"Tears" Instead of "Tiers" – Busting the Myths Surrounding HR Shared Services Through Professional Career Paths

People at work are motivated most by personal development, including career progression.

Next in line as far as motivation goes is leadership (the quality of their boss) followed by cultural fit and value alignment; fair pay; and recognition. So it really does make sense to spend some quality time, when launching your HR transformation model, to map out career path and progression for your HR community.

It’s now over 25 years since Dave Ulrich first advocated a tiered model of specialisms for enabling HR excellence, yet I still hear senior HR critics argue that the transformed HR model kills off internal promotion opportunities, as its focus on specialisations that create skills gaps which appear to be as wide as the Grand Canyon!

In launching HR transformation many organisations make the mistake of rushing forward with the technical aspects of their go-live plan, but forget to pay attention to Career Paths and Personal Development in the new HR model. They focus on the mechanics but forget the organics that enable the model to live and breathe going forward.

A number of myths persist regarding how HR Shared Services cuts off growth opportunities; and how it reduces skills to a basic entry level in a repetitive contact centre environment. Images of a bustling, noisy call centre – as portrayed in the international bestselling movie "SlumDog Millionaire" – haunt HR generalists, who feel like lambs to the slaughter. Concerns about de-skilling abound as staff envisage a flat structure of repetitive transactional work with no opportunity for progression to stretched assignments, and the stairway to "HR Director Heaven " seemingly torn down at the first step.

HR Generalists are concerned about having to let go of some of their smorgasbord of activities as these get channelled into subject- and process-matter silos in Centres of Excellence or HR Shared Services. Many also shirk from taking on a more "strategic" role as an equal partner at the business leadership team level, contracting and consulting for top table business versus being an executive "pair of hands". Scary stuff.

It’s no surprise that in the "Forming and Norming" stages, traditional HR generalists seeking to protect their status quo are often the fiercest critics of change, more so than the internal business clients of HR, and will cite disaster scenarios of other companies where Shared Services failed, and everything ended in tears (not specialist "tiers", as Dave Ulrich advocated back in 1995).

So how can we ever get to being strategic HR business partners if we are thrown into the HR Shared Services pit? Where do we get the skills to work as a strategic partner when we don’t get the strategy bit, and have never been given the equipment to hold our own as equal partners to VPS, MDs, and CEOs?

These fears and concerns often remain unanswered by an HR transformation deployment team whose primary attention is caught up in PMO work to roll-out the to be processes, and installing the new or upgraded ERP and IVA solutions. Sometimes the environment is such that the questions don’t even get asked through fear of reprisals, or challenging the integrity of the "Kings New suit of clothes".

But the reality check is this: if you want to retain and motivate your existing talent pool and attract new talent into your HR model do not ignore answering questions about personal development and career progression.

So how can we create clarity across the new HR model regarding personal development and career progression?

Here are some tips and techniques based on my own experience:

1. Put yourself in their HR shoes – where are they are now? This change is new for the HR department, un-chartered waters, and they are bound to be apprehensive about letting go of what they already know and do well, even if positively excited about new horizons and new challenges.

2. Peel back to the old model – what was on offer, what were the aspirations, what’s different now? Often the traditional HR hierarchy ladder of a single unit /single country HR team consisted of HR Administrator to HR Officer /HR Consultant/Advisor to HR Manager to HR Director to HR VP. A clear and obvious line of sight of progression. The tiered model in the Transformed HR organisation changes some of that with the advocacy of subject matter specialisms versus the generalist portfolio, and the different focuses of transactional excellence, strategic thinking and senior level business operations. So think about how you can join the dots to link the triangle model into "One Team HR" where personal development and career progression continues to be a real possibility, even when the skill sets are more differentiated between the three legs of the triangle model.

3. Promote "on the job development" – using the 70-20-10 rule. Here, 70 % of learning can be gained through structured on the job experiences, change management and continuous improvement initiatives, actual responsibilities for process and project management A-Z, with regular 1-2-1 review sessions with one’s manager; 20% will come from appointing a mentor to a mentee or peer-2-peer coaching against specific objects and agendas, assigning the learner the responsibility to work through self directed on-line or written text learning modules; finally 10% of learning comes from specific training programmes including class room interactions where role plays and case studies can help enable hot-house skills enhancement and knowledge acceleration.

Your role as leader and team manager in the above equation is to see that your team has a role as change agents, continuous improvement geeks. Its all about building stretch into jobs.

