Invest in HR Capability Development | Excellent Business Partnering

Without investment in ongoing capability development many HR professionals will be left knowing what they need to do differently but without the knowledge and skills to contribute differently.

Where possible, we strongly recommend that HR professionals achieve professional qualifications and accreditation through their relevant professional institute or governing body. This is important in building the credibility of HR, in ensuring professional standards and in developing a community of influential HR professionals. However, the acquisition of a formal professional qualification does not always address sufficiently the full range of capabilities that HR professionals need to acquire to operate as effectivebusiness partners.

A pre requisite must be to include a cost line for capability development in any business case for HR transformation or in the HR budget. There will be a one-off investment needed (particularly in the new capability areas). There will also be an on-going need to invest — to keep stretching people and to bring new joiners up to speed.

So, what are the approaches to capability development? In addition to the 'on-the-job' forms for development there are five main strands to consider:

1. Mandatory workshops
2. Optional workshops
3. Action learning groups
4. Coaching
5. Mentoring
6. Self-managed learning/on-the-job development

We have used combinations of each where we have supported capability development. Below we set out things to consider in broad terms for each strand followed by three case studies showing how organisations have blended these strands.

Mandatory Workshops

Typically workshops are offered to address the three new capability areas — although one of the case study organisations also made organisational design mandatory. These workshops are intended not just to deliver knowledge and skills, but also to deliver three additional benefits to HR:

• Create a common language
• Deliver a consistent approach and tool kit
• Create a network and community amongst HR professionals

In this way, even if some HR professionals have already acquired the requisite capabilities, there are benefits in their participating in mandatory workshops so that the additional benefits set out above are realised across the HR professional community. Additionally, more experienced members of the HR team should be encouraged to share their knowledge and experience.

Optional Workshops

Here, the workshops described above (or slight variations of these) are offered to HR professionals but are not mandatory. In addition, optional workshops have also been offered in areas such as 'Becoming a trusted advisor', 'Influencing skills', 'Facilitation skills' and 'Managing Conflict'.

The main advantage in this approach is that those HR professionals considered to be competent in a capability area need not repeat the training. The benefits of this approach are:

• Training is focused on identified need.
• Overall development costs are reduced (or spent on areas of identified need).
• Individuals considered competent in a particular capability area are motivated to address development gaps rather than attend workshops where they consider themselves skilled.

Action Learning Groups

Action learning groups typically comprise around 6-8 members, supported by an external facilitator, with the aim over time for the group to become self-managing. The approach is based on the group working on real business issues. Learning is achieved at two levels — applying the knowledge and experience of the group to the issue under discussion. Reflecting on the way the group works together as a learning experience in its own right.

This approach to HR capability development is used in two main ways:

1. Each participant brings his or her own 'live' issue or project to address with the group.
2. The group works on a 'live' business issue together over a period of meetings.

The first of these approaches places the onus on the individual to identify an issue and bring it to the group. In our experience, this approach has not always been successful with the main challenges being that people do not prepare sufficiently and they are not skilled in framing a problem or issue in a way the group can engage with quickly. However, where this approach has succeeded it has enabled participants to apply knowledge in the new capability areas very quickly and there is early pay back to the organisation on the investment made in development.

The second approach is more thematic. Some of the learning groups we have supported have tackled more strategic themes, examples being how to increase levels of engagement; the employee of the future; increasing line manager capability in people skills. With this approach, the learning groups decide how to approach the task and, with the support of the facilitator, take 'time outs' to reflect on how the group is working and to think about how to use tools and techniques related to the new capability areas. This approach builds deep bonds between group members and by the end of the process, groups are also self-managing.

In our experience this is a powerful way of learning as it not only engages theory and practice, but also gives organisations an immediate return on their investment. We anticipate that this approach to learning will gain ground in coming years linked also with virtual learning environments.

