My interest was sparked last week by a conversation with my friend and colleague John McGurk (of CIPD) about some further work he is doing on the evaluation of L&D.
For years practitioners and academics have searched for the means of measuring the effectiveness & contribution of HR. This is an important and useful process, as HR, like any other function in an organisation, needs to be clear about its value and relevance.
Perhaps more than any other function, HR has engaged in soul-searching about its raison d’être, with continuing debate about the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative measures. Practitioners seem to have fallen into 3 camps in this regard. The first are those who continually strive to provide “real” measurement of what they deliver. The second are those who have accepted the difficulties and have compromised on a set of measures that track what is measurable, but not necessarily useful. The third group are those for whom the measurement difficulties provide an easy let-off from the good discipline of performance measurement.
I’ve wondered if at times this search hasn’t been more motivated by personal insecurity in the profession than a real organisational need. Perhaps we need to confront issues of performance management and evaluation. Sometimes the obsession with measuring the performance of HR just seems to be unrealistic. Too many organisations are still poor at tracking and measuring individual performance, let alone the inadequate evaluation of ROI or delivery of business benefits at the end of a major project. Does too much HR measurement focus on measuring things that can be measured, rather than on what will help improvement.
Maybe we need to encourage more debate around “why measure?”, rather than what to measure. There seem to be a number of possible reasons for measuring:
The cynic in me says that the focus should only ever be on improving performance.
From an L&D perspective, perhaps the important questions to ask are:
So the next time the question of metrics comes up, don’t forget to ask yourself why are you really doing this?!
(Information on the Kirkpatrick model is available here.)
My colleague, Grahame Smith, and I spent a stimulating couple of days at "Manchester" (as opposed to "Harrogate"!) for the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition. We were running sessions in the Personal Development Zone on three of the Behaviours identified in the HR Profession Map. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response from those who came along to the sessions. Now I don't think that the level of interest in the Behaviours was just because the Development Zone offered somewhere for people sit after walking round the exhibition (it was next to the cafe area where they could have had free coffee and a seat!). Not only would it seem that the Behaviours resonate for people, but there is also a very healthy appetite for development beyond the technical domains of HR.
Our sessions focused on Curious, Courage to Challenge and Role Model and what's interesting is that these are the kind of behaviours that can feel as if they're optional or perhaps the window dressing. After all, it's the Behaviours like Driven to Deliver and Decisive Thinker that describe the rather sexier competencies for contributors in organisations. The three we focused on require a little deeper thought about why they matter above the challenges of day-to-day operational delivery, and they're also behaviours that have the potential for a higher degree of personal risk. So this makes the level of engagement we experienced more reassuring still.
So why are these particular behaviours so important for HR professionals? There seems to be a strong link between these three - if you are a credible role model in your organisation then you'll be taken more seriously (as will the HR function) and others are more likely to be open to your views and challenges. Being actively curious means that you're likely to keep yourself ahead of the game and be aware of where you need to be developing, factors that contribute to you staying effective as a role model. It's interesting to reflect on the participants for the Personal Development Zone sessions - they certainly showed curiosity by coming along (!) and their interest suggests that CIPD have struck a chord with the Behaviours included in the HR Profession Map.
One's left wondering are line managers ready to embrace and invest in the development of the kind of behaviours that will help HR to be more challenging to them and able to make an even greater impact? And are managers in HR willing to stand up and ensure that the development of HR doesn't come second and is truly valuable, or will the demands of line "urgent" managers in the wider organisation always come first?
At various points in my work I've been fortunate to run development programmes outside the UK. This year I've been working with management groups in both Italy and Germany with a mix of European nationalities. In this particular organisation English is the accepted language of work and I've been impressed by the dedication of non-English managers leading multi-nationality teams and using their second (or possibilly third language) to do it.
Managing & leading others is one of the biggest challenges in the workplace and this can be even tougher when facing the kind of economic climate we've had of late. To deliver clear, consistent messages requires thought and care to ensure that people really understand what's happening and what is required of them. To have to develop and deliver those messages in another language requires even more thought and attention. And of course, that's assuming you don't have to respond to unexpected comments or questions. So this has set me wondering - do English managers have it easy? We only really have to focus on the content and delivery of the message, we don't have to think so much about the language we use.
I'm interested to find if there's any assessment of the quality of management in different countries and of those managing international teams. If it were possible to make an objective comparison, I wonder if we'd find that actually we fall behind as international managers, or are we using the spare intellectual capacity of operating in our own language to do something else better?! Or, do we get an unfair advantage in international organisations because we fail to develop sufficient language skills at school?