Recruiting HR Professionals – Cutting costs v Talent & Experience

It might be slightly controversial, but several of my senior network have been surprised by recent hiring decisions at the top end of their HR function. I have heard several HR professionals feeling like they are reporting into someone 'with less experience' or someone who has come from outside of the HR function. But the question is why? We reached out to our HR network to find out more.

A staggering 68% of the professionals we surveyed felt that businesses are compromising on both talent and experience when recruiting HR professionals, with a further 23% agreeing, but feeling the compromise only applied to specific roles.

A lack of understanding around HR

36% felt the hiring decisions came down to the CEO’s lack of understanding around the HR function; only 3 in 10 HR professionals felt that their CEO or MD really understood the HR function and what they do. Interestingly 31% believed poor decisions could be linked to nepotism and people ‘hiring who they know’. A further 20% felt the decision was cost-based and the company had potentially made a poor decision to save money, with 14% feeling it was down to a poor interview process.

Is HR experience vital for senior roles?

59% of professionals feel HR experience is vital to being a senior leader in a HR function. However, 14% feel you could easily be a HR leader without any previous experience, and 25% feel you could do the role with some training.

These statistics would indicate that we have still not reached a point where Human Resources is completely valued and fully understood by most employees across the UK. When compared to 5-10 years ago there is obvious progress but there are still plenty of cases where it is only during times of crisis/complex ER issues that the value and importance of the HR function is genuinely appreciated. These sorts of attitudes will not likely be conducive to keeping up with ways of working in the modern world and the future of your business may suffer.

Lesley Dray, Human Resources Manager at Omega Diagnostics feels there is still work to be done to prove the value of the profession: “All too often I have heard the phrase anyone can do HR...maybe they can, but to do it well you need someone with an HR background who has some understanding of and empathy with people. Regrettably, HR is still not viewed as a "proper" profession in the same way as, for example, Finance perhaps because a lot of what we do is under the radar or perhaps because we are still shaking the stigma of being the HR police!”.

Education and showing commerciality

With so many professionals feeling misunderstood by their senior leaders or feeling like the recruitment process for HR isn’t as rigorous as it could be, it is down to the HR function to ‘educate upwards’, but more than that, it’s to show the value you add to the business. It is important to demonstrate you care about the company’s overall business and not just your respective department. HR is no longer viewed as the softer side of the organisation and plays an important strategic role that can bring real commercial benefits to the business.

A big part of this is knowing and understanding your leader and what actions or information will make them sit up and take notice.

For example, if you can show clear evidence that staff attrition is increasing due to a lack of specific benefits within their contract, this is something that will force leaders to take swift action. The obvious tangible result of this would be increasing your staff retention because you are taking notice of what the workforce wants. However, the wider, more commercial benefits will include saving time and costs on recruitment, retaining the best people in your business to provide the best service, and improving staff retention can enhance your company’s reputation in the marketplace.

Andrew Neal, CPO for Communisis agrees that commerciality is the key to getting buy-in from the top: ”Enterprise leadership, or the enterprise mindset is about thinking beyond our own function and thinking about the business as a whole, and how then the people function supports that and helps it achieve its outcomes. It comes back to taking action to understand the wider business outside your function.”

In an ideal world, HR would not have to do this as every leader would have a strong understanding of what each function does, but unfortunately, the data would suggest otherwise.

The importance of a good recruitment

It should be quite obvious that a proper recruitment process will be able to prevent some of the problems encountered above. If a company only hires candidates from a pool of HR people who have worked with the leadership previously, then there is often a gap in necessary experience required which is made up for by social memories/irrelevant things in common.

If you are using a specialist HR agency to bring in talent then you will eliminate this problem straight away, whilst gaining access to a network of professionals. Specialist HR recruiters, such as Macmillan Davies, know what good talent looks like and can find access to someone who can really add commercial value to your business.

Get in touch

Should you wish to have a confidential chat with James Roberts to discuss the current HR market and where we can help with inclusive recruitment or your search for work/recruiting into your team, please contact him directly at jroberts@mdhr.co.uk

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