Building capabilities that matter- HR capability building

“HR professionals must be highly knowledgeable about the marketplace for capital, products, and services.”

- Wayne Brockbank

Conflicting pressures, competing expectations, creating shareholder value, balancing differing requirements — these are a few of the many things that the HR deals with on a regular basis notwithstanding the disruptive operating environment, the eminence of data, analytics, agility, and innovation. 

With unprecedented disruption in all spheres of life, whether political, social or business environment, businesses are continually refocusing, realigning, and responding to such disruptions to cope with the diverse demands. The need for greater capacity and strategic focus in the delivery of Human Resource strategies and processes is all the more crucial. And this, in turn, creates the need for HR business partners to have enhanced competencies for collaboration with other functional heads managers, to comprehend business challenges and opportunities, to design and plan systems, processes, and interventions and most importantly to deliver on promises made. 

A recent dipstick study by People Matters on HR capability building found that 76 percent of CHROs believe that there will be tremendous changes in HR by 2022, but a whopping 66 percent say that they are not satisfied with their current HR capabilities. 

Investing in competencies and capabilities of individual HR professionals and building an integrated HR department is an endless task yet a crucial agenda. Many high performing organizations are aware that the core task of the new-age HR function is translating external business trends into organizational action, and it is in this action that the organizational value is created. And to generate this value, HR professionals need new sets of skills, knowledge, and behaviors to understand the business strategies, know the market shifts, analyze the bottom line and interpret data. 

So, what are organizations doing in terms of building HR capabilities to keep pace with the evolving organizational expectations? Is it about building professional HR competencies or building HR department capabilities? Or is it both? What development tools or professional development frameworks can HR use for their own performance improvement?

Through this cover story, we bring insights and perspectives of HR thought-leaders and industry leaders on how organizations are investing in development of their HR personnel and building HR integration capabilities and processes to respond to business opportunities and challenges, and how they are leveraging diagnostic tools to assess and bridge learning gaps and making their HR function more efficient and effective in extracting value from the operating mode. 

*Wayne Brockbank. Human Resource Management. Hoboken: Winter 1999. Vol. 38, Iss. 4; pg. 337