of their organisations. Capabilities include: customer service, speed, quality, efficiency, innovation and collaboration. An example of a capability is to create an organisation where employees find meaning and purpose at work. HR professionals can assist their respective line managers to create meaning, so that the capability of the organisation reflects the deeper values of the employees.

Change champion

As change champions, HR professionals must make sure that isolated and independent organisational actions are integrated and sustained through disciplined change processes. HR professionals make organisations’ internal capacity for change match or lead the external pace of change. As change champions, HR professionals have the role in making change happen at institutional (changing patterns), initiative (making things happen) and individual (enabling personal change) levels.

In order for change to happen at these three levels, HR professionals play two very important roles in the change process. First and foremost, they initiate change, which means they build a case for why change matters, overcome resistance to change, engage key stakeholders in the process of change and articulate the decisions to start change. Second, they sustain change by institutionalising change through organisational resources, organisation structure, communication and continual learning. Finally, as change champions, HR professionals partner to create organisations that are agile, flexible, responsive and able to make transformation happen in ways that create sustainable value.

Human resource innovator

and integrator

Effective HR professionals know the historical research on HR, so they can be innovative and integrate HR practices into unified solutions to solve future business problems. HR professionals must be knowledgeable on the latest insights on key HR practice areas related to human capital (talent sourcing, talent development), to performance accountability (appraisal, rewards), organisation design (teamwork, organisation development) and finally, communication. Besides, they must also be able to turn these unique HR practice areas into integrated solutions, generally around an organisation’s leadership brand. These innovative and integrated HR practices then result in a high impact on business results by ensuring that HR practices maintain their focus over the long run and do not become seduced by HR ‘flavour of the month’ or by another firm’s ‘best practices’.

Technology proponent

In the last few years, technology has altered the ways in which HR professionals think and do their administrative and strategic work. Today, HR people need to use technology more efficiently to deliver HR administrative systems such as benefits, payroll processing, healthcare costs and other administrative services. They also need technology to help people stay connected with each other. What is more, technology plays an increasingly important role in improving communications, organising administrative work more efficiently and connecting inside employees to outside customers. An emerging technology trend is using technology as a relationship-building tool through social media. Leveraging social media enables the business to position itself for future growth. Those who are able to understand technology will create improved organisational identity outside the company and improve social relationships inside the organisations. As technology exponents, HR professionals have to ensure that they access, advocate, analyse and align technology for information, efficiency and relationships.

The HRCS 2012 study report has shown how the above-mentioned competencies dictate 42.5 per cent of the effectiveness of an HR professional. Besides, the research report has also demonstrated how the same pattern of HR competencies holds true across different regions of the world, across levels of HR careers, in different HR roles and in organisations of all sizes. Furthermore, the study has found that HR competencies explain 8.4 per cent of an organisation’s success. Another interesting fact that came out of this research is that the competencies that predict personal effectiveness are slightly different to those that predict business success, with insights on technology, HR integration and capability building having more impact on business results and performance.

The findings in the HRCS 2012 study report capture what HR professionals need to know and do to be effective. In this world of change and unpredictability, there has never been a time more than this where the need was felt to identify what HR professionals must be, know, do, and deliver to contribute more fully to their organisation, employees, customers, investors and communities. Now it is up to the HR professional themselves to make sure that they acquire and build these competencies that will ultimately shape the future of their career and that of their organisation.

Ms Camilleri is a researcher

at the Foundation for Human

Resources Development