Where have HR generalists gone? This question is asked by Andrew Fox, Head of HR, UK Bank, Head of HR Retail Banking and Wealth Management Europe at HSBC. In his article on askgrapevine.com, he points to the fact that while there is a wide range of possibilities for the continuing development of HR professionals in the filed of employee education, remuneration or employee relations, there is much less formal opportunities for the development of HR generalists. Moreover, we mistakenly presume that HR specialists can easily play the roles of HR generalists.

"As economic, political and regulatory pressures increase, business and HR now more than ever need strong commercial, insightful HRGs to coach and challenge the business and ensure that the rest of HR is correctly aligned and deployed against the business' key challenges," Andrew Fox writes.

HR professionals have traditionally become HR generalists when they passed through various positions within HR and gained awareness of the entire employee life cycle in the company. However, then came the Dave Ulrich's model (HR business partnership) and HR functions - according to Fox - started to "break up, outsource, automate, etc." Today, we have HR generalists who are not sufficiently focused on business and do not have experience from different HR roles within the employee life cycle in the company.

The solution, according to Fox, is a post Ulrich HR management model based on HR generalists. It means to internally develop HR generalists who will:

• think commercially,

• be driven by solid data,

• have strong consulting skills,

• have a strong understanding of all aspects of HR and be able interconnected them to create solutions,

• focus on solutions and results,

• access their strategy from the perspective of the entire employee life cycle.

Do you agree? What do you think about the position of HR generalists in today's and tomorrow's businesses?

-kk-