Forget about Clinton vs Trump – this is the poll you should care about
A poll conducted this month with more than 500 members of the LinkedIn group HR Jobs and Ideas, revealed that 77% of HR professionals believe that most hiring managers are not adequately prepared to comprehensively assess candidates’ technical and soft skills.
This means that that they are more likely make erroneous judgements about a candidate’s suitability for a role based on unconscious prejudices such as the candidates’ perceived similarity to the hiring manager, or their perceived level of ‘threat’ to the position of the manager in question.
Such unconscious biases have been widely written about, and can have a major impact on the soundness of hiring decisions. Solving these issues is the purview of the HR department, but such expertise can only be utilized when management recognizes the problem.
Different factors contribute to the health of a company’ bottom line, but 80.5% of professionals surveyed agreed that robust human capital management skills have a clear correlation with business success.
A whopping 94.7% of professionals surveyed felt that liberating the full creative and productive potential of their people is one of the most important strategies for remaining competitive in today’s economy.
Significantly only 2% felt organisations should focus more on selection and less on personal development.
And that extends into how the Human resources profession is itself perceived. The good news is that most professionals surveyed felt their good work was being acknowledged by their organisations, with only around 30% feeling undervalued.
But there is clearly still work to be done in this area, as only 25% of responders felt that HR professionals are fully recognised as equal business partners in their company.
This is important if organisations are going to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive future.
So much for the diagnostics. What can organizations do in practice to improve this and build a lasting competitive advantage in human capital management?
In our opinion two main focus areas need to be simultaneously addressed:
1. Training & Development – Employers need to fully leverage in-house HR expertise and ensure it is being effectively shared at every level of the business, especially with hiring managers.
2. HR means business – We need to give greater visibility to how the human element directly impacts cash-flow. This is critical for convincing organizations to go beyond paying lip service about the strategic importance of their people.
At HR Upgrades we have developed a web-based business simulation game designed to pair your HR team with hiring managers within your company and play together for a memorable learning experience.
This enables the sharing of HR best practice across different functional areas where people may not be specifically trained for this role, while at the same time allowing other functional areas to experience the financial impact of HR decision-making.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how or whether business simulations could be effectively deployed in your organizations to boost your HR teams’ engagement in company business processes and improve talent acquisition and retention.
Share your experience and views on ratriraysen@gmail.com.
@RatriRaySen :Twitter
Author:
Ms. Ratri ray sen ,
HOD- Corporate communications and Training in Goenka group of Companies , Member of British Psychological Society. Ratri ray sen is Head of Research & Communication at HR and Training. Upgrades as well as the manager of the ASTD group “HR , Training and Ideas” .
