At least one of the speakers at the Westminster conference that I wrote about last week quoted the Ulrich model of the HR role. Thus a news article in the new edition of People Management (the CIPD magazine) caught my attention this morning.
The item is a report of a talk by HR guru Dave Ulrich at the CIPD Scottish conference recently. The point that Ulrich is quoted as making, and it is one I have made before now in my Newsletter articles, is to warn about the danger for HR of focussing on the strategic and ignoring the transactional. While he stresses the importance of being able to talk to senior managers about mergers, acquisitions, globalisation etc, etc, HR, he says, must also provide a top class administration function.
In my experience it is often the day-to-day that provides an opportunity to discuss the strategic. If the routine is in someone else’s hands you may struggle to get a longer-term discussion going.
