better if they understand how they contribute to attaining the organization’s
goals, but someone in a service centre administering a recruitment exercise
or advising on how to handle a disciplinary problem will not be spending
much time on creating an ‘achievable vision for the future’ let alone fore-
seeing longer-term developments or challenging the status quo. The research
conducted by Francis and Keegan (2006) elicited the following comment
from a CIPD course tutor about student practitioners: ‘It is complicated by
the fact that the majority of their concerns are operational rather than
strategic and there seems to be an increasing divergence between their
needs/concerns and the content of the CIPD programme.’ A student
remarked to the researchers that the CIPD thought that they would all be
strategic business partners ‘and we’re not you know, we have to deal with
day-to-day HR issues that arise in the business’.
The CIPD (2005) has supported the focus on strategic capability with the
concept of the ‘thinking performer’, to the effect that: ‘All personnel and
development specialists must be thinking performers. That is, their central
task is to be knowledgeable and competent in their various fields and to be
able to move beyond compliance to provide a critique of organizational
policies and procedures and to advise on how organizations should develop
in the future.’
This concept can be interpreted as meaning that HR professionals have to
think carefully about what they are doing in the context of their organization
and within the framework of a recognized body of knowledge, and they
have to perform effectively in the sense of delivering advice, guidance and
services that will help the organization to achieve its strategic goals. But the
extent to which more junior practitioners ‘advise on how organizations
should develop in the future’ may well be limited.
A more realistic assessment of what being strategic means can be
produced by analysing what is involved at different levels: HR directors,
heads of major HR functions (learning and development, reward, etc) who
may be in centres of expertise, business partners embedded in operational
departments, and HR advisers or assistants who may be working in shared
service centres.
THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF HR DIRECTORS
The strategic role of HR directors is to promote the achievement of the orga-
nization’s business goals by 1) developing and implementing HR strategies
that are integrated with the business strategy and are coherent and mutually
supportive and 2) ensuring that a strategic approach is adopted by the HR
function that supports the business and adds value. To carry out this role the
HR director should:
76 l The practice of strategic HRM