Auditing the effectiveness of your HR department

A helpful tool for any professional or team transforming HR, that breaks down how to do so with a wide focus. Use it to audit your organisation.

For the last 30 years, HR transformation has been occurring along a simple theme: HR is not about HR, HR begins and ends with business. We find that many who focus on HR transformation are focused almost exclusively on how to organize the HR department. We believe in designing the right HR department, however focusing ONLY on the HR department is a narrow focus of the overall effectiveness of HR.

Using Dave Ulrich and his team’s empirical research with over 100,000 respondents and advisory services with dozens and dozens of HR leaders, nine dimensions of an effective HR department have been distilled.

9 dimensions of an effective HR department*

1. Reputation: What is the reputation of the HR Department?
2. Context/Deliverables: What are the criteria (settings) that shape HR work?
3. Strategy: What is the mission or strategy of the HR department focused on capabilities?
4. Design (process, roles, and structure): How is the HR department organized?
5. HR and Organization Capability: How does HR facilitate the definition and creation of organization capability?
6. Analytics: How do we make better HR investments and choices?
7. Practices: How do we create HR practices?
8. Professionals: What do HR professionals need to be, know, and do to be effective?
9. Work Style: How does HR go about doing its work

These nine criteria for an HR department may be seen as delivering value at four stages:

1. Foundational/Administrative: HR focuses on efficiency.
2. Functional: HR focuses on best practices.
3. Strategic: HR focuses on delivering strategy.
4. Outside in: HR focuses on stakeholders outside the organization.

By comparing the nine criteria with these four stages, you can get a matrix that can be used to audit the overall effectiveness of an HR department.

The stages of HR departments

Click the PDF icon to download and read the 9 stages.

These 9 domains represent the criteria for an effective overall HR department.