Every senior HR professional should know the answers to the questions that are asked sooner or later by the company's top management. To be able to answer these questions, you must learn to be proactive and understand human capital management as a part of a broader management strategy of the whole company. You must also learn to measure and acquire marketing skills important in relation to employee recruitment and retention.
What questions should you expect to be asked? According to the Human Capital Exchange website, you should prepare for the five listed below.
1. Which parts of our workforce create the highest value for our company?
These may be your engineers, salespeople, or researchers. It is important to know who it is. First, determine what value you are interested in, i.e., profit in money, or the quality of customer service. Then you should create a model to clearly sort the different groups of employees according to their importance.
2. Which parts of our workforce will be most affected by employee retirement?
This question is very important especially in tech companies experiencing difficulties in finding staff with appropriate technical knowledge and skills. Therefore, it is necessary to anticipate and address the issue of employee recruitment and training with regard to the retiring talents.
3. What kind of talent is currently most in demand in our field of the labor market?
Always take into account who is currently most in demand and predict how it will be in the future. Based on your knowledge and predictions, you can prepare for winning the talent war on specific talents.
4. What skills will we need in the next 5-10 years and how will we get them?
Here is a clear link with the company's business goals. HR must be able to predict what new skills will be needed to meet future business goals and focus on ways to develop these skills within the existing workforce or on recruitment in order to obtain them.
5. What is the turnover rate in our company and what are its causes?
Any outflow of high-performing employees or talented managers will attract the attention of your company's top management and HR will be referred to as the culprit. Therefore, you will need a plan how to retain and eventually replace your top talent. You will have to observe the trends in turnover, perceive the warning signs and offer effective solutions.
Do not wait until your CEO or CFO comes to ask you these questions. Prepare in advance. You may, for example, start with a brainstorming in your HR team.
-kk-