Companies want to get beyond the pretty picture

Author: Peter Crush

 

Twenty years ago this year CRF Institute launched its first Top Employers project. Since then, thousands of evaluations have taken place, documenting the inner working of some of the world’s most successful companies. But what is this telling us about the future of the HR profession? CRF founder Sierk Baalbergen and CEO Steven Veenendaal discuss what they’ve seen and where they think HR is going:

 

“Twenty years ago, CRF launched as a tiny company, with a band of inquisitive journalists, interviewing companies about the things there was no information on – but which applicants joining them really wanted to know,” recalls CRF founder, Sierk Baalbergen. “At first it was painful for companies to see how they rated, but coinciding with our launch was the professionalisation of HR and a huge hunger from companies to see where they sat against their rivals and how they could improve.”

 

This desire for continuous improvement has, say Baalbergen and Veenendaal, continued unabated ever since. And both men say this bodes incredibly well for the future. “Companies want to get beyond the ‘pretty picture’ stuff, they argue. We’re rating them on 80 different factors – up from 7-10 initial questions when we first launched,” says Baalbergen “and there is continued demand for knowing more.”

 

According to Veenendaal the main driver is change itself. “The definition of what a Top Employer is changes all the time,” he argues. “The single biggest driver we’re seeing is a movement to synchronise international HR policies to form a more ‘one-company’ look and feel. Harmonisation is seen as being a key-driver for growth, as well as providing impetus for united employee culture.”

 

Both men argue that the European economic climate will force companies to look at their HR practices even more closely. Says Baalbergen: “Companies, like never before, need to be able to say what they are, where they are going, and what they need from their people to be able to do this. The future of HR actually looks very promising, because economic shocks are a driver for change, and re-evaluation, and innovation in HR.”

 

Veenendaal adds: “No-one is perfect, we all know this, but business is a race that encourages everyone to walk faster, and through our projects over the last 20 years, we have seen how companies seek to be better.”

 

Luckily, says Baalbergen, change is perpetual, which means he says he can’t see the job of Top Employers ever being achieved just yet.

 

 

 

 

 

“There’s never an end point!” Veenendaal says. “Global harmonisation, for example, is probably at odds with employees wanting to remove themselves from the corporate centre, by working from home. Companies will need to have a debate about how they are going to accommodate these different forces. The other future trend we see is companies working out how they will separate operational from strategic functions. No-one has got all the answers just yet, so there will be many big discussions still to come about how to achieve this.”

 

All of which means the future of HR is looking bright, you can be sure CRF will be there charting your progress (and reporting back), for at least another twenty years.