Jones believes that talented people can do anything, whether its a move from sales to operations, or finance to management. Yet he argues that HR people, unless they experience other functions, cannot appreciate what business units go through.
Its an argument with which Elaine Rowe agrees. Following the demerger of Virgin and Our Price, she became the operations and HR director for Virgin Retail. Now working as a consultant for Hamilton Irving, she also feels that its a necessary career move to step out of HR for a while. You get coccooned in your own discipline. If its all you ever do, its all you ever know, she says. Rowe found her focus shifting to getting results on sales, standards, costs and shrinkage.
To be sat in a trading meeting each week, being asked why youre overstocked in something, why the manager has been away somewhere and why the stores a mess it really connects you to the reality of business. Rowe found herself putting more demands on her HR team to cut out things the business didnt need. She also feels that all functions would benefit from moving around whether its people in buying going to operational roles or marketing people to buying as she says, It raises peoples horizons.
Jones can only agree. Tellingly, he says, if someone had suggested to him four years ago that HR people cannot contribute fully without non-HR experience, he would have disagreed. But its only when you have to handle profit and loss, budgets of millions and are responsible for customer delivery that you learn.
Theres a lot of talent in HR, and this could free up so much talent. Id love to find a way of evangelising this to MDs and CEOs because I did hear of a company that paired up managers for a preparatory period before they did a two-year job swap, but when I suggested this at my company, it was rejected out of hand. If I could find a company that would do that, I would go back in...
