Conventional wisdom says that human resources finally has achieved its
sought-after seat at the table. But the ability of human resources to add
value at a strategic level "is currently more promise than reality." That's
the sobering finding of Creating a Strategic Human Resources Organization
(Stanford Business Books, 2003), a long-term study of human resources by
Edward E. Lawler III and Susan Albers Mohrman.
The authors found that today's people managers still are most comfortable
with traditional human resources activities. "If they want to be effective
business partners, they need to change their skill set," Lawler and Mohrman
say. Almost 30 percent of the companies in the study promote human resources
executives who come from the business side, not human resources.
"In essence, some companies may have decided that the HR strategic-partner
role is too important to leave to someone with an HR background." The study's
conclusion: Human resources must reinvent itself. "The old approaches and
models simply are not good enough."