F
FRONT OF HOUSE
Serving as a trusted partner
to the CEO
Treating employees as digital
consumers
FROM Playing a peripheral role in company strategy FROM Regarding staff simply as people doing their job
TO Commanding equal business influence with others
on the operating committee TO Considering employees as consumers
Shared services and automation
will allow CHROs to spend
more time on business strategy
and culture shaping. “The
CHRO of the future will be in a
role of extraordinary privilege
to everything happening in the
enterprise,” said Beth Axelrod,
VP of employee experience at
online marketplace Airbnb.
Gaining experience outside
of HR will be key, given these
broader, more prominent
responsibilities. “Future HR
leaders will be business leaders
first and technical HR
Prioritising
agility
FROM Focusing on
polished HR programmes
ex p e r t s s e co n d ,”
argued Bina Chaurasia,
chief people officer at IT
security company Tanium.
“The path to CHRO will
include rotations into
and from other parts of
the business.”
Formative experience
might also come from
working for start-ups,
particularly around managing
risk and dealing with failure.
“The freeing of the
employee experience
should be among the
CHRO’s main aims,”
emphasised Rachel
Mooney, a former HR
director at Vodafone.
Digital HR can bring
“s i m p l i c i t y i n to
the organisation;
how can we
u s e to o l s a n d
technology to free
up manual
work, duplication of
effort, and repetitive and
structured work?”
“Employees need to
experience digital inside
the organisation so they
can start thinking about
customers in a different
w a y,” a d d e d R o s e
Thomson, CHRO of travel
technology company
Travelport.
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“The organisation is bending
and changing so quickly,
you have to be prepared for
anything and problem solve
like never before,” argued
Ashley Goldsmith, chief
people officer at software
company Workday.
The digitally enabled
CHRO is comfortable putting
forward raw ideas, letting the
executive team critique them,
and adapting them on the fly.
HR ‘verities’ must be left
behind and a wide range of
stakeholders consulted.
“New-generation CHROs
are always asking what
they stand for and how
that manifests in their work
behaviour; they have a
growth mindset,” said Louise
Patterson, CHRO of consumer
goods company Graze.
Research ilities and mindsets d HR leaders.
core capab most digitally enable
of today ’s
Employing data
science Promoting diversity and
inclusion (D&I)
FROM Using technology to increase
operational efficiency FROM Focusing on diversity in terms of
numbers and compliance
TO Using data to improve employee
experience & company agility TO Nurturing inclusion and belonging of
a diverse workforce
HR leaders must use data and
predictive analytics to inform the
executive team on everything from
recruiting capacity to retention to
workforce planning and analysis.
“CHROs need a quant
on the team who brings the
combination of data engineering,
data science, storytelling and
insights,” advised chief employee
experience officer at BMC Software
Monika Fahlbusch.
Building a culture that fits
technical talent, such as engineers
and data scientists, will be essential. While traditional D&I programmes will not
go away, CHROs at progressive companies
are focusing more on inclusion.
“Companies that embrace diversity
and practise inclusive behaviour create
a sense of ‘belonging’ that accelerates
teams’ performance and enables them to
create the best outcomes for clients,” said
Jonathan McBride, global head of inclusion
and diversity at global asset manager
BlackRock. Tanium’s Chaurasia added:
“Organisations with a deeper purpose will
outshine and outlast the competition - social
responsibility, engagement, diversity and
inclusion will be increasingly relevant.” FT
March – May 2019
// 17