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An RBL Institute Mini Forum White Paper
By Dave Ulrich & Justin Allen

Participating RBL Institute Members:
Jane Howard, BAT | Keith Lawrence, P&G | Bob Moresy, Cambell Soup | Carole Watkins, Cardinal Health

Imagine this: You are the Chief HR Officer of a Fortune 500 company and every morning, every single one of your 100,000+ employees wakes saying, "I absolutely love my job. I'm going to get in to work and give my company everything I've got to add value for our stakeholders!"

An impossible dream? Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but in the daily battle to add value for multiple stakeholders, companies are increasingly acknowledging the importance of creating and embedding an integrated, simple, and strategically-aligned employee value proposition. Whether faced with mergers and acquisitions, downsizing in a tough economic environment, or simply working to ensure employees are engaged and dedicating high levels of discretionary effort, a solid EVP can have an immense impact if leaders can make it real.

In a lively conversation on May 29, 2008, four senior HR leaders from some of the world's premier companies discussed the challenges, opportunities, and best practices in employee value proposition delivery. The following sketch provides key points from the discussion. We first list challenges currently faced by senior HR leaders, and then outline insights on (A) WHY employee value proposition (EVP) can be beneficial, (B) WHAT a good EVP must be, and (C) HOW we can make it real for our employees.

Download the RBL Institute mini-forum whitepaper "Employee Value Proposition" in .PDF format.

An RBL Institute Mini Forum White Paper
By Dave Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank & Justin Allen

Participating RBL Institute Members:
Diane Gherson, IBM | Brian Moore, Cardinal Health | Rick Vanasse, Bon Secours | Lori Weber, Intel

Since McKinsey and Co. published their famed study titled "War for Talent" in 1998, there has been an increasingly popular debate around the reality of a talent war, the location of the battle grounds, and who the "talent" we're all fighting for really is. In an RBL Institute mini forum facilitated by Dave Ulrich on July 3, 2008, HR Leaders from IBM, Cardinal Health, Bon Secours and Intel discussed the challenges they currently face in staffing and outlined the best practices that they are using in their organizations.

Download the RBL Institute mini-forum whitepaper "Innovations in Staffing" in .PDF format.

An article by Dave Ulrich & Wayne Brockbank
The RBL Group | Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan

The informal business partner model has existed for well over 100 years when effective staff support functions, including HR, contributed to business results. Formalizing how HR professionals create more value as "business partners" has been of increased interest in the last 10-15 years. Given the emerging importance of HR as a contributor to business success, we suggest that it might be useful to pause and reflect on what we have learned in the past decade about the relevance of the business partner model and on the challenges that lie ahead. (Click on the icon below to download the entire article.)

Download the article "The Business Partner Model: Past & Future Perspectives" in .PDF format.

An RBL Institute Mini Forum White Paper
By Dave Ulrich & Justin Allen

Participating RBL Institute Members:
Deborah Beckmann, Goldman Sachs | Bob Bloss & Colleen Meurer, Hallmark | Chris Altizer & Kevin Duffy, Pfizer | Wendy Butler, Royal Bank of Scotland | Keith Lawrence, Procter & Gamble

Amidst a slowing economy and turmoil in financial sectors around the world, leading companies are finding innovative compensation strategies increasingly important as they seek to ensure high performance and high retention. This paper outlines challenges companies are facing in the area of compensation and innovations they are deploying in order to stay afloat as the business environment becomes more and more volatile.In collaboration with compensation experts from Goldman Sachs, Hallmark, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Procter & Gamble, we outline five key challenges leading organizations face today, and six innovative compensation solutions they are using to surmount the challenges.

Download the RBL Institute mini-forum whitepaper "Innovations in Compensation" in .PDF format.

"The the 21st Century HR Organization" - Part 2
By Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank

In Part 1 of this article "Are Your HR and Business Structures Aligned?", authors Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, and Wayne Brockbank described how to structurally align the HR organization with the organization structure of the business.

This month the authors take an in-depth look at the dominant Diversified/Allied business model, laying out the five roles and responsibilities of HR that respond to this organization model: service centers, corporate, centers of expertise, embedded HR, and operational HR. This summary lays out the duties of each role, the relationship among these roles, and suggestions for implementing this new HR structure.

	Download Part 2 in our series "Building the 21st Century HR Organization" in .PDF format.
	Download Part 1 in our series "Building the 21st Century HR Organization" in .PDF format.

Additional Resources

	Many of the ideas in this article are discussed in How Leaders Build Value.

"Building the 21st Century HR Organization" - Part 1

For HR to be a success it must start with a clear strategy that delivers value and a structure that reflects the organization of the company. To align HR with its business organizations, HR leaders must first understand the model of business they serve and implications for HR design.

In a recently published article we looked at companies along a grid of centralization - decentralization, which leads to three basic ways in which a company operates: holding company, functional organization, or allied/diversified organization (Lawler and Galbraith, 1995). We then look at the role of HR and appropriate HR structures for each of those organizational models.

Download Part 1 in our series "Building the 21st Century HR Organization" in .PDF format.

Additional Resources

	Many of the ideas in this article are discussed in How Leaders Build Value.