How HR Drives Value

🚩 RED FLAG: When someone questions HR’s ability to drive business value. It can sound something like:

“HR is just a cost center.”

“HR is focused on feelings not results.”

“What does HR even do?” (TOO MUCH IMO!!!)

“HR doesn’t impact the bottom line.”

“HR is just slowing us down.”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard any of those before. Because I sure have! 

I’ve met far too many executives who have their doubts about HR’s ability to drive business value. It usually boils down to a few different reasons like they’ve had a negative experience with HR in the past, worked with an inexperienced HR team, or have never worked with a dedicated HR team at all.

I don’t really blame them but let’s be CLEAR – HR drives business value every dang day. 

Before I go any further, WTH do I mean when I say business value?

Business value = any benefit a company gains through strategies, action or investments. 

While revenue and profit are BIG parts of business value there’s also things like:

✅ Efficiency 

✅ Innovation 

✅ Customer satisfaction & loyalty 

✅ Brand recognition 

✅ Market share

✅ Cost saving

✅ Revenue growth (so important I said it twice)

In HR driving business value means connecting your people strategy to these desired outcomes. 

📣 An example: say your organization is focused on revenue growth (who isn’t rn??)

To connect your people strategy to that desired outcome you might say something like: This quarter we worked with sales management to reduce time-to-hire by 30% for revenue-generating roles by clarifying ideal profiles, building a more efficient interview process and instituting a project and we were able to fill key positions quicker which added an additional $500,000 in quarterly sales. 

Boom!! You did that. And that is BUSINESS FREAKING VALUE. 

Can you tell I get a bit amped to talk about this? Apologies in advance. 

I’ve said it a million times before and I’ll never stop saying it – when HR is properly resourced, respected and trusted an organization has greater success. 

So, let’s look at 3 ways HR drives business value to help you communication the hella impactful work you’re doing. 

And the next time an executive doubts HR’s greatness, feel free to forward them this newsletter. Or send them to me directly. 😈

#1: Hiring

When I think business value – hiring is the easiest example to use. 

Your talent IS the business because people DIRECTLY impact your business outcomes. 

Mic drop.

Without talented folks, what could you accomplish? A great product only goes so far. 

Double mic drop. 

Hiring has a direct impact on business value by:

• Speeding up time to revenue by ensuring key roles are hired 
• Enabling growth and scalability 
• Reducing turnover costs 

AND HR drives this impact by:

• Building strategic hiring plans that account for and is aligned with business growth 
• Discovering talented candidates 
• Delivering an excellent candidate experience 
• Playing a role in retention programs and supporting internal mobility 
• Leveraging data to reduce attrition in certain spots in the organization

Hiring is SO IMPORTANT. 

It’s why I’ll never understand why anyone disrespects recruiters. 

📣 Without them your organization might not be able to find the right talent to execute on those very important business goals. it comes to your workplace terrors. If you’re not so lucky and they want to stay at your organization you need to address the situation before it becomes dire.

#2: Culture and Engagement

Culture isn’t some intangible thing – it’s a real business driver. 

But I’ll be real clear: Culture isn’t JUST HR’s job – it’s everyone’s job. HR may build the systems and processes to enable culture but everyone in an organization contributes to it. 

HR impacts culture by:

• Defining values and operating principles 
• Designing employee experiences 
• Coaching and empowering leaders and managers
• Hiring talent 
• Creating systems where employees feel heard and valued
• Fostering inclusive environments 
• Creating equitable processes and programs 

Sometimes all that in one day… 

📣 Great cultures drive higher employee engagement. 

WE ALL KNOW THIS!! 

The more engaged the employees are →  the more productive → the more profitable the organization is. 

That’s just one way great cultures drive business value, there’s also:

• Faster and more focused execution – when employees are aligned around shared goals and values they are able to do faster & better work! 
• Better team dynamics drives faster innovation – when employees trust each other there’s more space to be creative and innovative. 
• Less friction means better and faster outcomes – how much time are employees wasting in unnecessary conflict? When your culture isn’t great my guess is TOO MUCH. Great cultures will not have unnecessary conflict and will get to outcomes faster.
• Reduced turnover – turns out when your culture is good, employees won’t want to leave. Replacing an employee can cost 2X their salary not to mention momentum is usually lost when someone departs.
• When employees are happy and engaged, customer experience actually improves. Happy employees mean happy customers which means $$$ keep flowing in! 
• Great cultures attract talent cutting down on things like time to hire

So the next time an exec dares to question a culture or engagement related initiative, come back and find the direct impact and business value and present it back to them.

#3: Performance

Performance isn’t just about hitting goals, it’s about consistency, alignment, accountability and growth.

HR teams that know how to do performance well are gamechangers when it comes to driving business value. 

And yes, while performance can feel incredibly subjective at times with the proper systems & tools it actually becomes much more objective. 

✨ Enter HR ✨

HR is responsible for:

• Designing performance frameworks
• Selecting performance software 
• Enabling feedback loops
• Supporting the creation of development plans 
• Fostering goal setting 
• Exiting employees
• Training

Performance impacts the business by:

✅ Driving productivity 

✅ Retaining top talent 

✅ Enabling strategic execution 

✅ Boosting engagement

✅ Improving decision making 

Performance is one of the biggest drivers of business value but many organizations struggle here. 

Here’s what your organization could be missing – the 3 C’S. 

⭐ Clarity: Employees can’t perform if they don’t know what’s expected of them, that means: 

• Setting clear goals at the individual and team level 
• Defining expectations regularly which includes talking about success metrics – what does success look like in this role?
• Connecting their work to the bigger goals

⭐ Coaching: feedback should help with growth, like: 

• Managers need to give actionable feedback. Check out the SBI model 
• Check-ins need to be continuous – we do Feedback Friday’s ever 2 weeks but another cadence will suffice. What won’t?? Only giving feedback during annual or biannual performance reviews. 
• Support learning not always being right or being perfect. Destigmatize mistakes and build trust with your team that everyone is learning together. 

⭐ Consistency: Getting reps in builds new and better habits, that means: 

• Recognize performance regularly – make sure it’s not just the critical that is being focused on! Great performance should be celebrated regularly. We have a Slack channel to call folks out! 
• Tracking goals is critical to knowing how something is progressing and if plans need to be adjusted. 
• Performance standards need to be consistent, transparent and fair. No one likes being held to a different standard!

What about the future?

Next week’s post will focus on the future of HR. 

I promise it will be better than Madame Web. (Yes, I watched it so I can say things like that).

Since you can’t see the future, I’ll just tell you what’s next!! I’m digging into what’s in store for HR, how is our role evolving and how to prepare. 

It’ll be a beautiful bow on this quarter’s content.