Today’s CEOs and executives maintain that there are three key components to a successful business: 1) you have to have the right strategy, 2) you have to have the operations in place to execute that strategy, and 3) you have to have the best people in the world to execute those operations.
Being responsible for one-third of a business’s success already puts HR in a critical role. But it’s not just about finding the best people—it’s about finding the best people, at the lowest cost, with the lowest possible attrition and the best possible performance. And it’s about guiding your executive team to the right decisions using the language they understand best: numbers. Talent management—covering everything from recruiting and compensation to ongoing education and retention—has traditionally been managed in silos, with a series of disparate systems and disconnected processes and reports. In today’s data-driven world, CEOs demand more. Given that 55% of the US GDP alone is spent on wages and salaries, it’s not a stretch to say that the biggest financial decision a company can make each year is the total amount of merit increase. The strategic HR leader is expected to come to the table with hard numbers justifying merit increase requests; it’s no longer enough to state industry trends or averages. And that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Today’s HR leader needs to holistically understand the workforce by function, category, and location. Is R&D attrition in China hurting the company’s bottom line? Does the company need to offer more competitive packages to retain top-performing sales reps in North America? These types of questions cannot be answered quickly, easily