Making HR Matter: What CEOs Want and How to Deliver It

Is your HR team clearly impacting your company's profitability? Do you want to derive more economic value from your people strategy?

Every executive recognizes that people are vital to their company’s success, but that recognition is all too often an abstraction for both the C-team and HR leadership. CEOs may see HR more as a cost center than as a function that can add economic value. Additionally, HR professionals may perceive their responsibilities as mostly limited to recruiting, benefits, compensation, and compliance, rather than contributing to the vitality and growth of their company.

Making HR Matter offers a powerful new framework that helps C-level executives and CHROs alike develop an HR function that contributes to their company's bottom line. HR professionals learn how to start with the business model and build out from there, using the four essentials of RelevantHR to become an indispensable team that’s fluent in the language of management, finance, and business.

Authors David Alsop and Ted Forbes, career HR leaders with proven track records at companies like Kraft-Heinz, Ultradent, Capital One, United Airlines, Backcountry.com, and Cotopaxi, show HR professionals exactly how to position themselves as value-adding partners in business. As accomplished CHROs, they show C-suite executives exactly what to look for in an HR function that creates economic value.

Offering a refreshing, business-first concept of HR, Alsop and Forbes suggest that if you’re not contributing to your company’s bottom line, you’re not making yourself relevant. Offering both insight and descriptive stories from the field to both C-suite teams and CHROs, this book describes how to leverage essential principles that will help HR deliver value and impact. These strategies include:

• Aligning people strategies to your business model by using income-statement thinking.
• Becoming an indispensable advisor who delivers thoughtful and actionable insight and wisdom.
• Starting with value-aligned behaviors to create and scale a company culture built with strategic intent.
• Finding, developing, and retaining talent that grows your company through a future-focused mindset.
• Discovering the convergence point that balances human experience with business results.

The path to RelevantHR demands that you, as a business leader or an HR professional, fundamentally rethink HR’s mandate within your company. RelevantHR means having a measurable impact on your company’s growth and success. Alsop and Forbes show you how to elevate your company while also elevating your entire HR team’s reputation.