SYNAPSE - 2014
SYNAPSE - 2014
GAME ON!!
The Future of HR: Making the Right People Decisions and Making these Decisions Happen
- Dr. Richard Sibbernsen
Dr. Richard Sibbernsen has over 30
years of experience in International
Human Resource Management. He has
been the Executive Vice President (HR)
of AT&T corporation, world’s largest
telecom operator employing 300,000
employees in over 120 countries with
$120 billion as revenues. He has also
worked as a Group General Manager
for TNT limited and was responsible for
the HR strategy and programs for
Sydney based world-wide logistics
business. As the Senior Vice President
of Corporate Relations at Tenneco Inc.
he has dealt with many complexities that
are faced by a global firm. He stresses
on sharing good practices of different
cultures and effective communication
within and organization.
He currently is an adjunct faculty
member at the Loyola University in
Chicago, University of Sydney and
University of Texas, San Antonio. He is
also a visiting faculty member for
Human Resources Management at
XLRI Jamshedpur.
Line leaders chair and
populate these forums
and must be engaged
and executing well; it
is hard to “fake it” in
such an environment.
Instead of presenting a long list of “to Do’s”,
HR trends or High performing HRD habits this
topic is approached in a different manner. A
fictional letter (circa 2020) is presented below
to stimulate thinking and action about the future profile and value added contribution of an
HR leader from the perspective of “the Boss” –
a global company CEO. What do you want
your CEO to say about your legacy?
Dear Board of Director Members,
The purpose of this memo is to recommend Megha Bindal, our Chief Human
Recourses Officer, for promotion to the role of
CEO –Asia. We are called in the business
press the “Best managed global company in
the industry.” I consider the people leadership
DNA, and the results provided by Megha Bindal
(we fondly refer to her as “MB”) in the last 7
years as CHRO critical to this company success.
MB came to the CHRO role strong in HRM theory (academic studies), but she was also a proven
operations leader (She headed up the company
call centers for a decade in several countries). It
is the alignment with business and execution
excellence where most HR leaders fail yet this is
MB’s strongest attribute and deepest experience.
Let me give you a few examples to illustrate her
strengths and value contribution as “A business
driver”. From the start in her CHRO role, MB
(to use her own words) “pitched the HR tent in
the middle of the business to make great people
decisions and to make those decisions happen”.
Specifically MB effectively organized our HR
approach around 5 key attributes – line leader
ownership, systems thinking, front-line focus,
data / technology driven solutions, and global
leadership development. Let’s look at a few
examples of how MB moved us out of the “HR
fog” of self-imposed complexities, misunderstandings, and little proven co-relations between
HR and market performance.
Line Leader Ownership and Grievance
The first order of business for MB was to hold
the “mirror up” to line leaders and illustrate
through various employee and customer surveys
what was “good, bad and ugly” about our current
set of HR policies and practices. The feedback
was a “sharp” reality check! MB simultaneously
verified the tight relationship between line leader
involvement in HR decisions and market performance. She then “organized us” to imbed all our
people decision-making and execution activities
is a series of high quality, fact based forums
which were placed on the corporate calendar. A
Workforce Planning Committee (work force
transformation, productivity, quality projects); a
Leadership Development Council (identification,
asset, development, and measurement of future
leaders) and a Global Diversity Committee (cross
border rotations) were created and have proven to