Álvaro Cárcel, Partner.
In organisations, human talent management is undoubtedly key to their long-term success and sustainability. At the heart of all this is People Management, whose role is crucial to generate the right conditions to, among many other things, attract the best talent, build loyalty, create an attractive environment that reduces aspects such as turnover or absenteeism, develop people and train future leaders, or shore up the key positions in the organisation.
People management plays a multifaceted role, spanning very different functions, and whose decisions not only have implications for corporate culture and employee well-being, but also, ultimately, for the company's financial performance.
When faced with the responsibility of selecting a company's next people management team, the first question to ask is the maturity of the organisation's human resources. Generally, there are 3 common scenarios:
1) Scenario 1: Very immature organizations, in which there is a fully transactional people department (or sometimes, there is no department or people manager at all). In these cases, the challenge is to create the department from scratch, generally with few resources (position without equipment and with a minimum budget), to lay the minimum foundations from which to start building.
2) Scenario 2: Organizations with a certain degree of maturity, where there are certain solid foundations from which it is possible to start building robust processes. In these cases, the challenge is to evolve what already exists and make a significant qualitative leap to place the people department where it needs to be.
3) Scenario 3: Mature organizations, where there are already structured people departments with different specialist functions, established processes, and a function that participates in strategic decisions. In these cases, the challenge is generally more continuity, and generally consists of improving processes, adjusting, reorganizing teams, or redistributing some functions, etc.
Understanding the above is crucial, as the type of profile that the company will need to incorporate will largely depend on it. Let me explain:
1) In scenario 1, the company will largely need an operational, task-oriented profile with enough ingenuity to "make magic" with very few resources. You will also need to have a great capacity for resilience, to be able to face an organization (and internal stakeholders) that do not yet believe in the function of people, and therefore will need to demonstrate more and more, every day, with little margin for error.
2) In scenario 2, on the other hand, the person who joins will have a certain advantage, and his or her role will not be so operational but will need a greater capacity for influence to obtain more resources (budget) from the general management or property. Generally, when companies are at the moment of making a qualitative leap, it is precisely the time to invest in systems, applications, external consultancies, etc., which entail a strong investment. The person must be able to justify such investments to achieve a certain return. The person should therefore be able to look at the organization today, define where it should be in a 3–5-year time horizon, and be able to mobilize the necessary resources to achieve it.
3) In scenario 3, the incorporated person will find a smoother path. That doesn't mean the task is simpler; It's just a different challenge. In this case, the profile must have the ability to gain the trust of a generally more mature team, with its acquired virtues (and vices). The initial focus is likely to be more internal, to build credibility with the team and peers. From here, draw up a plan to continue evolving the department. These are usually challenges of quiet evolution, and not of revolution.
Therefore, the search for a people manager requires a combination of technical skills that are taken for granted (and that will depend, in part, on the challenge and the sector), but also a series of competencies that will be very different depending on the business context.
The conclusion of all this is obvious considering the above: it is absolutely necessary for organizations to become aware, before starting the search for a people management, of their degree of maturity in the matter. The management team must look inwards, carry out an exercise of sincere analysis, define the stage of maturity of the organization, and only then define what type of profile is required in this specific context.
Building a professionalized people department, structured by functions, with stable processes, reasonable budgets, and with a specific weight in the management committee is not an easy or fast process. And precisely for this reason, each search requires exhaustive prior work to define the right profile at the time of the company.
Without this prior work, there is a very high probability of making a mistake in the selection, with the enormous cost associated with all this.