Five quotes why HR should matter – and why it often doesn’t

30 second read

Analysing where people create value should be centre stage as we embark on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. HR should be shining...

Sian Harrington

Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum

“Managing the transition towards deeper investment in human potential in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is one of the most important political, societal, economic and moral challenges we are facing today”

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman, World Economic Forum

Guy Bergin LinkedIn

“Skills are the fundamental unit of human capital. Knowing which skills are most resilient, most persistent, and most likely to remain relevant through technological innovation and economic change is key to successfully upskilling and reskilling workers”

Guy Berger, economist, LinkedIn

Saadia Zahidi World Economic Forum

“Every country risks creating lost generations if it fails to adopt a more holistic approach to nurturing talent that takes into account a proactive approach to managing the transition from education to employment and to ongoing learning and skills acquisition”

Saadia Zahidi, head, Education, Gender and Work, World Economic Forum

Ram Charan

“CEOs would like to be able to use their chief human resource officers the way they use their CFOs—as sounding boards and trusted partners—and rely on their skills in linking people and numbers to diagnose weaknesses and strengths in the organization, find the right fit between employees and jobs, and advise on the talent implications of the company’s strategy.

But it’s a rare CHRO who can serve in such an active role. What they can’t do very well is relate HR to real-world business needs. They don’t know how key decisions are made, and they have great difficulty analyzing why people—or whole parts of the organization—aren’t meeting the business’s performance goals"

Ram Charan, global adviser to CEOS and corporate boards and bestselling author  

Bruce Kaufman Georgia State University

“After an extensive reading of the literature, I conclude that strategic human resource management researchers as a group deserve a D to F grade. Among the problems are an over-reliance on knowledge areas and perspectives pertaining to the internal dimension of organizations and management (eg strategy, psychology, and organizational behavior) and too little attention paid to those areas and perspectives dealing with the external dimension (economics, industrial/employment relations and the macro side of sociology)”

Bruce E Kaufman, department of economics, Georgia State University in Strategic Human Resource Management Research in the United States: A Failing Grade After 30 Years?  May 2012

 


 

Enjoyed this story?
Sign up for our newsletter here.