Ong Ye Kung
CEO, Singapore Workforce
Development Agency

IN less than a week's time, Singapore will be hosting the inaugural Singapore Human Capital Summit. It will be the first ever human capital conference in Asia, targeted at a regional audience, and dedicated to discussing the issue of people and talent at the strategic level. The response has been encouraging and overwhelming - registrations came in from local and foreign participants, and from all sectors of the economy.

Of the participants, 36 per cent are C suite, that is, they are CEOs, CFOs, COOs, etc. The remaining 64 per cent of participants are at director or senior management level, of which about half are human resource (HR) executives, while the rest perform a host of other functions in their organisations. This means that at this human capital summit, only one third of participants are HR professionals and executives.

This participation profile reinforces two of my observations about the human resource industry:

• The HR executive is no longer an HR executive.
• HR work is no longer HR work.

Why is the HR executive no longer an HR executive? Looking back at my role as a chief executive officer of a government organisation over the past few years, I would say I spend over 50 per cent of my time on people issues - selecting the right people for the job, resolving issues and conflicts between team members, explaining to people why we are doing certain things, developing career and development paths for people, counselling and coaching people, working out a succession plan for key positions in the organisation, and so on.

Yet, I am not an HR executive. The HR function is carried out by leaders throughout the organisation. Many members of my senior team are preoccupied with people issues. It has to be, because ultimately an organisation is but a bunch of people getting together to do something in common. Getting them together and developing them to be better workers must be a key preoccupation throughout the organisation, and not just the job of the HR executive.

Why is HR work no longer HR work? I think the HR professional went through a sea change in recent years when, because of competition and globalisation, there was a wave of outsourcing of non-core functions to cheaper locations or cheaper vendors. HR is also a victim of this cheap sourcing. There is therefore a view among some HR professionals that a lean HR department is a good one. They strive to outsource recruitment, payroll processing and administration of benefits. They are proud of their low HR executive to staff ratio.

This may be well and good for an organisation where the emphasis on people cascades throughout the organisation, with the leaders paying heavy attention to human capital issues. But if this is not the dominant culture of the organisation, it is a dangerous path to take, as the organisation would have declared that developing its people is no longer a core activity.

HR is the custodian of talent - how you define values, recruit based on values, develop and nurture talent, oversee a remuneration structure that motivates and is consistent with corporate values. These are key success factors for any organisation, which cannot be outsourced. An effective and forward HR department is always a tremendous asset to the leaders of the organisation.

These two observations frame the central challenge of the HR profession going forward. The central challenge is not about giving HR strategic treatment, and moving HR into the board room. The fact is that strategic people issues have already moved into the board room. Boards are discussing strategic people challenges such as how to better develop talent and planning for leadership succession. The challenge is whether HR executives are moving into the board room together with these key issues and challenges.

The HR profession will need to step up its game and build up high-level competencies to earn its place in the board room. Otherwise, the same discussions as well as strategy formulation and execution will be conducted without its input and involvement.

This article was first published in The Business Times on October 18, 2008.