Chief People Officer

Whilst I'll probably upset some people by saying it, HR has always had a bit of a bad reputation. Stereotypically it's a department full of jobsworths and pen pushers for whom rigid compliance is more important than the personal wellbeing of the employees. It is often portrayed as a place devoid of human empathy, where 'the computer says no' (see Little Britain sketch show) and is the last place employees want to go. OK, so I'm exaggerating here and there are a lot of HR departments out there that don't look like this, but still there is one overarching problem here; HR is generally legal and compliance based and a back office department to the business.

When James and James Fulfilment got to the size where it needed an HR department, we wanted to stay well clear of that stereotype (I've seen several examples that matched the stereotype and couldn't face being responsible for one). Although we didn't know it, what we had begun to create was something a bit special and not seen in very many companies - the Chief People Officer.

Starting with a blank canvas

We started by hiring someone with no HR experience whatsoever. Someone who liked people, had never worked in an actual HR department and would come with an open mind. Their remit was to make sure people were happy (whilst still dealing with all the administration). Initially this was fairly simplistic - basically go and talk to people and see how they feel. We ended up with a lounge style break room, some games and books, table football and Time Crisis 2 from a motorway service station. It helped, but we didn't instantly have the culture we wanted. It seemed this HR thing was harder than it looked.

Learning Curve

Over time the number of staff increased and so did our understanding of how to do this well. I'd seen the bad, and you read about all the fancy things at Google and Facebook, but none of us actually had any experience. We moved the focus from simply trying to make people happier, to a more defined goal of what a great culture looked like: engaged, motivated, innovative, challenging. Then we worked out ways we thought might get us there.

Of course everyone has, and had, their own suggestions, but throwing money at the problem and hoping that some of it sticks wasn't going to be a good strategy. You cannot give the most holiday, the most flexible working environment, the best healthcare and the best incentives because you'd eventually go out of business; and it doesn't matter how happy your staff are when that happens, they will no longer be happy. Instead we found you have to choose a focus and then build your incentives around that. We have innovation as our focus at James and James; we reward innovative projects regardless of success, we spend a week each year running training courses as part of innovation week and our company values promote this too.

It's been a very iterative process though, with many of our original initiatives being scrapped after less than a year. That's why measurement is also key. Not just your regular employment surveys, but looking at all the data that surrounds your staff. Time to interview new applicants, opportunities for personal development, skills gaps and training, achievement of goals and objectives. In most companies these are fully devolved to the management - but can you really expect your managers not just to monitor all of this, but to be experts in how to improve it company wide? Previously it seemed logical to me that HR should be a management responsibility, but given no one department can change company wide policy, devolving the people management now seems crazy. Managers are unlikely to have the expertise and cannot make all the changes necessary, plus the traditional HR dept is focused on compliance, not performance. Step in the Chief People Officer (CPO).

CPO vs HR Manager

People are the largest single cost and asset in our business, so it only seems sensible to make it someone's responsible to get the best from them. You could argue that management and the CEO should be setting the culture, but will management and the CEO put enough focus on this given that they have a myriad of other issues to think about? When you make something one person's focus and responsibility it almost always gets done better. The Chief People Officer responsibilities will vary from company to company, but we set the following:

• Create and maintain a fast-moving, innovative culture as the company grows
• Get the best from every employee by creating a motivating workplace
• Ensure that we don't just get their best, but that their work is fully aligned with the goals of the company
• Make sure every person has the right skills and training
• Identify candidates for promotion and action personal development plans to get them there
• Hire the right people, retain the best people and quickly exit the worst
• (Oh, and make sure we're still compliant in the process)

Our management team still do a lot of the work, but the CPO is the person who drives it, acting as both an adviser and a monitor. Unlike HR which often sits under operations, the CPO in our business sits on the SMT under the CEO, providing direct feedback to senior management and ensuring that proactive changes can be made quickly. The remit of this new role extends much further than that of the HR department. It encompasses areas such as office design, work equipment and social events, as well as the typical recruitment, admin and employee safety. Having one person responsible for culture, recruitment and performance means we're more likely to hire people who are the right fit too - our people department pre-screen all applicants before the hiring manager sees them and the wrong ones won't make it through.

How do you measure the people departments performance though? That's not been easy either, but our CPO has coined the phrase Performance Velocity. It's a measure of people performance (motivation, ability and attitude) and also direction (alignment with the company's objectives). Your team is only working at their best, when they're fully motivated AND doing the right work - it's easy for someone to get distracted on to a non-core project.

While we may have got there by our own path, we're not the only company doing this and the focus from compliance based HR to performance based people management is certainly a refreshing change that's being seen in forward thinking companies.