Corporate Learning
Strategies
Daniel R. Tobin,
Ph.D.
Using a Human Resources Development Advisory Board as a Strategic Tool
Copyright ©1998 Daniel R. Tobin
The
Human Resources Development (HRD) director for a large manufacturing company
told me about her organization's advisory board: "It's pretty worthless.
When I started in this position two years ago, my manager, the vice president
of human resources, recruited the ten business unit vice presidents to serve on
the advisory board. The first couple of meetings were pretty good, but today
we're lucky if five of them show up for any given meeting. We haven't seen
several of them for more than a year."
"Can
you tell me something about the meetings?" I asked.
"We
meet on the first Monday morning of each month. We're supposed to start at
"What
happens at a typical Monday morning meeting?"
"We
start off by presenting the statistics for the past month: student hours,
ratings, budget data, and so on. Then we talk about any new programs that have
rolled out in the past month and any new ones scheduled for the next
month."
"Is
there any discussion?"
"Once
in a while, someone will ask a good question about a new program. Most times,
the questions focus on trends in enrollment. They also pay a lot of attention
to the budget data -- how much we are spending and why. Once in a while,
someone will pass along a comment about a particular program from one of their
employees."
This
company's advisory board (AB) is basically useless. I don't blame the no-shows,
and I wonder why the others bother to come. But is doesn't have to be this way.
The AB can be a vital strategic tool for any HRD director, whether managing a
one-person shop or a company wide function with dozens of employees.
Why Have an HRD Advisory Board?
If
HRD is to play a key role in helping the company and its employees succeed, it
must endeavor to fully understand the company's business -- strategic business
directions, core competencies, competitive challenges, new strategic business
initiatives, etc. Whether HRD has one or dozens of employees, it is difficult
to keep up with everything that is happening in the company, to understand all
aspects of the company's various businesses, to understand all the competitive
issues and pressures. A properly selected AB can provide key insights and
understanding for the HRD group.
At
the same time, the AB can act as key advocates for HRD activities throughout
the company. AB members can become sponsors and champions of key HRD
initiatives, and can provide pointers to key knowledge resources inside and
outside the company. The AB can provide key linkages throughout the company,
helping to ensure that the company's HRD resources are being utilized to
maximum advantage.
Recruiting Members for your Advisory Board
Who
should sit on your company's Advisory Board? In the earlier example, the AB had
a very high-level membership -- the vice presidents/general managers from the
company's ten major business units. Membership in some ABs tends to be focused
more on functional lines -- representatives from sales, marketing, engineering,
manufacturing, etc. In other companies, there is a mix of functional and
business unit representation. Some companies recruit AB members, others call
for volunteers.
Too
often, business leaders consider it merely a matter of corporate citizenship to
have a representative on the AB. "Sure, an HRD Advisory Board is a good
idea, and I'll appoint someone from my group to be on it." After making
this "commitment," the leader asks his staff, "OK, who has some
time available to sit on this board," without really considering (or
caring) who the best representative would be.
In
several cases where I have been asked to do a training session for a corporate
HRD advisory board, it became obvious that the people in the room were there
because their managers had told them to be there, and not because of any great
interest in the work of the advisory board, or even in the general topic of
human resource development. An AB with the wrong membership is, at best, not
useful and, at worst, a detriment to the achievement of HRD's goals.
To
be an effective member of the AB, a person should have at least the following
qualifications:
·
A thorough understanding of the
business unit or function he/she represents. The AB member should know how
his/her function or business operates, what its key challenges and core
competencies are, and be involved in the planning and execution of the
function's or unit's strategic business initiatives. This is the key value that
members can bring to the AB: the ability to help HRD understand the company's
business.
·
Credibility in his/her own
organization. The AB member should be a person whose opinion carries weight in
the organization -- "If Mary thinks this new program is a good idea, we
should give it a chance."
·
Time and willingness to help, to
work with other AB members and with HRD staff to fully understand the
challenges being faced, and to work cooperatively to develop solutions to those
challenges.
·
A basic understanding of and
belief in the value of knowledge and skills in meeting company, organizational,
and individual goals. Too often, ABs count within their membership a number of
cynics who don't believe that HRD can do anything to help the company succeed.
Without a reasonable attitude going in, AB members will not be effective and
may end up being dysfunctional.
Some HRD directors feel that the higher the level of AB
members, the greater the prestige of HRD in the company. They pressure their own
vice president to recruit his/her peers to serve on the AB. While an AB
composed of vice presidents can be effective, I believe it more important to
ensure that AB members meet the above-stated criteria. Too often, as in the
initial example in this paper, vice presidents are too wrapped up in running
their own businesses to have enough time or energy to devote to the AB.
It
is also important that the HRD manager personally recruit AB members. The
personal relationships between the HRD manager and AB members are of critical
importance. If the HRD manager leaves selection and recruitment of members to
his/her vice president, he/she is missing an important opportunity to start
building these relationships.
When
you have recruited your AB based on these qualifications, you have made a good
start. But now that you have a AB, what do you do with it?
Advisory Board Orientation and Training
You
have recruited your AB to help HRD better understand the company's business.
