Many people who work in the HR profession focus their efforts on improving the typical HR activi- ties that are performed in a firm, including staffing, training and development, compensation, and performance appraisal. However, they sometimes overlook the important strategic objectives of their employers. This is why managers in other areas of a company often fail to see the importance of HR staff. There doesn’t seem to be any real connection between what the HR function does and what the firm is trying to accomplish strategically. There- fore, HR professionals need to get involved with performance consulting in companies, which re- quires them to be more proactive in their approach to managing HR activities.
This is what Craig Mundy focused on when he was given the opportunity to take over the HR area in Ingersoll Rand’s Climate Solutions, a large and valuable business unit within the company that was
created by merging Trane and Thermo King under one operational umbrella. The unit employs 25,000 individuals and has locations in over 60 nations. Performance consulting was particularly important to Climate Solutions because the global economic downturn occurred right after the unit was created, which means that costs had to be managed while the organization tried to make global gains.
The HR group worked with managers to create positive talent plans to help the unit reach its stra- tegic goals. In particular, the following issues were addressed by HR:
• The key gaps that stopped individuals from accomplishing their objectives were highlighted.
• Diverse approaches that effectively reduced gaps were identified.
• Solutions tied to talent management were created and utilized.
Another step involved developing a talent solutions framework that enabled leaders to identify the causes of performance problems in the organization and to develop fixes. The framework is based on workforce planning, which involves finding out the firm’s talent requirements. Once these needs are known, leaders can determine how and when employees will be hired. Developing individuals once they are hired is the next issue that is addressed in the framework, followed by how to improve employee engagement and retention. Finally, performance needs to be monitored so that successes can be documented. Using this talent solu- tions framework at Ingersoll Rand enabled the HR group to play a more strategic role in the company.52
Questions
1. Why do HR personnel need to think more strategically in companies? Why might such an approach enable HR to be taken more seriously by other managers?
2. How would you evaluate the talent solutions framework developed for the Climate Solutions unit at Ingersoll Rand? Is the approach some- thing that you could use as a line manager or as an HR professional, or should it be changed or developed further?