Searching through some older journal articles on organisational change (as one does!) I found an interesting study by Dave Ulrich with the uninteresting title of “Human Resource Competencies: An Empirical Assessment”. Whilst it is now well over ten years old, I think there are lessons in it for how HR and OD managers can address the challenges they face in achieving credibility and influence in their organisations.
Ulrich’s study identified three key sets of competencies that HR professionals need to demonstrate to be seen as adding value to the business.These three areas are:
- HR functional expertise - knowing and being able to deliver state of the art, innovative HR practices,
- Knowledge of business - understanding how their organisation operates so they can adapt HR practices to local conditions, and
- Managing change - being able to match internal adaptive change to that in the external environment.
Functional expertise was important to discern best practice, business knowledge enabled one to join the executive team, but the greatest impact on how they were perceived was their competence in managing change. This emphasis rose with the seniority of the HR role; ie HR professionals at the GM level were valued less for their knowledge of the business and technical knowledge and more for their knowledge and ability in managing change.
This study was conducted in the mid 90s. Do you think anything would be different now? Or would the capability to manage change would be even more important now?
To all the HR professionals out there - how strong is your knowledge of and skills in change management? What could you do to improve this? Who could you talk to who has a deep knowledge of change, influence, and the leadership of change?
Randal and I will be waiting for your call. ☺