And just as you have been so busy running your HRD group to develop this
understanding yourself, so AB members have been so immersed in running their
own businesses that they typically have not had time to develop a full
understanding of your HRD business. Therefore, it behooves you, at the initial
meeting of the AB, to provide some orientation to the training function,
including:
·
The charter and goals of the HRD
group.
·
An overview of current and
planned HRD programs and services.
·
Current statistics on
participation, quality ratings, etc.
·
Key internal and external
relationships.
·
Key players from the HRD staff.
·
A tour of HRD facilities.
If HRD in your company has not historically been viewed as
a key contributor to the company's success, it may also prove useful to provide
the AB with an overview of some success stories from other companies which
demonstrate how an effective HRD function can add value to the company's
strategic business initiatives.
Once
the overview is complete, it is time to move on to defining the mission and
role of the AB itself.
·
Why have you asked these people
to serve on the AB?
·
How can HRD help them and the
functions/organizations they represent?
·
How can they help HRD?
·
How should the AB function at
meetings and between meetings? It is a good idea to present some ideas for
these ground rules, rather than to just throw out the question, sit back, and
watch the action. While the first meeting should be run by the HRD manager, the
AB should elect its own officers and give them responsibility for setting
future agendas, of course with the assistance and advice of the HRD manager.
Members of the AB will be very familiar with the tools and
methods they use to plan their own businesses, but may not be at all familiar
with those used by HRD. It will serve you well to familiarize AB members with
your methodology, but in doing so, it is vital that you present your methods in
a way they understand. Too often, we get so caught up in our own jargon, which
makes perfect sense to us, that we fail to recognize that it may be totally
incomprehensible to others who do not share our training and experience.
For
example, one company's HRD director asked me to review a "Human Resources
Development Planning Guide" which his group was just completing for use by
his company's business unit managers. The guide presented a very comprehensive,
systematic planning process which would enable a business manager to start with
his/her business goals and, working through a series of steps, determine the
training and development activities required to enable employees to meet those
goals. While the guide was very well done, it had two basic problems which
would doom it to collect dust on the business managers' bookshelves:
First,
it was written in the language of HRD. As an HRD professional, the language
made sense. For a business manager, it was all but incomprehensible.
Second,
the planning process detailed in the guide had no relationship to the company's
well-established business planning processes. If I were a business manager
reading the guide, my reaction would be: "I've just finished months of
work developing plans using the company guidelines, and now you're telling me I
have to start over from scratch just to determine training needs? You're
crazy!"
One
of the first and most vital tasks you can undertake with your AB is to develop
your own understanding of the company's business planning processes and then
work with the AB to extend those processes to determine the learning needed to
enable and facilitate the achievement of company, organizational, and
individual goals. When the AB realizes that HRD is not trying to reinvent the
wheel, but is trying to add value to the business (their businesses), it will
become a powerful strategic tool for helping HRD achieve its own goals.
At
this initial orientation and training meeting for the AB, it is also wise to
select a high priority company need on which you can focus your initial
efforts. For example, is one division trying to implement TQM, introduce a new
product line, improve customer service ratings, or move to concurrent
engineering? Use the AB to help select one high priority area that you can work
on together to test the planning methodology and, at the same time, provide
evidence that HRD can really add value to the company's strategic business
initiatives. A quick, effective response to this type of need will go a long
way to establishing (or re-establishing) the credibility of your training
organization within the company.
Running the Advisory Board
The
AB should be convened on a regular, typically quarterly basis. Depending on the
urgency of the items on the agenda, the AB may at times need to meet as
frequently as once a month. But you must remember that this is an advisory
board, not a management group. In the earlier example, it was ludicrous to
think that the ten senior business unit managers in the company would take a
full day each month to devote to the AB (and the first Monday of the month at
that!).
This
does not mean that the work of the AB takes place only four times a year. If
the AB is convinced that it can add value to the company through its work, it
will appoint its own subcommittees and work on key issues on a regular basis,
outside the quarterly meetings. The HRD director should also provide AB members
with regular monthly updates on key issues and programs and should feel free to
call on AB members for advice or assistance as needed. At the same time, AB
members should be calling the HRD director for assistance in program planning,
to advise the director on changes in priorities or on upcoming strategic
programs to which HRD can add value, etc.
Each
quarterly meeting should be well-planned by the AB chairperson and the HRD
director to ensure that the meeting time is well utilized and that AB members
feel that their time at the meetings is worthwhile. The typical agenda items of
reviewing enrollment statistics, budgets, and quality data should be handled in
written reports delivered to AB members before the meetings -- little value is
added to the training function or to the AB members by sitting and looking at
table of statistics and listening to someone reading them off the charts.
A
properly constituted, properly run advisory board can be a key strategic tool
for HRD directors who are seeking to make their organizations a key contributor
to their companies' success. The AB can help to revitalize a HRD group that has
lost its focus and can become key advocates for the work of the group.
Dan Tobin
welcomes your reactions to and comments on this article. To send him e-mail, click here
or send email to DanielTobin@att.net.