Assessment Centres and Global Talent Management by Iii George C. Thornton;Povah Nigel; & George C. Thornton III

Author:Iii, George C. Thornton;Povah, Nigel; & George C. Thornton III
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Contribution to Business

Traditionally, the HR function has been viewed as administrative, focusing on the level of the individual employee, the individual job, and the individual practice (Becker, Huselid, and Ulrich 2001), with the basic premise that improvements in individual employee performance will automatically enhance organizational performance. In the 1990s an emphasis on strategy and the importance of HR systems began to emerge. Both researchers and practitioners began to recognize the impact of aligning HR practices with organizational strategy. HR has now emerged as a business partner in which individual HR functions, such as recruitment, selection, training, compensation, and performance appraisal, are closely aligned with each other and also with the overall strategy of the organization.

It has also been confirmed that to effectively shift to the new paradigm, the HR professionals need to possess the critical competencies beyond the functional knowledge. While the functional knowledge (functional technical competencies) are important to delivering successful performance, translating this functional knowledge to effective outcomes for the organization would be a function of the right kind of behavioural competencies which would be the key differentiating factors that impact performance. This is further corroborated by a 16-year long study involving thousands of HR professionals and over 28,000 line managers and peers, undertaken by the University of Michigan’s Business School (Ulrich and Brockbank 2005).

The results of this study highlighted the type and nature of the competencies of HR professionals that have the most influence on company performance. It was found that Strategy-Related Competencies (change management, customer orientation, and strategic decision-making, and so on) accounted for 43 per cent of impact on business performance. The second cluster, Personal Credibility (result orientation, relationship management, influencing communication, and so on) accounted for 23 per cent of impact on business performance. The third cluster, HR Delivery (staffing, training and development, organization design, HR measurement, Legal Compliance, Performance Management) accounted for 18 per cent. However, what is pertinent to observe here is the finding that HR delivery was not a key differentiation factor across low-performing companies and high-performing companies, and they are in that sense threshold competencies. Lastly, the Business Knowledge cluster (Knowledge of the value chain labour knowledge), and HR Technology cluster accounted for 11 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

Similar results were replicated in the 5th study on HR competency conducted by the University of Michigan and RBL Institute in 2007. Further in the context of Asia, the study by Long and Ismail (2008) also supported the relationship between HR competencies and business performance. Thus it is obvious that to effectively contribute to business, HR personnel needs to ensure that relevant competencies are adequately developed in them. The HR Compass, if fully implemented, will go a long way in enhancing the contribution of HR to business.

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