Are You At the Table Yet?

Earlier this week I attended the HR Executive Roundtable Group meeting which I co-founded at ARRIS. The speaker was Joel Koblenz from the Koblenz Group in Atlanta who talked about what CEOs want from HR leaders and what they expect. Joel's discussion to the group was "a view from the top". The topic was timely and on target based on what we currently are seeing in the economy and industry. 


It reminded me of a post I put up last July so I thought I would repost it again since the points that Joel touched on were what I wrote about last year.  In addition, Joel mentioned 2 other key points that I failed to bring up in that previous post:

• meeting with your CEO weekly to calculate the HR strategy against the current business strategy
• making sure that you understand the business from the ground up, not just what you produce and who are your key competitors.

In addition, all successful corporations use HR strategically, not just to manage administration and other mundane HR tasks. CEOs are interested in growth, profits, innovation, and the ability to retain customers. HR is at a key position to help the CEO attain all of these objectives. To do this your time in the HR leadership role should consist of the following:

• discussing talent, retention, and talent development and pipeline candidates;
• compensation and competitive intersections of market and attaining the best talent;
• benefits, maintaining a competitive package and harnessing costs, especially health and 401K and pensions;
• identifying integration acquisitions quickly;
• anticipating critical business events and regulatory issues;
• guiding and maintaining a daily interaction with the CEO and key business leaders;
• understanding the dynamics of the economy and how they impact the business;
• and finally enabling growth drivers at the employee and business levels.

Are you doing these key functions on a daily basis? Let me know your thoughts.