HR Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals

HR Business Acumen Skills

Description
Even though ATD reports that 87 percent of human resource professionals believe that is it critical to have business acumen, most HR professionals find it difficult to effectively influence business unit executives. Our research shows that three-quarters of business unit leaders perceive HR to be lacking in basic HR Business Acumen Skills.

Unfortunately, most line leaders view HR and HR professionals as transactional and administrative workers incapable of helping them with their strategic priorities.

Before executives or senior directors will be open to partnering with an HR professional on significant business initiatives, they need to understand how the project will specifically impact their overall corporate goals.

Before you arrive at the HR Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals workshop, you prepare information on an actual business unit or executive that you would like to strategically influence. Then, you spend two or three days with a former corporate officer (e.g., CEO, CFO, CIO) who consults on the current state of the business and on the specific strategies needed going forward. The strategies include three key phases:

Identify your target customer’s goals, objectives, and strategies including the operating issues that constrain the achievement of their market and business performance.
Link a unique, Human Resources solution to your target partner’s business issues, strategy, and financial goals to provide compelling internal business value.
Articulate the unique and compelling business value of your solution to business unit leaders and executives.

Our executive facilitator serves as “the client” throughout the Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals workshop. Together, you analyze your company’s annual report, financial reports, and industry analyst reports to identify crucial issues affecting your potential business partner.

You get an in-depth look at financial concepts such as ROI, time to market, and the time value of money. After analyzing your customized case, you prepare for and practice conducting executive level meetings using your target business partner.

Outline
While Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals workshop is customized for each client, the general outline is as follows:

Review your internal customer’s point of view, the pressures they are under, and how they make decisions.
Review key financial statements and how they interact with a particular focus on the competitive landscape and trend analysis.
Review secondary research sources for both public and private companies.
Generate questions that you can use to move horizontally and vertically throughout the organization.
Practice primary research questioning to validate your financial and secondary research with a CXO leader.
Use comparative analysis and ratios to help identify business issues and solution opportunities.
Role play live opportunities with our CXO leaders.

Outcomes
As a result of attending the Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals workshop, you will master strategies for developing relationships with internal business units and internal executive decision-makers as you learn to:

View the customer (both external and internal) customer from a business perspective to identify and solve critical business issues.
Identify a broader range of opportunities/needs based on your business based value proposition.
Create business value for your ideas through an analysis and application of financial and business information.
Understand how to maximize the business and financial value of your solution.
Identify and justify the financial impact of your solution.
Position your solution as part of a strategic investment that supports executive-level needs, such as increased revenue, greater profitability, greater inventory controls, and higher return on assets.

Target Audience
Human Resource professionals who need increased business acumen skills to understand business drivers to more effectively influence executives and senior management to be successful.

To speak with an LSA Expert to learn about HR Business Acumen Skills program customization and delivery options onsite at your company, please contact us.

Related Information

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Director Human Resources

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Manager, Human Resources

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Lisa Bruun
SVP Human Resources

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HR Business Acumen Skills for Internal HR Professionals