WILLIAM GREENHALGH CEO, HUMAN RESOURCES PROFESSIONALS ASSOCIATION

William (Bill) Greenhalgh has a strong background in nuclear engineering, petroleum, telecommunications, publishing, entertainment, and security industries. He has served as president, the Globe and Mail; president, Cinram International; COO, Shred-it International, and handled various roles at Nortel. Greenhalgh has been instrumental in crafting fundamental visionary changes in HRPA’s strategic direction.

Q. What are the key issues you want the HR to understand?
A. Any senior HR executive needs to be a business person first and an HR leader second. He should have a comprehensive understanding of the business: the nature of the business; its challenges and opportunities; who the customers are and their challenges; and who the competitors are.

HR executives also require an understanding of challenges and business needs of supervisors and front-line managers on a first-hand basis. They need to forecast critical social, legislative and people trends; leading the organisation in implementing programmes that have front-line buy-in. They need to be the CEO’s trusted advisor and be a coach to the executive team.

Q. As a CEO, what do you expect from HR in terms of understanding the business?
A. HR executives bring the people dimension to the organisation’s strategy. Creating a strategy is important and executing it is vital; how well that is done depends on having the right people, culture, training and compensation. Those programmes are part of HR’s role, so it has to be a part of the creation of the strategy and plans to implement it. For this, HR needs to understand how the business works, the market, and the challenges and competition it faces.

CEOs also feel that HR executives – more than any other senior executive – should have the capability to build trust, communicate and collaborate with others with exceptional levels of diplomacy and discretion. These attributes must co-exist, however, with a deep understanding of the business – a strong grasp of the business’ operations and financial realities – and its algorithms and P&L. Click here to read full interview...

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