By Jordan Turner | 3-minute read | October 24, 2023
Executive Insights from Day 2 of Gartner ReimagineHR
According to our research, just 50% of board directors rate their CHRO as effective at explaining data to the board, and only 44% feel CHROs are effective at educating the board on complex issues. In this session, Mark Whittle, Vice President of Research and Advisory for HR at Gartner, discusses how CHROs can improve.
The three key strategies for stronger board influence are:
Understand board members and their priorities: Adapt to the board; don’t make them adapt to you. Do your homework to understand who each board member is, so that you can effectively guide them to address talent topics beyond compensation.
Improve board packet quality: Overinvest in board packets — they matter more than the presentation. Tell a compelling story and infuse talent risks and themes throughout the entire packet, not just the HR section.
“Sixty percent of corporate directors stated they want more time for discussion between the board and senior management."
Mark Whittle, Vice President of Research & Advisory for HR at Gartner
Collecting employee engagement data is one thing, but actually using it to make a business impact is another. Keyia Burton, Sr. Principal Analyst at Gartner, discusses how to act on employee feedback, share it with managers, and drive business outcomes from investing in your employees.
Follow these three steps to bridge the gap between what employees need to be engaged and what we do to engage them:
Identify and reduce work friction: Don’t make your employees do work to even be able to do their work. Think about the small problems in addition to the big ones. What, in the day-to-day, creates friction and makes work hard? Go after addressing these challenges, too.
Support managers to close the loop on the engagement process: It’s not just the what; it’s also the how. Support your managers in creating impactful action plans. Empower them to understand engagement data, align priorities and jointly agree with you on specific next steps.
Use shared language to measure and talk about engagement: Communicate with common language, and let them know that you’re taking action on what they’ve identified as problematic.
“Branding our actions under a blanket term like 'engagement' may be helpful for our project planning, but it's not helpful or valuable for employees. We have an opportunity to rebrand this in a way that feels much more relevant and is more employee-centric.”
Keyia Burton, Sr. Principal Analyst at Gartner
Gartner ReimagineHR Conference, the premier gathering of CHROs and their HR leadership teams, brings together HR leaders to learn how to build a more human organization, leverage new HR technologies and inspire extraordinary talent impact.
Learn more about Gartner ReimagineHR Conference and what's in store for 2024.
Share this article
Mark Whittle is a Vice President of Research & Advisory with Gartner's HR practice. Mr. Whittle's responsibilities are to assist clients with their priority projects and challenges through his deep knowledge of Gartner's HR best practices, benchmarking and research insights. He has particular expertise in HR Function Strategy and Management, HR organizational structures, building CHRO influence with the CEO & Board, and Employee Experience/EVP/Culture.
