HR should report to the CEO

In about 13 percent of companies (for smaller companies the number is 22 percent), the head of HR reports to the CFO (CFO Research Services, 2003).

Per job description, the CFO represents a primarily financial orientation and creates value by saving money or cutting costs. In such an arrangement, it is easy for HR to simply become an extension of accounting with HR programs and processes being implemented for their cost-effectiveness and ease of administration.

Reporting to a CFO is reasonable when HR is focused on transactions, strives to cut costs, and/or works well with metrics. But, the first two conditions are losing relevance since HR has automated and outsourced the majority of transactional processes to various vendors thereby improving efficiency and lowering costs. In fact, HR function expenditures currently account for less than 1 percent of the company’s total operating costs (BNA/SHRM Survey and analyses of 740 publicly held firms).

Instead, HR should focus on maximizing the strategic value of the workforce. After all, total payroll expenses equal between 60 to 70 percent of operating costs.

Thus, the best firms separate the HR function from Finance and require the HR Director to report to the CEO, who, per job description, seeks to generate money by investing in high ROI resources.

Internal Blogging

Besides stay interviews, internal blogging is an excellent communication platform to increase performance and retention.

Internal blogging encourages business conversations, team building, project management, knowledge sharing, cross-shift communications, and provides a window of opportunity to learn what employees think about their company*.

Companies that support internal blogging have seen improvements in their products, processes, and quality of service as a result of employees being more communicative, more involved, and more outwardly focused. Other benefits of internal blogging include:
• Employees enjoy their work more,
• Employees connect more with people outside their teams, and
• Employees share and receive information on a whole in a new scale.

Furthermore, the best employee blogs allow for open brainstorming and problem-solving and thereby improve efficiency across the organization.

For these reasons, internal blogging has a great potential to become another “HR best practice”. However, before your organization can deploy internal blogging, it must be considered either this framework is appropriate given your organizational circumstances.


* Wright, Jeremy (2006). Blog Marketing. New York: McGraw Hill.

Holiday Countdown

With 10 days of public holidays and an average of 10 days for annual leave, healthy employees in China work 241 days a year. This comes up to 1,928 working hours; 241 lunch hours in-between working hours and up to 582 hours of traveling time (to and from work).

Yet, quite a few employees go to work counting their next upcoming days off from their employer. Comments like the following are not unusual: “Another two days to go before the weekend”, “I already booked the flight, another three weeks to go”, “We just came back from our holiday and now must wait 7 weeks for Labour Day Holiday”, etc.

All too often, holidays are the key impetus for satisfaction in employees’ professional life.

Understandably, holidays are something to look forward and a break from a routine. But, employers should learn to distinguish between holiday excitement and holiday relief. After all, they expect employees to arrive back from their holiday revitalized and not sorry to be back at work.

A reluctance to return may signal that the company does not challenge, inspire, and motivate the employees. Leaders and managers should change a defunct culture by designing meaningful work experiences so that employees view 31% of their life each year as a contribution rather than a sacrifice.

Outsmart the Proverbs

„Jak cie widza, ... to pracuj” – When they see you, ... then work (Original: How they see you, that's how they perceive you.)

„Kto pod kim dolki kopie..., ten szybko awansuje” -- Who digs a trap for others, ... gets promoted faster (Original: Who digs a trap for others ends up in it himself.)

„Gdyby kozka nie skakala, ... to by nie dostala podwyzki” -- If the goat didn't jump, ... she wouldn’t receive a pay increase (Original: If the goat didn't jump, she wouldn't have broken her leg.)