STRATEGIC HR 

Singapore - HR practitioners need to understand that it is important for them to achieve any talent objectives set by their chief executives or they would eventually lose respect.

Elizabeth Martin-Chua, the former senior vice president of Phillips China, says companies need to start taking a hard line with HR when it involves the organisation's talent management strategy. Speaking at the second Strategic HR Forum organised by PSB Academy's Career Services today, Chua says she doesn't understand why CEOs would be more lenient to HR than to other business divisions when they fail to meet their targets. "If you didn't meet your sales target, you would be fired," she says. "If you promise to bring in top ten high potentials and you only managed to bring in five, your boss would say ‘well done'."

Having spent more than 30 years in various HR roles for the electronics manufacturer, Chua believes HR should own up and take responsibility if they fail. Especially when it comes to talent matters, explains the principal consultant for her management consultancy firm Elizabeth Martin Chua Associates, because having the right human capital is critical for an organisation that wants to succeed. "If you have committed yourself to finding a successor and you didn't manage to find one, you have not taken to task."

She adds, "In fact, most of the difficult KPIs (key performance indicators) [set for HR] were never matched because all HR people know how to give excuses."

Companies should never accept excuses for failure but the reality is HR gets away with it most of the times. "You give excuses like the [labour] market is tough, we don't pay enough or the guy wasn't ready, and you can stay a few more years [in the job]," says Chua. "If these were the reasons I had given, even I would start losing respect for myself."

But Chua understands that plenty of challenges that HR faces are, in fact, contradictions. Taking the recession as an example, she knows that many of her HR peers were told to reduce overall costs and yet find resources to invest in people. While balancing both aspects is still a big issue for HR, Chua believes that it can be done, given time. 

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