A new partnership with CPA Australia means AHRI can expand the services it provides to HR professionals and students. AHRI CEO Lyn Goodear explains what goodies are in store – including some new AHRI membership benefits.
In the Harvard Business Review last year, McKinsey global managing director, Dominc Barton, Korn Ferry vice-chairman Dennis Carey, and corporate board adviser Ram Charan, co-authored an article titled “People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO.” In the US, the chief human resources officer is often called the CHRO.
It was a somewhat lengthy article that included these two sentences:
“Just as the CFO helps the CEO lead the business by raising and allocating financial resources, the CHRO should help the CEO by building and assigning talent, especially key people, and working to unleash the organisation’s energy. Managing human capital must be accorded the same priority that managing financial capital came to have in the 1980s, when the era of the ‘super CFO’ and serious competitive restructuring began.”
It’s worth noting that none of the authors come from a HR background, yet they put a compelling case for the equal standing of HR and finance as critical functions in serving the interests of the enterprise through the CEO.
Apart from the contribution they can make to productivity and profitability in the business, there are occasions when a judicious exercise of collaboration, professionalism and sometimes courage is required from both the CFO and the CHRO. Those qualities come into play when a CFO is asked to cook the books, for example, just as they do when a CHRO is asked to play fast and loose with employment law. Both need to rely on their credibility to stand their ground and win the backing of their peers.
It was with affinities of this order in mind that the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) recently signed a formal agreement with CPA Australia to expand the range of benefits for members of both organisation. The agreement facilitates the opportunity to mutually share resources, research findings, and online and other published content in ways that reflect our common agendas within business, especially as they relate to workplace culture.
It is now increasingly well recognised that workplace culture is a vital contributor to customer service, business sustainability and shareholder value. The former CEO of IT and software giant HCTL Technologies, Vineet Nayar, put a powerful case for the proposition: ‘employees first, customers second’.
That was not because he denied the primacy of the customer, but because he was convinced that if a business gets the people part right, it will get customer satisfaction right. That principle goes for all parts of the business because, ultimately, customer service is mission critical, whether the business be small, medium or large.
Against that background, we have agreed to discuss AHRI membership benefits and CPA benefits, commercial arrangements and engagement opportunities that enable each organisation to create greater value for members. In time, that will likely include repurposing our intellectual property so that it serves a similar mutual purpose.
One area in which we have greatly admired the approach of CPA Australia is in the recognition it has accorded its burgeoning student membership base. Like CPA, our many student members are the future of a profession that will increasingly demand that practitioners of HR are ethical and credible experts. They will need to be recognised in business as capable of bringing to the enterprise the attributes that puts them on an equal footing with their peers in marketing, operations and finance.
We are always looking for ways to expand on AHRI member benefits. Accordingly, as part of the CPA agreement, we have begun to look at how we can build our own Student Ambassador program with a view to building a momentum that gives outstanding HR students a stake in their future profession.
To learn more about AHRI membership benefits and how to become a member, click here.
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