Since 1987 our research has identified the skills that
determine effective HR professionais. Over these 25 years,
the fundamentai skiiis required for HR professionals have
remained much the same (know the business, deliver vaiue added
HR practices, manage change and have personai credibiiity),
but the specific competencies have evoived based on changing
business conditions and expectations for the HR profession.
Our 2012 competency data set for HR professionals is a unique
partnership with many ieading HR professional associations
around the worid. With their support and the active invoivement
of RBL institute members and the University of Michigan, we
have coiiected giobai data from over 20,000 respondents and
650 organisations. This data comes from line managers, HR
and non-HR associates who rated HR professionais on 139
behaviourai and knowledge-based competencies. They tie
HR competencies to both personai effectiveness and seven
dimensions of business performance.
in this latest round of research we have identified six domains
of competencies that HR professionals must demonstrate to be
personaiiy effective and to impact business performance.
These competencies are driven by three themes facing
businesses today;
1. Outside/in: This means HR must turn outside business trends
and stakehoider expectations into internal actions
2. Individual/collective: Which means that HR targets both
individual ability and organisational capabilities
3. Event/sustainability: This implies that HR is not about
an isolated activity (a training, communication, staffing,
or compensation programme) but sustainabie and
integrated solutions.
With these three trends. Figure 1 points out three spheres
of infiuence of HR work:
• Individual: What high performing HR professionals do as
individuals to build effective reiationships and reputations
within their organisation
• Organisation: How effective HR professionals design,
develop and deliver HR systems and practices that enable the
organisation to create capabilities, manage change, innovate and
integrate HR practices, and depioy HR technology
• Context: What respected HR professionals do to ensure
understanding of the external trends and reaiities facing the
organisation and responsiveness to external stakeholders.
With this as background, each of the six domains of HR
competence captures the role and responsibility of HR
professionais in creating vaiue (see Figure 1).
• Strategic positioner. High performing HR professionals think
and act from the outside/in. They are deeply knowledgeable
of and able to translate external business trends into internal
organisation decisions and actions. They understand the gênerai
business conditions (e.g. social, technological, economic,
poiitical, environmental and demographic trends) that affect
their industry and geography. They target and serve key