The CHRO challenge
The traditional HR Director role continues to evolve.
From the classic ‘personnel’ approach of the 20th century, with a focus on recruitment, administration, employee relations, and ‘tea and sympathy’, the demands of the role continue to grow into something more challenging and less tangible.
It’s not unusual for the top role focusing on people to now go by names like Chief People Officer, Chief HR Officer, Head of People, People and Culture Director – the variations go on and on. This reflects the shifting sands on which the role is built, and the difference between businesses. While there will be common themes, one size doesn’t fit all and the demands on a Chief People Officer in a listed business could be vastly different from those in a private equity. These could be different again in a charity or public sector organisation.
But what are the common challenges? In the CHROs I speak to, these are some of the themes I hear:
The first is the lonely place that the CHRO occupies. Often reporting to the CEO, but with a dotted line to the chair and board and maintaining supportive and challenging relationships with their ExCo peers, it’s the role in which trust is probably most challenging to build and maintain. There are vested interests all over the place, often meaning that it’s difficult to find that objective and confidential support resource. I know that in my time as a CHRO I often felt I always had to have all the answers and that there were limited places to go to for help. External lawyers can provide help, but can be restricted to a narrow, legal, context that doesn’t consider the personalities and emotions. And often, often don’t fall into an employee relations or legal context.
Remuneration is often the elephant in the room. The CHRO is expected to have a strong grasp of remuneration matters, and adding in elements like financial services regulation or being a plc makes things even more difficult. Navigating the relationship between CHRO, CEO, CFO, and non-executive RemCo chair can be difficult, and for new CHROs this sort of challenge will be new. The task of building a robust, but trusting, relationship with the RemCo chair while taking care of the business’s priorities is a skill, as the board has – to an extent – different priorities than the executive team.
The modern CHRO must also balance the developmental parts of the job with the tough and unpopular ones. How do you support the development of an organisational culture that values personal and career development, trust, psychological safety, and wellbeing, at the same time as maintaining discipline around costs, or even reducing headcount? Several times across my career I was involved in rightsizing or restructure exercises, of which an important part was maintaining a strong culture, supporting those impacted, minimising ‘survivor guilt’ for those that remained, and helping the organisation move on. And it was difficult! The whole organisation looks to the CHRO to provide the frameworks, the messaging, and the expertise for these sorts of exercises to be successful, and it often feels impossible.
That developmental side also includes coaching. I focussed on this a lot in the final couple of years of being a CHRO and for me, it was the most rewarding. Coaching your CEO and ExCo colleagues, and other talented people from across the organisation is real value add stuff, but it’s also resource intensive and needs to be managed carefully. Having expert coaching skills, learned from an accredited organisation, is core to being successful and supporting others effectively. And this means having a great team beneath you to pick up much of the day to day support to the business (BPs and Operations) and centres of excellence work (like Talent and Reward) is vital.
What can you do to build the right skills? It takes intent, reflection, focus, and bravery. Do you want to discuss more? I specialise in supporting CHROs and bring a unique mix of ‘been there, done that’ experience and sophisticated coaching techniques to help you to be successful. If you do, contact me at info@hex-development.com for a free, no obligation consultation.
In our next blog, I’ll be exploring what a great HR team looks like – the structures that will work, the skills the team need, and how you can effectively succession plan for when the CHRO moves on.
