It appears that most corporate executives have a slightly more generous view of their colleagues in HR than the one popularized by Michael Scott from "The Office." Unlike the fictional boss, who makes little effort to conceal his disdain for what he regards as HR's wet blanket policies, many business leaders view HR as a critical partner in developing and growing their business.
For instance, 42 percent of C-suite executives regard HR's role with the rest of the company as both strategic and transactional, according to a recent survey of more than 400 non-HR executives by the Society for Human Resource Management. Another 18 percent view it as a strategic partner. The survey accompanied a similar one conducted of HR managers on their views of human capital challenges.
There remain distinct minorities of executives who view HR's role as much more narrow, however. Twenty-one percent say it is largely a "transactional and administrative" function, while 15 percent see its role as mainly an enforcement and compliance division.
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Similarly, significant minorities of business executives say they are exploring a variety of future changes to HR at their companies. Specifically:
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Broadening scope and reach in business partnering (29 percent)
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Outsourcing more transactional HR tasks (26 percent)
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Broadening scope and reach in change management (22 percent)
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Adopting more quantitative metrics to measure HR impact (18 percent)
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Transferring more HR duties to line management (16 percent)
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Decentralizing generalist HR duties to individual business units (12 percent)
The great majority of HR personnel report either to a company CEO or a company president or owner. Across businesses of all sizes, only about 10 percent of HR professionals report to the company COO or CFO.
Non-HR executives also are unlikely to credit their HR departments for pushing for big strategic changes. When asked who was responsible for developing a more strategic HR function, 49 percent of executives said either the CEO or executive team, compared to only 26 percent who said the HR department itself was leading the charge. Another 16 percent said it was the CFO's responsibility.
The survey showed that non-HR executives also view the current and future human capital challenges differently. Whereas 38 percent of HR professionals said that employee engagement was a top concern for their business, only 21 percent of other executives said the same thing. And while 31 percent of HR personnel said that developing the next generation of company leaders was a big issue, it was only cited by 18 percent of other business leaders.
Instead, non-HR executives cited the following as top human capital challenges:
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Retaining highest-performing employees (28 percent)
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Maintaining competitive benefits (22 percent)
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Retaining employees overall (22 percent)
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