The Ever Changing Role of HR Professionals
 |
|
Answering Cutting Edge Questions about the Changing Role of HR
After our marquee event, HR Measures, Metrics and Analytics, I had the opportunity to sit down with our keynote presenter, Toyin Ogun, Senior Vice-President HR for Victoria’s Secret, part of the Limited Brands family. Over the last 25 years, Toyin has become a leading expert in the field and a true business partner as an HR professional at The Limited Brands.
|
What do you believe is the largest challenge facing HR professionals today?
The challenges facing HR today are directly related to the challenges facing the global economy. The rapid increase in technology combined with factors such as declining transitional costs and expanded communications have created several challenges for firms, who find themselves facing competition from unforeseen forces. With a new emphasis on speed of transaction and flexibility in the market place, the primary summons for Human Resources becomes managing the human capital necessary to stay competitive. They need to upgrade their strategy, organizational development and business capabilities. In addition, they need to focusing on recruitment and retention of top talent, especially e-commerce talent, and leading the charge for decreasing costs across the enterprise starting with human resources costs.
During your tenure, we have spoken about how in your role, you have become a business partner. What do other HR professionals have to do to become a strategic partner?
The fundamental question every HR professional should be able to answer is the following, "how does my firm make money?" Implicit in that answer is concept to customer continuum that every HR professional should be fully cognizant. Only when we have a mastery of how the business works do we become relevant strategic partners.
You recently spoke at our 5th Annual HR Measures, Metrics and Analytics Summit held in Orlando, Florida. As a practitioner, there are hundreds of metrics to choose from. How many do you believe are appropriate to measure at once and which have ensured success for you at the Limited Brands?
Our increasing responsibility as a strategic partner requires us to quantify performance in key HR functions to demonstrate HR's impact on the organization. We can accomplish this by tracking HR metrics that align with corporate strategy and inform business decisions. When appropriate HR metrics are selected and used consistently by an organization, we can distinguish opportunities to improve workforce performance and productivity as well as identify HR areas that require cost control and increased efficiency. The fewer the metrics the better; in order to add value we should use the metrics as a decision support tool to enable and inform the appropriate decisions.
To view Toyin Ogun’s presentation, “Assessing and Communicating the Impact of Human Capital: A Leading Indicator of Business Success,” from HR Measures, Metrics and Analytics, please click here.
Heather L. Fallon currently serves as the Director for the Center for Human Capital Management at The American Strategic Management Institute. For comments and or questions she can be reached directly at Fallon@ManagementWeb.org.
