HR
as Your Second Business; Employees are Your First Customers
The
big idea here, is much larger than the concept of strategy alone.
What needs to happen (and is happening in the best companies),
is companies must recognize that the HR and staffing function;
the process of recruiting and retaining qualified staff, should
be properly considered as a business unit on equal footing with
whatever the main business is. If for example, you are in the
business of producing electrical components, and are a leader
in your field, you have no doubt addressed every player, every
resources, every angle and every stage of the process that starts
with a raw material somewhere in the world and culminates in you
making a successful sale to a customer. In fact, you have probably
gone beyond that point to realize that when you make that sale,
you have completed one part of the process, that is finite, and
have now embarked on the second part which is infinite. Ideally,
you should never lose that customer. You should service him to
death, listen to his ideas, problems and needs. You should anticipate
what he wants before he thinks of it himself, and never give your
competition an opportunity or reason to come in and take him away.
This
is how we need to think about the business of Recruitment and
Retention. There must be resources allocated - not just to fulfill
short terms gaps, or staff the project of the moment, but to build
a long-term culture that attracts and retains the best people
in the industry. HR should become another business unit in and
of itself. And, you should recognize that your employees are your
first and most important customers. Think about it. You can have
customers to buy your product lined up around the block, but if
you have no employees you are not going to have any product to
sell them! Money that goes into improving the lot of your employees,
and making them more fulfilled from working at your company is
not an expense, it is an investment.
Just
as you might invest in buying a patent, doing R&D, building
a factory or buying a marketing campaign, so is money spent on
employees an investment. This is central to the success of all
excellent companies. Some are old economy, some new economy, some
have transitioned from old to new, but the companies that are
winning the race for talent, share this belief, and they put it
into practice.
In a moment, I am going to give you some examples of what U.S.
companies are doing to make this new perspective become a reality.
But understand that for these things to really work, they have
to be part of a bigger picture. There must be a serious commitment
to making the process work year in and year out. Marry that to
ongoing vigilance and ability to adapt and change with the environment,
and likelihood of both survival and success are far greater.
