To help HR professionals deliver value through organisation, we have focused our work on helping them build the “right” culture, which is the identity of the firm in the mind of the key customers made real to employees. As such, the “right” culture turns an external brand into internal agendas for all HR practices. – Dave Ulrich and Arthur Yeung, HRD Connect (September 2019)
If you are following many of the discussion streams in social media as of late, you will note that there is an increasing focus on the importance of how HR and procurement must work together to hire the best and the brightest talent in a very competitive job market.
However, to be able to form a working relationship between procurement and HR, there has to be a greater understanding of the roles that each will play in this symbiotic exercise.
The focus of this article is to provide procurement with a better understanding of what transformation means from an HR perspective and how it will impact recruiting and hiring practices.
Beyond Cultural Transformation
In the Ulrich and Yeung article, they talked about transformation involving more than a cultural shift in thinking. Specifically, the need for a structural change towards a market-oriented ecosystem or “MOE.”
Under the MOE model, organisations are no longer “structured” as divisions within a “chain of command.” Instead, they become independent teams aligned with specific market opportunities in which said units are similar to holding companies. The big difference is that through this new structure, MOE connects the “independent teams in an “information, resource, and expertise” ecosystem. The authors suggest that through the ecosystem, teams will have better customer focus, greater innovation, and the agility to respond to rapidly changing global markets.
Advocates and Innovators
HR’s value proposition to the enterprise is that it delivers both internal and external value through “talent, leadership, and organisation.”
From an internal standpoint, value is “realised” by giving employees wins in the marketplace resulting from the introduction of a sound and innovative business strategy. As a result, HR will be able to facilitate improved value to customers, investors and communities.
In this context, and in assuming the role of advocate and innovator, HR can help business leaders “see that the quality of their organisation makes a difference in employee, strategic, customer, investor, and community results.”
“to fully reinvent an organisation to become the emerging market-oriented ecosystem (MOE), HR should go beyond culture to a complete overhaul of the structure of the organisation.” – Dave Ulrich and Arthur Yeung
Beyond assisting leaders in delivering the desired results, HR can also “coach, advise and develop” leadership to comply with the MOE model’s core tenets – including providing training support when necessary.
Procurement’s View of HR
While I would encourage you to read the article in its entirety through the following link, as well as spend time checking out the HRD Connect site, how many of you are familiar with HR’s view of enterprise transformation including the MOE concept?
Does HR’s perception of its role and responsibilities as facilitators of the transformation process surprise you as a procurement professional? How does it align with your vision of procurement’s transformation?
As we move towards a collaborative partnership with HR, answering these as well as other questions will have an impact on hiring new procurement talent – including leadership. It will also influence the development of existing expertise within the enterprise.