Bridging The Gap – Think How Your CEO Thinks

As an HR professional, it is important to learn how to interact with management and help companies succeed. How can a person understand how to connect with management? Learning how to boost your credibility is one of the important elements you need to focus on if you want people to take you seriously.

It is everyone's job to take initiative

Taking Initiative

"If employees step up, we would pay more." We hear this a lot, but nobody does anything. We end up sitting there and waiting for each person to step up and do something. We spend a lot of time waiting on other people to take the initiative. If HR would help with strategy, the leaders will listen. Everyone needs to take that first step.

Who Can Be Strategic To Their Organization?

What does it mean to be strategic? There are three key elements of being a credible person for the company:

Focus on the long term
Focus on organization goals
Align with the strategic vision

Do you struggle to pull yourself out of a day-to-day task-oriented area of HR? If you do, it is time to learn how to pull yourself out of this area and put yourself into a position where you can gain credibility. There is a four-step process one must follow if you want to gain credibility:

Know Your Business
Understand Management
Decide how HR affects them
Get alignment

We often use our knowledge to tell others how our role will impact their department. However, the problem is, we need to take time to learn about the company and understand how management works. The knowledge you have is not universally accepted, despite what you may think. While there are some elements that are universally accepted, but learning to be strategic means you must understand the goal of the business and how it is different.

Understanding your competition will help you learn about their company culture and what they are trying to do"

Know Your Business

What is it that makes your industry unique, and what elements do companies universally accept? Walmart and Target may sell similar products; they have very distinct and unique business models. Walmart is a low-cost provider, while Target charges a little more for a higher quality of product. A luxury brand works on high-quality, exclusive products, to charge more for the product versus worrying about volume like Walmart. People hired at Walmart are different from those hired at Target and the high-end retailers. Different people need to come to the companies with different experienced. The client-base is different, and you need a different employee to work at Walmart than you do at a high-end retailer. Understanding your competition will help you learn about their company culture and what they are trying to do.

Understanding your competition will help you learn about their company culture and what they are trying to do.

How Do You Gain Insights Into the Industry?

Read blogs and subscribe to newsletters to learn about your industry. This is a great way to learn how the different companies operate in the industry, and it helps you to interact with management as you know the right terminology to use. Buzzwords are important to management, and you must know what they mean if you want to be credible to management.

Understanding Lifecycle

An HR professional must understand lifecycle information to know what they can afford. Money helps you to know what type of people you can hire, as not everyone will work for the same amount. People and talent are the drivers of the company, and HR plays an important role in the costs of the company. What drives the revenue and growth? When you know this, a CEO will have an easier time respecting you, and listening to you as you present new ideas. Show the CEO how you can reduce turnover, which will increase revenue and costs. Focus on how maintaining your employees will save money as you do not have the recruitment costs, and you can show how people who have been with the company sell more, bring in more revenue, and are ultimately the best asset a company has.

Convert Your Numbers for Departments

It is everyone's job to take initiative. If you want people to engage with you, it is your job to make things as simple as possible for each department. They need to know what you want, and how it corresponds to their department. Make what you want, what they want!

Want more information about how to bridge the gap? Please, contact us.

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