Recently I facilitated one of our first member roundtables on the topic of High-Impact HR Organizations. This was interesting on two levels for me both as an analyst but also as a member of the community of HR and Learning professionals. Our members often tell us that they would like to chat with other professionals in their industries on specific shared topics of interest in a less formal environment than the traditional webinar or conference session provides. Our goal for the member roundtable was to provide that type of intimate discussion opportunity for our members to speak with each other and the analysts. We felt our first group of member roundtables accomplished this goal. 

We held discussions on High-Impact HR, Onboarding, Leadership Development, and Measuring Informal Learning. Some of the initial feedback on the roundtables from participants included:

• “I loved hearing from other companies.”
• “I liked confirming the work that we are doing in building out our Centers of Excellence is in the right direction.”
• “Hearing that huge global organizations face the same issues as small local organizations. We all have issues with executive support, funding, focus, and strategic direction around leadership development.”
• “That we're all having the same challenges in implementing and measuring informal learning.”
• “There is a need for ground-breaking work here! [Measuring informal learning]”

For my individual roundtable on High-Impact HR organizations, I was fascinated by the willingness to share and discuss this topic among six different companies that ranged in size from 5,000 to 170,000 employees, and included industries as diverse as construction, restaurant and entertainment, insurance, and business services. By utilizing a webinar technology that allowed for both verbal and non-verbal communication methods (hand-raising, facial expressions, clapping, questions and chat boxes) we were able to hold a discussion which kept everyone sharing their opinions, even if they didn’t all speak consistently. I was amazed by how engaged the group was on this particular topic. We have really just begun our own research on High-Impact HR organizations, and shared only about 6 to 7 data points from our initial findings to start the conversation. This was a dialogue among peers, even for me the analyst. I was learning as much from everyone on the call as everyone else – and truly enjoyed my role as the facilitator in this type of session.

During this roundtable, we had some phenomenal discussions on critical topics such as:

Where are today’s HR Leaders coming from?
The roundtable discussion matched early research data, showing a mixture of business and HR backgrounds, both internal and external to the organization. HR background seemed to be predominant, but that varied by industry.  One interesting item we noted was that those positions that were primarily hired as VP’s of Talent or to develop integrated talent management strategies were more likely to be hired from outside the organization. It seemed when these roles were hired they were expected to have experience managing a talent management effort elsewhere.

What do HR organizations look like today – and are these moving toward something or away from something based on historical trends?
Without a doubt there seemed to be a focus from everyone on creating (moving toward) development of HR Centers of Excellence, especially in process areas such as performance management, learning & development, leadership development, and talent acquisition. We had several questions from the roundtable about whether these were more often located in a central location similar to traditional HR shared service areas (benefits and payroll). As a group it seemed that Centers of Excellence, unlike traditional HR service areas tended to be focused less on centralized locations and more on centralized leadership.

What is an HR Business partner, and what is their role in relation to other members of the HR organization?
About half the round table had an HR Business partner role in their organization, and only a few of those felt they were focused on strategic work such as workforce planning and talent planning. The rest of the group felt that this role was expected of every one of their HR Leaders who managed compensation, performance, learning, and other specialty areas. These were Director or Senior level roles that were expected to work strategically, and gather data from HR generalist and employee relation roles throughout the organization.

The nice thing about a roundtable is that there isn’t a right or wrong answer; we aren’t focused on educating to a specific point or coming to an agreement. It is an opportunity to discuss experiences, challenges, opportunities, and shared questions.

This leads me to my second point of interest from the session. As a professional in our industry today it is often difficult to imagine how we can engage both our colleagues and internal clients in genuine and engaging discussions when our days are filled with more work than we can fit into eight hours. Often in our day to day discussions with each other we feel like it is our job to have all the answers or ensure that the company message is shared appropriately. 

How valuable would virtual employee roundtables be in your organization?

I know of many organizations that have implemented traditional face to face roundtables, “Brown Bag Lunches,” or “CEO breakfasts,” and these have always been a valuable employee engagement tool for gathering insights from your worforce, but they often require a great deal of logistics and setup –not to mention the fact that you need to reside in a single location (difficult these days for many organizations).  From my experience with these formats, they also often turned into presentation or Q&A sessions, primarily because the groups running them didn’t understand how to truly facilitate a discussion.  As HR or Learning professionals in our organizations, we play a unique role in that we are seen as neutral third parties on most topics, and we can facilitate a discussion without infusing opinions or required answers.  If you currently have an engagement strategy in your organization, does it have a similar tool for allowing employees to discuss and share their ideas, best practices, and thoughts? Are there topics in your organization that would benefit from a virtual roundtable discussion (e.g., new employee orientation, recent media or marketing plans, new product rollouts, customer experiences, employee engagement findings)?

If you are interested in discussing this topic further, or have experiences and best practices from your own virtual roundtables, I would love to hear from you.  If you’d be interested in signing up to participate in a future roundtable with one of the Bersin & Associates analysts, go to the  Upcoming events section of our website to view the next scheduled roundtables. We'd love to have you join the discussion.