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Career Path for a Senior HR Executive

The optimal career path for a senior HR executive does not follow a simple formula. This article will identify and discuss, very briefly, three variables (with a selection of evaluative questions) that appear to have the most significant impact on a successful career path and professional development for an HR professional.

• 1-Professional-Personal Vision and Values
• 2-Professional Self-image and Vision of the HR function
• 3-Ability to meet Current and Future Trends & Challenges
• 4-Key Evaluative Questions for Successful Professional-Personal Career Development

1) Professional-Personal Vision and Values

Before deciding on any career development path, HR professionals must develop an honest and realistic understanding of their personal needs as well as their professional strengths and weaknesses. While employees may have the ability to perform with a high degree of competency in a certain role, they might find that the reality of the day-to-day responsibilities will lead to a lack of personal and professional fulfillment over time. Also, employees frequently find themselves struggling with the political pressures and constraints that come with a particular role or feel that the nature of the job does not constructively challenge their personal and/or professional vision for the present and future. In order to more clearly define one’s optimal career development path HR professionals should ask him themselves a few key questions:

• What are my non-negotiable issues i.e.; family time, professional ethics, etc? These issues have to be re-examined at each critical step along the development path.
• What aspects of a particular career path contribute to my personal and professional vision of the future?
• How will this career path impact currently unchallenged aspects of my personal life and professional self-image?
• What does the end game look like‑personally and professionally?
  

2) Professional Self-image and Vision of the HR function

The issues and questions raised here intimate that HR professionals must have a reasonably clear vision of the kind and quality of the impact they want to have on an organization and the means by which they are going to achieve this impact. We are essentially suggesting that HR professionals have a strong sense of their own professional profile or expertise as well as a strong sense of an organization’s value of the HR function in order to knowledgably advance of their career objectives.

One’s own professional profile is a critical component in determining a personal fit with an employer. Defining your own profile goes beyond finding a personal area of core expertise within the field, such as Compensation and Benefits, Human Resource Development, or Employee/Labor Relations, etc. A professional profile should combine your core expertise and skills with your professional preference(s) in approaching HR issues, i.e.; from the perspective of strategic management, change management, culture, etc. This professional preference becomes increasingly important as a differentiator in the selection process the farther along you are in your career path. Additionally, a successful career path for a senior HR executive requires a well thought out and compelling human resource philosophy. In other words: Why does the HR function exist? What should the strategic HR imperatives be? How does HR serve an organization?

An answer to these questions, in the extreme, can range from the definition of HR as purely an administrative support function to ensure the compliance and stability of an organization, to the definition of HR as a highly integrative and consulting function with the core objective of driving organizational effectiveness, change, learning and growth.

It is vital for a senior HR executive to present a well thought out and clearly articulated professional preference and philosophy to the selection committee and/or executive team. These positions should demonstrate how one’s personal vision and values, as well as professional self-image and vision of the HR function, ideally aligns with the organization’s overall HR mission and strategy.

3) Ability to meet Current and Future Trends & Challenges

Many of today’s HR issues and trends will become tomorrow’s HR challenges. A number of the important issues facing organizations today are either being ignored or reacted to rather than being planned for and resolved. A reference of just a few of these issues for discussion purposes would minimally include:

• The impact of the retiring baby-boomer generation on organizations
• The impact of rising health care costs on organizations
• The impact of declining executive tenures and short-term financial management on organizations.

While the dynamics of these issues vary, their nature makes it clear that a critical core function for HR over the next 10-15 years is going to be one of risk management. The optimal career path for a senior HR executive will therefore be (at least in part) a reflection of how well an HR professional can anticipate and respond to the risks and challenges an organization faces.

Let’s take the example of the retiring baby-boomer generation. This challenge is not a new one in the sense that it has been anticipated for years, but as the first Boomers start to retire (increasingly by choice, not by organizational design), less than 20% of major American businesses are currently addressing this increasing supply shortage pro-actively. The next generation of senior HR executives will have to face the tipping point of over 40% of today’s managers leaving the work place without a corporate strategy to manage this turnover. While simultaneously, statistics show a continued shortage in the supply chain for new talent.

Rising health care costs (benefits) are already a strain on many organizations, regardless of size. This trend will continue and the HR function will have to be at the forefront in finding creative solutions to manage these expenses. Not unlike the Baby-Boomer example, HR executives will find themselves in a completely changed business environment, where today’s reactionary strategies are simply inadequate. The ability to innovate and create new approaches to these issues will be vital in order to rise and stay on top of the HR field. Corporations unable to identify alternative ways to build leverage in the negotiation of appropriate price-points for insurance services, risk losing the financial strength to sustain their benefits in an ever demanding market environment.

One of the key responsibilities of HR is to recruit and retain the best possible talent to ensure organizational effectiveness/development and growth. In today’s marketplace many corporate HR functions fail at this task starting from the ‘top down.’ Statistics show that the average tenure of senior executives is declining, with CEO tenures averaging less than five years. At the same time many large corporations continue to give short-term financial reporting and operational objectives a priority over longer-term investment in overall organizational effectiveness and development. Do these two trends correlate? Interestingly enough, statistics show that the stocks of Fortune 500 companies that are still managed by their initial founders out-perform others by an average of 14%.

This data suggests that a successful career path in the field of HR will therefore depend on a professional’s ability to create a strong buy-in from senior management. Thus, the ability to present a convincing and comprehensive business case for the HR function will become increasingly important. The desired outcome of such a proposal should include both the executive team’s approval of longer-term investment in organizational effectiveness and development as well as the commitment of the executive team in personally working in partnership with HR throughout the ongoing achievement process.

4) Key Evaluative Questions for Successful Professional-Personal Career Development

At this stage, it should be obvious that a comprehensive and strategic outlook on the selection and evaluation of potential opportunities in one’s present or future employer is required in order to chart the right career path. The following will provide you with a list of some of the more important questions that every professional should ask to help assess and evaluate your career opportunities.

• What information does the organization provide regarding its Mission, Vision, Values and Culture?
• What are the organization’s goals and strategic objectives?
• What is the current market and industry environment of the organization?
• What is the organization’s attitude toward current and future business trends and challenges?
• What is the current perception of the HR function within the organization and how does the current HR structure and initiative reflect on the function’s ability to address current and future challenges?
• To what extent is the organization currently able to retain senior management and recruit and develop top talent?
• What opportunities and risks does working for the organization pose to the career development path of a future senior HR executive?
• Is there a HR Career Management Planning function within the organization? This topic will be discussed in the next article.