The debate rages on, but maybe our female role models have the answers, says Sarah Francis
HR directors must refine their commercial and analytical knowledge in order to breach the boardroom gap, Virgin Media’s former chief people officer, Elisa Nardi, said at an event earlier this month.
During a lunch hosted by recruitment group, HR Moves, Nardi insisted that HR professionals can offer valuable insight to the boardroom due to cross-organisational data and analytics access.
“Reward, CSR and succession planning are just some of the ways HR can get involved with boardroom discussions,” she explained as part of a speech about how key character and intelligence traits are needed in order to positively interact with the board.
The issue has long been debated by HR professionals: As far back as 2002 People Management reported that three-quarters of large organisations do not have an HR director on their main board. Thankfully the number of HR directors now sitting round the boardroom tables of UK companies is much closer to 50 per cent, and the prominence of HR business partners in the last few years has undoubtedly helped to align people issues with long-term company strategy.
But according to PwC’s latest ‘Talent Challenge’ report, 93 per cent of global chief executives recognise the need to reform strategies to attract and retain talent, yet many are failing to do so. The concerns now are that HR professionals do not possess the skills and commercial knowledge to influence key talent management decisions at board level.
It’s no wonder that 26 per cent of executives neglect to consult HR over business planning, as a survey by Oxford Economics showed earlier this year. This report concluded that many find the translation of qualitative workforce language into quantitative business strategy a challenge – so is the answer greater HR analytics as Nardi suggests?
Many determined HR professionals hope that Big Data will be the ticket to the boardroom but they should remember to keep stats and workforce data relevant, as this can be a CEO’s biggest pet peeve: 85 percent of the 418 global executives surveyed by KPMG in 2013 said their HR teams “fail to provide insightful analytics.”
I say it’s time to prove them wrong.
“The objective of the seminar was to arm our HR client base with actionable knowledge, in order to fulfill their HR agendas”, said Caroline Foote, founder and managing director of Career Moves Group.
“We need to look ahead to where they’re going to be in the next three to five years, and offer events that will assist their progression, while arming ourselves with practical commercial insight from highly regarded executives like Elisa”.