A Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), also known as Chief Personnel Officer (CPO), is an organisation’s key in ensuring a strategic environment in order to maximise talent motivation, aiming to bring high talent engagement and retention. Similar to the other C-suites, CHRO bears HR key responsibilities and beyond, including workforce strategies, organisational and performance conductor, HR service delivery owner, compliance and governance regulator, coach, as well as adviser to the senior leadership team and board member.
As vital as a CHRO’s responsibility in an industry, a long list of challenges emerges. Industry professionals and C-suites told Boyden that providing clarity and simplicity in the processes and leadership’s approach to talent in facilitating the management of business complexity is the greatest challenge. Other than that, the war of talent and the changing nature of work are among laborious challenges CHROs must overcome.
See also: Step-by-step Guide To Be The Next CHRO
Aon Southeast Asia research has also found that problems generally come from a CHRO who is lack of experience and expertise. Aon wrote that global CHROs don’t have as much variety in their career experience prior to becoming the Head of HR, with only 24 percent having required experience and expertise.
Here are some of CHRO challenges to excel in the coming years.
CHROs are urged to know talent’s demand. They also need to provide C-suites colleagues with an insight into the skills of an existing workforce, availability of new talent, and strategies to bring business value.
The evolving needs of a business, volatile economic environment, and rapid technological enhancements are catalysts for transforming the role of the CHROs. Thus, CHROs are expected to understand all aspects of business operations, derive insight into talent needs of every department or division.
As mentioned, rapid technological enhancements will force and push CHROs to be more analytic when hiring talents. CPO must rely on advanced analytics and data for hiring decisions.
Talent development is primer than ever. That said, in-house experts for hiring, staff planning, and retention must be the greatest concern for CHROs to establish succession planning and career progression which is linked to employee engagement. Besides, Aon advised that in-house focus enables CHROs to think from an outside-in perspective and in the language of business leader which is critical in maintaining and building a better relationship with business stakeholders.
Lastly, organisational culture is one of the keys to retain the best talents. Therefore, CHROs are expected to build a culture that fosters the right talent, performance, learning, and development to retain talent and attract talent by creating a brand outside the company.
The challenges, in summary, revealed that CHROs are expected to address the needs of global labour market, lead digital transformation in a company, meet the structural and social changes to develop a productive workforce, engage employees restlessly and support business objectives.
As CHROs are tested to be more strategic in their approach to bring long-term business sustainable success, the right and fastest way is that they should gain trust from and work together with CEO and CFO to examine the causes of possible failures. That being said, the idea is to look beyond obvious external factors, such as falling interest rates or shifting currency valuations, said Charan et al. in their research. Additionally, CHROs should be an expert at diagnosing how various parts of the social system works while systematically looking for activities that are causing bottlenecks or unnecessary friction. This means that CHROs should always update their tech fluency.
Read also: 10 Guiding Principles for CHROs to Lead the HR Transformation Journey
