The business world has changed rapidly in recent years—thanks, in part, to the widespread adoption of remote work and the volatility of the labor market. As a result, the CHRO job has changed dramatically, and so has the process of filling it. Like Goldilocks, recruiters are realizing it’s harder to find the one that’s “just right.”
Talent strategy challenges have brought remote work, the labor market, and culture into boardroom discussions unlike ever before. As a result, directors and CEOs have become more involved in the CHRO hiring process. Staffing firm executives told HR Brew that this shift is not unprecedented.
“If you think back to the financial crisis of 2008, finance had their Sarbanes-Oxley moment,” Steve Patscot, who leads Spencer Stuart’s North American HR practice, said. “I’d say 2020 was the HR [Sarbanes-Oxley] moment…so many of these ‘gray zone’ issues—culture, talent, compensation, retention—they’re all coming back to HR.”
Because the skill set required of CHROs has evolved so quickly, the process of recruiting for the role has changed, as well.
Top-level involvement. One of the biggest changes to CHRO searches has been the seniority of leaders involved and the amount of time they dedicate to it. In the past, most CEOs were not involved until the end of the process, Dan Kaplan, senior client partner for Korn Ferry’s CHRO practice, said. Today, “We don’t really let [that] happen.”
“We want the CEO engaged with us every week, meeting candidates, regularly engaged,” he said. “We have some searches where the CEO or co-founders are spending 10, 12, 15 hours with candidates because they understand that relationship is so paramount.”
Board directors have become much more involved, too, due to the new dynamic they share with the CHRO. HR leaders used to meet with the board on a quarterly basis for a “data dump,” Kaplan said. Now, he added, “There is an expectation that the board and the CHRO are going to be in a regular cadence of communication…so, we’re now seeing much greater involvement of board members.”
New CHRO skills. Today’s CHROs need a much more expansive skill set than they might have, say, in 2019, Kaplan and Patscot said. Adaptability is key, as is the ability to manage conflict and challenge the CEO and board, they explained. These are the emerging traits companies are looking for in a new CHRO.
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“The head of HR is the one person whose…job [it] is to tell you when the emperor has no clothes,” Kaplan said. “So, we do a lot of testing on that.”
Testing, he said, may involve situational role-plays and asking CHRO candidates to “give us examples of some really tough conversations you’ve had to have…the time where you thought you were gonna have to pack your box up and go home that day because of a conversation you [were] about to have with a board member or the CEO.”
An agile mindset is also key, according to Patscot and Kaplan. Change is one of the greatest challenges facing HR today. The CHRO needs to embrace it, rather than lean on red tape to stick to the status quo.
“The single biggest thing that’s changed is the pace of change,” Patscot said. “Historically, HR likes to have rules and process. And now it’s agile, it’s flexibility. You think about the fact that there'’s five generations in the workforce. They all want something different.”
A true partner. “CEOs have realized that this must be a strategic function,” Patscot said. But because of the historical nature of the role, some CEOs, he added, aren’t prepared for their head of HR to be assertive.
“I’ll have CEOs telling me, ‘I want someone who’s going to give me tough feedback,’” Kaplan shared. “It sounds great, until the first time someone comes in and gives you really tough feedback.”
CEOs need to understand what it means to have a head of HR as a meaningful contributor to the company’s strategy, and that starts with acknowledging how much the job description has changed, depending on the situation of the company.
“The best CEOs know what good looks like and know how to find it,” Patscot said. “And everybody else is still kind of figuring that out.”—AK
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