Welcome to the June Newsletter.

There has been a lot written recently about the real and perceived value of Human Resource Management.  I think it is quite a hot subject, but a really difficult one to get an absolute true sense of. So, in this issue I have gone to the heart of the matter- Les Williamson has been kind enough to talk about his own take on HR and how it rates in his organisation.

Cisco is a world beating organisation. It has a reputation for commercial success built on inspiring the best people to perform consistently. Surely if HR has a real value it is here. I hope you enjoy the interview with Les.

Regards,

David Owens
Managing Director
HR Partners

You can still become a member for the remainder of the year, simply visit www.hrnetworkgroup.com.au and select "Sign Up 2010" from the main menu.

Upcoming dates and locations for 2010:

Sydney North Ryde
Tuesday 22nd June 2010

Melbourne
Wednesday 11th August 2010

Sydney Norwest
Tuesday 17th August 2010

Sydney CBD
Wednesday 18th August 2010

Brisbane
Thursday 16th September 2010

The Melbourne Team welcomes Natasha Hawkes.

Natasha Hawkes recently joined the Melbourne team, bringing with her extensive experience within the recruitment sector.  Natasha has worked as an Account Manager/Consultant in Melbourne, London’s West End and Sydney recruiting within the Business Services and HR arena.

Natasha’s expertise in recruitment and selection ensures that she can apply credited experience to the successful appointment of HR Professionals with the right technical capability and cultural fit.

Natasha’s focus on service delivery is second to none.

For more information about permanent work in HR or to connect with Natasha, please contact her on (03) 9603 0601 or nhawkes@hrpartners.com.au

HR Partners has had a long term interest in being involved in recognising excellence in the field of Human Resource Management.

By sponsoring the Human Resource Partners Prize at MGSM we are in a small way giving something back to the profession and at the same time acknowledging exceptional achievement in HR.

There were two equal winners of the Human Resources Prize for 2009, congratulations to Katherine Zofia Norton and also Rameli Jajoo.

Companies in the Thames Valley, UK are once again having to compete for the best HR talent. Andy Montgomery, who runs Digby Morgan’s Reading office, expands further.

In the Thames Valley we have been enjoying something of a resurgence in the HR employment market. As the pool of immediately available candidates who were casualties of the job losses of the last 18 months dries up, it’s throwing up an interesting factor that maybe employers are not yet considering: skills shortages.

Although candidates are starting to consider their career alternatives whilst still ensconced in their current roles, there is still a reluctance to leave the security and comfort of their current businesses.

Importantly, there is a growing body of evidence to show that companies are investing in their staff by focusing on attraction, engagement and retention and retention and concentrating their effort on learning and talent development.

This is being demonstrated by the sheer volume of vacancies that we are filling that support this affirmative action plan - roles that fall into the recruitment, learning and development and compensation and benefits space: a good indication that businesses are starting to reinvest in their staff.

Many of us know Cisco Systems as a strong Commercial organisation and one that has a good reputation for valuing its people.

As the Business Leader in this Geography – I am interested to know “just how much do you value HR”?

HR - or the function of People - underpins the overall strategy for Cisco and enables successful execution on our annual initiatives. The value of that as per the question is therefore the value of the Company as a whole.

Many functions and skills combine to make up an empowered and aligned team of people to deliver upon whatever it is they are seeking to do as a Company, but without a business aligned HR function, many fail.

I value the function enormously in order to deliver a differentiated value to our customers and sustainable growth for our shareholders.

What does your HR team provide to the organisation – which creates competitive advantage?

Alongside the rest of the leadership team, my HR business partner has a seat at the table and contributes actively to the business planning of our organization and our ongoing leadership review. They are accountable to drive the People agenda through the creation of HR Workforce strategies that align directly to our business strategies. We are about to commence our new fiscal year planning, however for the last year our key HR Workforce strategies have been focused on continuity in driving the change management for our internal transformation and secondly developing and executing against a Talent Roadmap for employees, managers, hi potential and the executive leadership.

In terms of competitive advantage, our attrition is extremely low and in a highly competitive talent market, this means we are able to retain employees. By focusing on developing employee capability, building leadership bench strength, sourcing and pipelining external talent in the marketplace, we are able to create a resilient workforce capable of achieving our growth targets. These workforce strategies underpin the achievement of our 7 differentiated business strategies across Australia and New Zealand.

How do you measure the success of your HR team?

Measuring success for all functions including HR is pivotal; as part of our Balanced Scorecard reviewed monthly at leadership meetings we track all strategies and their associated measures.

The "People" component of the scorecard has measures such as Hi Potential talent development & promotion, diversity, employee development & learning participation, attrition, mentoring measures and several other metrics that together allow for the overall tracking of progress against the 4 HR Workforce Strategies.

We have a formal review of progress against our HR Workforce Strategies twice a year and when we conduct business reviews with our Senior Vice President twice a year, HR is an important component of that review.

If you were recruiting a new Head of HR for Australia what are the 3 key attributes you would look for?

The 3 key attributes I look for in a HR Professional are:

• Overall business acumen
• Willingness to mix HR practices and drive organizational change/disruption in the business
• Highly intuitive people radar

During the planning phase of an enormous change agenda over the past 2 years, my HR business partner was instrumental in enforcing the focus on a sustainable, highly transparent and openly communicated change mgmt process. This soon turned out to be a pivotal aspect of our internal "transformation" in order to drive sustainable wide spread people change and aligned behavior.

The advice was actually in the form of a rather urgent wake up call that if we were to execute on the transformation without the supporting change mgmt, we would lose many of the team and risk achieving our objectives. Needless to say the advice was well and truly taken and many many months down the road, results are positive and behavioral change is now part of our DNA.

HR Partners have provided free access to a leading edge Salary Survey tool at www.hrsalarysurvey.com.au.

We collect and publish salary survey data from time to time and some of you may be surprised that we do not provide data very often on the remuneration enjoyed by HR Directors.

In my experience data taken from this segment is harder to collect than most others.

Participation rates are quite low- it is I suppose the narrow end of the pyramid.

The biggest challenge to producing data though is the enormous range in Remuneration from bottom to top.

HR Directors in some sectors including retail and leisure and in mid size business services can be at around $200k - $240k plus small incentives – say around 10%.

HR Directors in some Public companies can earn in excess of $500K plus benefits (shares, Car, discounted product, etc).

Applying a median at this level is in my opinion a) difficult and b) produces a vanilla result, people can look at our Median salary data and say ‘I know so many people on more than that- or absolutely the contrary’.

Perhaps a project for Quarter 3, tell me if you are interested.