As you can imagine, I've been having a great many conversations with business leaders about the potential impact of the pandemic. A common thread is the idea that the working environment will change forever as people realise the benefits (or rather, lack of dis-benefits) of working from home. One of the many thoughts that this has sparked for me is whether this crisis will be the beginning of the end of the Chief Human Resources Officer as an executive role. The CHRO has long been a puzzling thing to me. The challenge lies in the blend of roles that sit within the Human Resources silo. My observation over the years is that these functions are in general very operational, dealing with the mechanics of employee relations, recruitment, training, internal communications and so on. Because of the operational focus of much of the people-base there is a general lack of high quality strategic thinking and high impact action to turn an organisation's people into a competitive advantag...
Thoughts on strategy in a Digital Economy