HR people spend too much time with other HR people, actually 75 percent of their time says Jon Younger, partner in The RBL Group. Jon works with HR guru Dave Ulrich and Danish consultant Christine M. Cleemann on providing strategic HR advice throughout the world. Among their customers are a number of major Danish companies such as Maersk, Novo Nordisk, and Velux.
Jon Younger believes that the time has come for HR departments to not only know the company’s strategy and business model, but they must also be able to see through the strategy and into the outside world in order to discern important stakeholders. It may be shareholders, customers, and society. This is how HR can help to create value.
And from this picture, interventions and resources can be prioritized to focus on what contributes most to the bottom line.
Younger assesses, on the basis of his work for the world’s leading companies, that Danish HR departments are well underway to transform itself to become powerful, strategic devices that can generate business value.