Do you help shape your company’s strategic direction?

Development 1st is a Strategic HR consultancy. We work exclusively with Leaders of Human Resources as they identify and address their issues and challenges. Our sole purpose is to provide the inspiration that enables Human Resource Management to generate and exercise appropriate power to underpin business success.

If you know what the most important challenge facing you and Human Resourcing is at the moment, then can we take a few minutes of your time to reach consensus?

Fact: It is estimated that HR teams spend up to 85% of their time on administration and transaction processing, but only 15% on strategic activities. In best practice HR organisations only 20% of time is spent on transactions, and the remainder is spent on the execution of more strategic activities.

Development 1st has examined the research and best practice in this area and we have now mapped out a strategic development framework leading to HR operating as a full business partner.

Leading companies have been reviewing the contribution of Human Resources, and are examining the most effective ways to organise their people to improve efficiency and better serve the company's needs.
Indeed, there has long been a call for HR to be contributing in a different way, and to define the key role it needs to play in the overall success of the business.

Increasingly, these companies have taken on the challenge, and are setting a “New HR Agenda”.
It is our belief – and vision – that this will become the norm within the next 5 years, as the imperative to focus on core capabilities, the attraction and retention of talent begins to outweigh any concerns about how changes in the HR function might be destabilising.

In this context, HR must evolve to successfully take on a key role in formulating
and implementing their company’s strategy for generating capability.

As a result, capabilities must now become integral to the strategic planning framework. The speed at which a company can grow and adapt, will in large part, now be determined by the pace at which it can generate and reconfigure its capabilities.

Therefore the value that HR adds is now high on the business agenda and critical to that company’s success. However, expectations will not be met unless a new HR strategy and service delivery model can demonstrate a positive impact to the bottom line. A new set of HR guiding principles is needed to begin to maximise its impact and to become a strategic partner proactively creating strategy rather than implementing it.

Much has been written and spoken on this subject, which can be summarised as the two halves of an equation. Firstly, the transactional self-service elements of HR and secondly, the strategic contribution of HR. Currently, the trend is to outsource the transactional elements which then leaves the way clear to refocus valuable resources into the strategic contribution of HR. It is here that the new agenda for HR as a business partner becomes less clear and the way forward begins to falter. Until now.

We believe that, as a forward thinking leader in HR, you too will be concerned about the role HR now needs to perform. With this in mind we would welcome the opportunity to discuss our thoughts on this subject and the solutions now available.

Development 1st helps clarify your thinking in each of the 3 critical stages in this transition:

· Identification, review and future management of your transactional processes

· Building Strategic Knowledge and Capability

· Aligning HR strategy with business strategy and moving from promise to performance.

We are looking to work with a limited number of forward-thinking leaders of HR that understand this new agenda and want to take action. As part of this journey we are establishing a Centre for Strategic HRM™– a leadership forum where you and other like-minded leaders can share knowledge and experiences in an informal environment and take learning from both academics and other leading practitioners.

What are the consequences of not embracing this new agenda? Will your competitors take the lead by fully leveraging their capabilities? Will your competitors win the “War for Talent”? Could complacency lead to a loss of competitive advantage?

Should you wish to arrange an initial meeting with us to discuss the New HR Agenda, and are interested in participating in the Centre for Strategic HRM, please call Dr. John Evans or Carol Rawson on 08702 404 402 or email enquiries@development1st.com

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