Coaching

Coaching has its place in the development repertoire and, in our work with organisations, has been used in two ways:

1. In its more conventional sense of an external coach working on a number of coaching objectives with an individual. Typically, this approach has been used with more senior members of the HR leadership team.
2. As part of the action learning group process — where individual coaching sessions are held between learning group meetings with two objectives: First, to help the individual reflect on the experience of the learning group and their contribution. Second, to address individual development goals that are inappropriate to be tackled at a learning group meeting.

This latter approach has been particularly powerful and has enabled individuals to accelerate the application of new capabilities.

Mentoring

Mentoring has been used in two different ways:

• Linking HR professionals with other HR professionals. For example, people who are at 'Mastery' in a given capability area with those who are developing that capability;
• Linking HR professionals with colleagues outside of HR primarily to build their knowledge of the business and to improve the way they influence the organisation.

Where possible, HR mentoring should be integrated into any organisational approach to mentoring.

Self-Managed Learning/On-the-Job Development

Individuals clearly need to take ownership for their development too. Most self-managed learning can be linked to general resources available to the wider management population — whether e-learning resources from business schools, library resources or links to external Web sites such as the CIPD.

On-the-job development can include work shadowing, work placements, project roles, temporary assignments, meeting/workshop facilitation, project team leadership.

In terms of HR partner capability, there is also a challenge to HR professionals to read more broadly — including publications like Financial Times, McKinsey Quarterly, HarvardBusiness Review, Sloan Management Review and The Economist. Each of these brings interesting insights from the world of Consultancy and Academia which HR professionals should be using with internal clients to change the conversations they hold and bring fresh thinking to the table.

In the following we set out three examples of how different organisations have tackled capability development.

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Case Study — AXA UK

AXA has combined mandatory workshops, optional workshops and self-managed learning.

Mandatory workshops include (but are not limited to) consulting skills and organisational design. These were chosen because organisational design was considered to be a significant gap across the HR community and a strategic skill set. Consulting skills were also a significant gap and there was a strong need to build a common approach in the way HR professionals engaged with business colleagues.

A suite of optional workshops is available to HR professionals to sup-plement the mandatory workshops and to address areas such as project management.

E-learning and other learning resources are available through the organisation's Intranet to address specific individual development needs.

Development plans are agreed and monitored as part of the performance review process.

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Case Study — National Grid

National Grid has engaged in HR capability development over some years now and has completed a number of 'waves' of development. Development has focused mainly on mandatory workshops, action learning groups, coaching and mentoring.

The first wave was to put all HR professionals (irrespective of organisational level) through mandatory workshops in the areas of strategy and change management, client relationship management and project management.

The second wave established action learning groups supported by coaching of learning group participants. These learning groups were thematic and coaching reinforced the learning group experience and addressed individual development needs that were inappropriate to address in a learning group context.

A third wave of development is in progress — partly to bring new joiners up to speed on new capabilities and partly to build HR capability in internally developed change management methodology.

As capability development covered all HR professionals, including the HR leadership team, it proved to be very effective:

• HR leaders were able to contribute their experience to more junior members of the team.
• A common language and tool kit were developed which could be reinforced through the line management structure.

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Case Study — Global Telecoms Business

This organisation decided to roll out mandatory workshops for the bulk of the HR professional community and run learning groups supported by coaching for the HR leadership group.

The mandatory workshops in all three new capability areas (strategy & change management, consulting skills and project management) were extremely successful and went a long way to creating a common language and toolkit. Although the HR leadership team thought they already had the capability covered by mandatory workshops, this was not the case.

In this instance the approach taken to learning groups was for each person to bring along his or her own 'live' issue. We experienced two problems — first, people did not prepare adequately for the learning group, and second, they did not have the requisite knowledge in the new capability areas and more time was spent in covering ground addressed in workshops than on the 'live' issues.

The main learning here was that adopting a dual approach for the HR leadership team/the rest of HR was ineffective as the HR leadership did not have the foundation tools and techniques they thought they had which meant they played 'catch up' and were unable to provide the coaching and support to team members that would have been beneficial.

Whilst aspects of this capability development approach were successful, the dual approach adopted falls into the 'How not to' category and we do not recommend it.