Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/234597
CEO's Letter The Importance of Stardom This issue we celebrate the 2013 HRO Today Superstars with a listing of the movers and shakers in the practitioner, provider, and analyst communities. I would rather we think of this group as one entity—simply as thought leaders and pioneers experimenting with better ways to serve the ultimate end user, employees and managers. HR has become a vast and integrated issue in modern business. Anyone who doubts that should watch the video on our Corporate Responsibility Magazine COMMIT!Forum website (www.commitforum.com). This gathering of CEOs from billion-dollar-plus multinational organizations discusses the importance of the workforce to their success. What these CEOs want from their chief HR officers put simply: the best and most productive workforce available within the budgetary parameters of their business. They clearly are focused on the workforce as a competitive advantage. Through the past few years of research by the HRO Today Institute and others, we have clear and convincing evidence that HR is a key to business success. Measurement protocols for HR's contribution to sales and profitability are still evolving, but the question is largely answered. One of the prevalent delivery systems for HR is outsourcing both non-strategic and some strategic functions to a growing community of competent providers. Shared service centers, center of excellence, and other models to ensure global consistency and service delivery have all grown in the past decade. And every one of these service models whether outsourcing, center of excellence, or shared service center posed a risk when first proposed, a risk when first approved, and a risk during implementation. The risks were multi-faceted: risk to the proposer's and the approver's career, risk to the provider's reputation if it was an outsourced service, and risk to the organization of disruption or failure. [6] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2013 When we seek employees for our various enterprises, we all seek the "stars." I often tell people at conferences that in my more than two decades in the recruiting or RPO industry, I never saw a job advertisement that said,"Our company seeks mediocre performer." Everyone wants to hire the top 10 percent of the labor pool. Everyone wants the stars in their industry or their job family. But who are these stars? There are a variety of professional or technical competencies that go into qualifying someone as a top performer, but, equally important, are personality attributes. For many leadership roles, the ability to be an entrepreneur or to take a risk is a key qualifier for stardom. So in this issue of HRO Today magazine, we celebrate the superstars of HR on the services and technology side of the HR, the in-house practitioner side of HR, and the analyst and research side. While we list the stars, I thought it wholly fitting that we start this magazine by explaining how important we think they are. It would not be telling the whole story by just having a listing of names. What made them HRO Today Superstars is that these are the people who experimented, innovated, and changed the way HR was practiced at their companies and their clients. These are the entrepreneurial best of us. These are kind of people we look at when we look outside our walls. I would just like everyone for a moment to congratulate those that dwell within our walls. And to thank them for their achievements, their willingness to take personal career risk, and the contributions they have made to the practice of HR. This has been a great year for HRO Today magazine and SharedXpertise. I want to thank our advertisers, our readers, and our contributors for their support. I hope 2013 was a great year for all of you, and I wish you Happy Holidays and continued success in 2014! Elliot H. Clark, CEO