Michigan Ross researchers conduct largest HR study ever

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--In the largest global study ever of human resource professionals, researchers at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and the RBL Group found that HR managers play an integral role in the overall effectiveness of a company’s performance.

The 2012 Human Resource Competency Study, using data from more than 20,000 respondents around the world, identified six areas in which HR professionals must demonstrate proficiency. To be successful, they must be:

• Strategic positioners who understand evolving business contexts, stakeholder expectations and business requirements, and be able to translate them into talent, culture and leadership actions.
• Credible activists who build relationships of trust and have a clear point of view about how to build business performance.
• Capability builders who define, audit and create organization capabilities required for sustainable organizational success.
• Change champions who initiate and sustain change at the individual, initiative and institutional levels.
• HR innovators and integrators who look for new ways to do HR practices and integrate those separate practices to deliver business solutions.
• Technology proponents who use technology for efficiency to connect employees and to leverage new communication channels, such as social media.

"We can empirically show that when HR professionals demonstrate these six competencies, they are seen as personally effective and they impact business performance," said study co-director Wayne Brockbank, a professor at Michigan Ross and director of its Center for Strategic HR Leadership.

According to study co-director and RBL Group partner Jon Younger, HR professionals must work together to best drive business results.

"The strategy, organization and actions of an HR department explain about three-to-four times the performance of the business than the competencies of individual HR professionals," he said.

For the past 25 years, Dave Ulrich, a professor at Michigan Ross and partner and founder of the RBL Group, and Brockbank have explored the question, "What knowledge and abilities are necessary for successful HR professional?"

"This research shapes the HR profession because it defines what it means to be an effective HR professional and how to build an effective HR department," said Ulrich, who also co-directed the study with Brockbank and Younger.

Alison Davis-Blake, the Edward J. Frey Dean and Leon Festinger Collegiate Professor of Management at Michigan Ross, says this work is an especially meaningful project for our corporate stakeholders.

"Through the Human Resource Competency Study, Michigan Ross professors Ulrich and Brockbank and their RBL colleagues deliver actionable ideas based in empirical research," she said. "These ideas shape not only the corporate HR agenda, but also the strategic agenda, for years to come."

To accomplish these goals globally, Michigan Ross and the RBL Group have partnered with leading HR professional associations in Australia, Latin America, China, India, the Middle East, Northern Europe and South Africa.

The RBL Group is a global professional services firm committed to creating value through the effective management of people and organizations. It is recognized as the trusted adviser to the world’s top HR leaders and their senior executives.

The Michigan Ross Executive Education has excelled in developing future HR leaders for more than 30 years. Their programs, offered to senior executives around the world, have been cited as the best HR development programs in the world for the past 20 years.