HR and the Information Agenda - Ordre | CRHA · competitive insights. • Unstructured data is growing in importance. As speed and volume of information access becomes commoditized,

© 2016 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com

HR and the Information Agenda

A HArvArd Business review weBinAr feAturing

Dave Ulrich

OctObeR 24, 2016

Sponsored by

http://www.oracle.com

© 2016 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.comwww.hbr.org

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OVERVIEWBusiness transformation is on every organization’s agenda today, and information is key to every aspect of this shift. Human resources leaders have become increasingly sophisticated in using information to create greater business impact on talent, leadership, and culture. However, HR analytics can’t be isolated within HR. To add real strategic value, HR leaders must focus on creating an information capability throughout the organization. HR leaders must take the lead in leveraging the information agenda to add value and drive business results.

CONTEXTDave Ulrich reviewed his research and discussed a framework for HR’s role in building and sustaining information as a fundamental organizational capability.

KEY LEARNINGSto create value, HR teams must recognize the importance of major trends.

Three trends that affect how HR creates values in organizations are:

1. HR must take an “outside-in” perspective. HR teams have evolved from dealing with administrative issues to focusing on functional expertise and HR strategies. Today, HR teams are looking beyond strategy and aligning with external stakeholders. This “outside-in” perspective treats strategy as a window to external constituents, such as customers, investors and owners, communities and regulators, and partners and dealers.

Figure 1HR Outside-In Creates Stakeholder Value

CONTRIbuTORSDave UlrichRensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Business, Ross School, University of Michigan

Angelia Herrin (Moderator) Editor, Special Projects and Research, Harvard Business Review

OctOber 24, 2016

HR and the Information Agenda


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OctOber 24, 2016HR and the Information Agenda

2. HR creates more value by cultivating leaders and the culture than through hiring. Teams are more powerful than individuals. Companies win through leadership, culture, and workplace processes. These are areas where HR should devote more attention.

Figure 2HR Value Creation

3. The HR value proposition depends on transformation. Teams must begin with the business context, then focus on outcomes, HR design, and HR accountability.

Figure 3The Four Phases of Transformation

Specific HR competencies and capabilities are needed to positively impact the business.

The HR Competencies 2016 research initiative is a joint effort led by University of Michigan Ross Executive Education and The RBL Group. Research on HR competencies revealed:

• HR competencies can be categorized. The skills HR professionals need to be success-ful can be grouped into nine factors falling into three broad categories: strategic enablers, core drivers, and foundational enablers.


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Figure 42016 Competency Model

• HR professionals must cultivate competencies with high business impact. Analysis found that serving as a paradox navigator has a large impact on organizations, yet HR professionals are not as effective in this capacity as in other capacities.

Figure 5Framework for Prioritizing HR Competencies

• To add value, HR leaders must hire high-quality team members. HR professional competencies only explain 7.7% of business performance, while the activities of HR depart-ments explain 31%.


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Figure 6HR Activities Create More Value than HR Professional Competencies

• HR organizations should develop capabilities that positively impact the busi-ness. Four key capabilities have high business impact, but many HR teams aren’t very effective at them. They are: innovation, culture and shared mindset, speed and agility, and external sensing.

Figure 7Framework for Prioritizing Organizational Capabilities

HR teams can use the 2016 competency model as a guide to playing more strategic roles.

Using this model, Ulrich answered four key questions facing HR teams:

1. How do HR teams get invited to the leadership table? One effective approach: become a credible activist.

2. Which stakeholders does HR represent at the table? If HR is representing internal stakeholders, like employees or line managers, act as a credible activist. If HR is represent-ing external stakeholders, like customers or investors, serve as a strategic positioner.


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3. How does HR create business value? HR must navigate paradoxes by managing ten-sion and the divergent/convergent cycle.

4. What is the best way to build an HR department? Recognize the importance of the HR function and build capabilities to support information, speed, culture, and collaboration.

Data and information enable organizations to make better decisions.

Technological advances mean information is now available anytime, anywhere, and anyhow. As HR teams embrace information, they should recognize certain data-related facts:

• Information can be a source of competitive advantage. Firms that have a disci-plined approach to managing information create information asymmetries that lead to competitive insights.

• Unstructured data is growing in importance. As speed and volume of information access becomes commoditized, unstructured data is emerging as the source of competitive advantage.

• The nature of work will be looking for and identifying patterns in unstructured data. Unstructured data requires bundling and interpretation. Having a unique social algo-rithm helps create competitive information asymmetries.

The information landscape for analytics has evolved. Many analytics initiatives in the past featured internally focused scorecards. The next generation of analytics emphasized insights, based on predictive analytics and trends. Today, organizations want information to predict what will drive the business.

HR technology has evolved from focusing on efficiency to creating emotional connections.

Initially, HR technology platforms aimed to make processes more efficient. However, technology has evolved. Solutions now emphasize business impact, shared experiences, and emotional con-nection. Thanks to technology, employees no longer need to be co-located. Some organizations ask team members to create one-minute monthly videos to keep their peers connected to one another.

Figure 8The Evolution of HR Technology


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To create a greater business impact, HR teams must identify, import, prioritize, disseminate, and leverage information.

To manage the flow of information, HR teams must follow six steps:

• Identify market information. HR must look outside the organization and determine how information such as regulatory changes or customer information will affect the firm. One HR team uses company training sessions to gather unstructured information about customers.

• Import market information into the firm. Potential sources include analysts, inves-tors, current and former customers, and suppliers.

• Prioritize the information. Determine which information has low value and eliminate it from further consideration.

• Disseminate organization-wide information. This effort should focus on what the firm wants customers to know about the organization.

• Leverage information. The goal is to use information to support decision making and action.

• Create an external brand. HR must cultivate a brand with external stakeholders.

“We live in a world with an overwhelming amount of information. When we have more information, we make better decisions. However, we need to think differently about information.”

– Dave Ulrich


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The information contained in this summary reflects BullsEye Resources, Inc.’s subjective condensed summarization of the applicable conference session. There may bematerial errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in the reporting of the substance of the session. In no way does BullsEye Resources or Harvard Business Review assume anyresponsibility for any information provided or any decisions made based upon the information provided in this document.


bIOGRAPHIESDave Ulrich

Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Business, Ross School, University

of Michigan

Dave Ulrich is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michi-gan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organizations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learn-ing, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. He has helped generate award-winning databases that assess alignment between strategies, organization capabilities, HR practices, HR competencies, and customer and investor results.

Angelia Herrin (Moderator)

Editor, Special Projects and Research, Harvard business Review

Angelia Herrin is the editor for special projects and research at HBR. Her jour-nalism experience spans 25 years, primar-ily with Knight-Ridder newspapers and USA TODAY, where she was the Washing-ton editor. She won the Knight Fellowship in Professional Journalism at Stanford University in 1990. She has taught jour-nalism at the University of Maryland and Harvard University.

Prior to coming to HBR, Angelia was the vice president for content at womenCon-nect.com, a website focused on women business owners and executives.

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HR and the Information Agenda - Ordre | CRHA · competitive insights. • Unstructured data is growing in importance. As speed and volume of information access becomes commoditized,