4. Get the Centres of Expertise to let go of Tier 2 work – transfer this into the HR shared services team. I have seen examples where the COE compensation and benefits team still hold on to salary survey administration, and job evaluation and job grading, and the annual pay review process administration, even though these processes are all about repeatable transactional excellence. COE, let these go to Shared Services!

I have also seen COE Talent Acquisition continue to hold on to the A-Z of recruitment from posting to sourcing to screening to interviews to offer. On the other hand I have also seen enlightened COE TA teams let go of posting, sourcing, screening, interview scheduling, and offer letter generation and dispatch, handing these over to enlightened and up-skilled TA transactional specialists in the HR shared services function. It really works!

This not only develops skills in the HR Shared Services team but also frees up the COE to get involved in more strategic planning, best practice benchmarking, and design of new policies and programmes, their heads high above the transactional routines of process delivery.

5. Upskill Strategic HR Business Partners to become more "strategic" business partners. We all know that changing a job title from generalist HR Manager to Tier 4 SHRBP doesn’t by itself transform the way of working. Organisational Savvy, Business Acumen around P&L, budgeting and forecasting, long range visioning, market intelligence and competitive instinct, contracting and consulting at the senior level … these are all skills beyond the standard HR generalist tool-kit and need to be added if Tier 4 is really going to add value in the Transformed HR model. Research shows that 50% of HR Generalists moving into Strategic HR Business Partner roles don’t make the grade. It’s because the skillset requirements are so different. Ways to overcome this include setting a high bar at the selection stage, where you measure the commercial, strategic and emotional intelligence competencies as a high ratio of the mix with HR knowledge and skills. I personally found that as a new HR Business Partner in one of the first HR Transformations at SmithKline Beecham, back in 1996, having mentors from the commercial business of Finance and Global Marketing helped me to become more applied in my thoughts and deeds, and more grounded in business operations. In addition, I read the book by Peter Block "Flawless Consulting", which taught me to have the mindset that I was a business consultant inside the company, and I attended the excellent 3-day workshop by Designed Learning on Internal Contracting and Consulting Skills, where we did deep and intense role play work to build new behaviours, become more assertive and move from the HR "I want to help" mindset to the SHRBP mindset of being an equal partner at the Leadership Team table.

A radical comment at this point: Don’t assume that Strategic HR Business Partners can only come from the talent pool of transformed HR Generalists. I’ve seen cases where cross-functional moves into HR from Commercial Management roles including Sales and Marketing have been successful. Where there is the right competency set and mix of commercial, strategic and operational experience, folks from other functions can make it big in Senior HR roles! The HR process knowledge can be built on if the other skillsets are already there.

6. Hire some people into your HR Shared Services team who are "bigger than the job". Sounds crazy but it works. Graduates with some work experience, and those who are already trained in customer services and change management, can take on the role of change agent as well as process manage the task. True: you may only keep them for two years, but when it’s all about employability and situational needs this is a win-win for them and the company. And in my experience some of these talented individuals move into team leader roles, or COE consultant positions, within the organisation. After all, they know the company culture, are fully aware of stakeholders needs, and are respected for their expertise in active listening and managing key HR processes, and achieving high levels of customer satisfaction.

Let’s end with a few examples of other top tips and real success stories

When speaking about Career Development and Progression do promote the fact that lateral development, rotations, and project secondments are also career enhancing and strong learning opportunities for personal development – "up" is not the only way. I personally know of some great examples in HR Shared Services where individuals switched from Employee Relations Specialists to Talent Acquisition specialists, from Compensation to Benefits, from Talent Management to Global Mobility Management and have grown as a result.

Capable Team Leaders in a Shared Services model can readily grow to be Shared Services Directors, and Strong Tier 2 consultants can become Tier 3 COEs in similar functional areas in fairly rapid progression. When I worked as HR Shared Services Director at Coca-Cola I saw, over a period of 3 years, 20% of my original HR Shared Services team progress from Tier 1 work to Tier 2 work, 80% gain a wider role scope geographically, and also a few examples of progression from Tier 2 work to Tier 3 work, as well as one example of progression from Tier 3 to Tier 4. So just that small sample size demonstrates that lateral and vertical progression is alive and well in the transformed HR model.

Share your stories of people who have developed and progressed in the model. These are the real case study examples which make success tangible to others who are just about to move into this new way of working.

Want to discuss this subject further? Feel free to contact Simon at simon@simonbrownassociates.com

"Tears" Instead of "Tiers" – Busting the Myths Surrounding HR Shared Services Through Professional Career Paths

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