Canadian HR Reporter

N E W S 8 www.hrreporter.com C-suite looking for greater insights from HR leaders The pandemic has pushed employees into the spotlight, as employers realize just how valuable staff are. But a recent survey shows many business leaders are looking for greater insights from HR when it comes to people data, writes Sarah Dobson WHEN it comes to business oper- ations, are HR and the C-suite aligned? Yes and no, according to a recent survey, which suggests HR could be providing more insights on the people data side. "There's alignment in terms of what needs to happen within the companies," says Steve Ryujin, interim managing director and vice president of the small business segment at Sage Canada in Vancouver. "The challenge is there's a bit of a disconnect between taking advantage Plus, with the pandemic, business leaders and the C-suite are becoming even more aware of those issues, he says. "HR leaders and professionals, generally, have always understood the importance of that. But I think through this pandemic, even more so, the business leaders are becoming more attuned to the importance of having the right information, such as the data." There's fault on both sides of the equation, says Rafael Gomez, director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Relations at the University of Toronto. "In one sense, you have to be invited at some point to the table in order to be part of it. But there's also been, I think, historically, a unifocal view of HR as simply linked to people and psychology. And I think that has prevented the economic considerations of a business to also become part of HR's focus." But if you're not building a company on a sound foundation of good HR policies, you're going to be in a heap of trouble, he says. "Pretty soon, because your product and your service can only take you so far, there'll be a competitor very quickly that might copy you. And it's at that point that your people become — it's a cliche — your most valuable asset. So you need people who understand organizational and really getting the true power of the HR team and the HR professionals to better the company, from a people perspective." Overall, the two groups are aligned when it comes to their organization's top priorities. Both groups rank financial performance as number one, closely followed by a focus on leadership. Business operations and digital transformation also feature in the top four, finds a survey by Sage of more than 500 senior HR and business leaders in Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Australia. In addition, 81 per cent of CEOs, CFOs, CIOs and CTOs feel HR's priorities are aligned to that of the overall business. However, 59 per cent don't feel that HR is playing a leading role across business priorities. And more than half of the C-suite say HR is not playing a leading role in operational excellence (62 per cent), skilling and upskilling (55 per cent) and company culture (54 per cent). Surprisingly, many HR leaders appear to agree, at 65 per cent, 52 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively. Part of the challenge is HR is so busy with issues such as retention and acquiring employees, says Ryujin. "From a business perspective, we get pulled back into some more of the tactical pieces on a daily basis." behaviour… to be cognizant of what matters to the whole of the organization, which is financial success and market share and so on." "It's beholden to the HR function to understand what the economic drivers are and, at the same time, it's important for company leaders to not keep HR at the sideline." The disconnect is not necessarily HR's fault, says Emily Field, associate partner at McKinsey & Associates in Seattle. "They are being asked to digitize, to automate in order to increase self- service, while simultaneously cutting costs and developing deeper insights — while at the same time, they haven't stopped doing the more customer service-oriented tasks to the business. And so, if we think about this idea of 'HR must transform itself first,' it's actually about saying, 'What do we have to also stop doing? What do we need to start doing? And what are the capabilities that HR needs to have in order to be able to do it?'" There is also a big shift underway, in part spurred by the pandemic, where the future of HR is really about employee experience, she says. "As part of that, it's really saying, 'How do we become like human capitalists? How do we put humans at the centre of all of this and what is the role of HR across the employee experience?' versus VALUABLE PEOPLE DATA NOT BEING PROVIDED Source: Sage 60% Percentage of the C-suite who are not using HR data to drive any kind of decision making 90% Percentage of the C-suite that would find new hire failure rate data useful, yet only 14 per cent say HR provides this 86% Percentage of the C-suite who say employee net promoter scores would be valuable, but only 13 per cent get the data 93% Percentage of the C-suite that would find employee engagement data helpful, but only 25 per cent are given access by HR

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