01 Jul Why Should HR be in The Boardroom

Why Should HR be in The Boardroom

Simon Wallace | 1st July 2014

“People are the place”

Human Resources (HR) should be in the boardroom for many reasons including the obvious that what and how individuals contribute is critical to the growth and advancement of the organisation, society and to mankind, in general.

My experience is that a high percentage of business strategy is slow or fails to deliver the desired results because key elements of HR are missed during strategy formulation. HR in the boardroom will prevent this oversight if the board considers the following dimensions of HR strategy:

Culture

To determine what behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is not

Structure

To organise the workforce for communication, control and the productivity required

Personnel

To produce procedures that fairly reward, develop, protect and review the work community

HR in the boardroom demonstrates to all stakeholders that the organisation’s employees are the most important asset. The concept of an employee as an asset has been called Human Capital (HC), which leads me to another insight that I’ve had, that is HR is finite (like gold or silver) and extracted to create wealth but HC is infinite and used to produce more and more wealth.

This insight is relevant to the boardroom and why investment in HC, through professional training and development to prepare the employee with the knowledge, skills and attitude to be the very best they can be in their job, is so very relevant and important.

The return to an organisation from this approach will be more than financial gain and will include a motivated, happy organisation, that feel safe and consistently over deliver when called to turn ideas from the board into action.

Great businesses include HR in the boardroom and tap into their HC potential!

Is HR in your boardroom?

About the Author

Simon Wallace is founder of The Whole Thing Group and passionate about performance improvement. Creative entrepreneur and trusted advisor to some great companies that are achieving great things.