By repositioning themselves as strategic leaders, HR practitioners can make the transition from day-to-day operations to setting their organisations up for long-term success. 

Now is an exciting time to enter and work in the HR profession. As HR’s remit grows, HR practitioners are leading businesses during intensive cycles of change, enabling workplace wellbeing and psychosocial safety, and integrating innovative technologies into organisational workflows. 

Today’s HR leaders are not only in a prime position to positively influence the direction of their organisations, but are also vital to shaping their growth in the long term.

I’ve spent 15 years working with executives and teams from organisations such as BMW, Bank of Queensland and Toll Logistics. During that time, I’ve coached and partnered with leaders who wanted to solve tricky business problems and create the conditions for their organisations and people to flourish. 

Here’s what I’ve noticed: even now – years after HR has well and truly made the shift from personnel management to a strategic role – HR is still perceived by some people as solely performing a compliance function. 

It’s no longer about asking, ‘Can HR get a seat at the table?’; we need to bring the chairs ourselves.

Learning to demonstrate HR’s strategic value requires a different set of skills and practices, which I walk practitioners through as the facilitator of AHRI’s new short course, The Strategic HR Leader. 

Below are four moves HR practitioners need to make to successfully make the transition from an operational to a strategic leadership role.

1. Become a leader for leaders

Preparing yourself for a strategic role starts with moving away from the demands of the reactive, and entering a proactive mode. 

While HR practitioners will always need to be responsive to the immediate needs of the business, too many are getting stuck in the weeds. Quite often, this means HR’s voice is not being heard at an executive level. 

However, we can’t wait for executive leadership teams to recognise the strategic value of HR – we need to drive this transition ourselves.

This requires HR to position themselves differently within the organisation. In addition to being a technical specialist, we need to embrace our role as a coach, influencer and leader for other leaders within the business.

For example, consider a situation where a large-scale change to a workplace’s flexibility policy has been proposed, with the aim of improving productivity and collaboration in line with revised business goals. However, the proposal has the potential to significantly impact the employee experience. 

This is where HR can leverage their people expertise to support strategic decision-making. In this case, it’s up to HR to assess the ramifications – for instance, the impact on engagement – and lead this conversation with the leadership team. 

Finding an HR mentor or colleague who is performing that strategic role and engaging in systems-level thinking can be helpful in this regard. By comparing the work you’re doing on a day-to-day basis with what they’re spending their time on, you’ll be able to identify the potential moments for high-value, reflective planning.

Of course, this isn’t an easy shift to implement; it requires a deep level of self-awareness and an understanding of the full potential of the HR function – which leads me to my next point.

Learn actionable strategies and frameworks to take the next step into strategic leadership with AHRI’s short course.

2. Articulate your value proposition in commercial terms

Articulating your value as a people leader means connecting your HR practices to the commercial outcomes and broader objectives of your organisation. This way, we position ourselves as strategic drivers of business growth. Imagine if we stopped saying, ‘The HR team implemented another learning and development program this quarter,’ and instead reframed our contribution as, ‘The HR team saved the business $120,000 by internally filling a critical skills gap, and drove a 10 per cent increase in sales as a result of upskilling the workforce.’

Or, what if we tracked the positive impacts of an emerging leader who had just completed a personalised leadership course that the HR team developed? If this leader has then rolled out an innovative wellbeing initiative across their team, boosting engagement and efficiency, HR can demonstrate the tangible contribution they have made to that outcome.

This reframes HR’s work from a support function to a value-adding partner to leadership. When you’re able to speak the language of business, you aren’t just being served the work, but actively contributing to the overall strategy. 

To cultivate that breadth of knowledge, I recommend developing a comprehensive – and honest – understanding of your own HR capabilities. This is where holistic tools, such as the Australian HR Capability Framework, are excellent for benchmarking your skillset. 

“It’s no longer about asking, ‘Can HR get a seat at the table?’; we need to bring the chairs ourselves.”

3. Leverage data-driven decision-making

Strategic HR leaders also need to be able to speak the language of data.

Robust data collection and presentation is key to measuring the success of your HR initiatives and programs, and crucial to communicating their ROI to the business more broadly. 

Again, linking the numbers to business outcomes and opportunities is the difference between a number and an actionable insight. During my early career as a training and development manager in the hospitality sector, the hotel I worked for had a basic KPI of four mandatory training sessions for employees per year. Our hotel quadrupled this number, and as a result, it was one of the highest performing hotels in the region. 

My HR team was able to point to our training attendance metric and use it to demonstrate how our learning and development programs were contributing to the organisation’s bottom line. We could also demonstrate value through other metrics such as increased revenue, sales and restaurant spend.

Collecting these metrics can be done through regular employee pulse and engagement surveys, as well as tracking results for specific HR initiatives as you would with any other project. 

To step into a forward-planning mode, you need to initiate this data collection process proactively – no one else will ask you for it. I recommend determining what data matters most to you and ensuring it’s realistic to measure on a regular basis, as you don’t want this task to have the inverse effect of being a time-sucker.

Pick two or three key metrics to track for trends, patterns and anomalies. For example, this might be turnover, retention and absenteeism. When you build this data capture into a regular process, you’ll be able to identify insights – perhaps, a fall in turnover in a particular team – that can be linked to specific HR initiatives and used to drive better decision-making.

4. Craft opportunities for leadership

As HR practitioners, we’re well-versed in spotting the opportunities for uplift among our people. Yet, we, at times, struggle to invest in our own development.

The hard truth is that you’re going to hold back the capability of your organisation if you don’t grow along with it.

Advocating for your professional development, such as through training courses, certification programs and credentials, is easier said than done. In these conversations, reframe the request back to the business. Remember: it’s not about you, but what you can bring to the business as a result of this training.

Consider questions such as:

• What expanded services am I able to offer as part of my HR function?
• What additional outsourcing costs can I potentially cut by building the skillset in-house?
• What is the ROI of this specific certification for the organisation in future workforce planning?
• What are the tangible and intangible benefits of uplifting my HR capability in this focus area in terms of engagement, wellbeing and performance?

This is where data comes in handy. Find the statistics to build a mini-business case for your growth, and treat your skills gaps as a business necessity as you would for any other employee in the organisation.

After all, when we are our best selves – proactive, strategic thinkers with a long-term vision – we can truly embrace the great influence we have on the working lives of our people and the success of our organisations. 

Catherine Bell FCPHR is an experienced people and performance specialist, with a passion for helping leaders and organisations thrive. The Director of Bell Training Group, Catherine brings together the best of science and heart in her work as a consultant, facilitator, coach and keynote speaker, and works with leaders of all kinds to build the confidence and clarity to lead well.

Ready to transition into a leadership role and prepare your organisation for the future? Gain essential skills in critical and strategic thinking, strategic human resources, and value-added business partnering in AHRI’s short course.