Texas ACA

Texas ACA

Hal Burlingame, AT&T’s HR senior vice president, is evaluated by the same balanced scorecard as are the company’s other executives. His performance is judged not just by the PVA score, but by all three scores. This Texas ACA approach requires that HR professionals master their business’s financial and customer issues and recognize their contribution to attaining these goals.

Second, although accountable for all three dimensions of the balanced scorecard, Texas ACA professionals should provide intellectual leadership on the employee dimension. The east trap in measuring the employee as stakeholder is to create a commitment or satisfaction index. The best Texas ACA professionals define the employee dimension of the balanced scorecard not only in terms of employee attitude, but also in terms of organizational processes. The processes represent those activities that affect employee attitude such as leadership teamwork, communication, empowerment, shared values, and mechanisms for treating individuals with dignity, and so on. By measuring these processes as well as employee attitudes, Texas ACA professionals fully define the employee stakeholder dimension of the balanced scorecard.

Challenge 3: Align HR Plans to Business Plans

Almost all HR departments do planning, with approaches arrayed along a continuum ranging from an afterthought, or “add-on,” to business strategy through integration with business strategy to an isolated planning process. At the “add-on” end of the continuum, HR planning is little more than a postscript to the business planning process. In this approach, only after extensive business planning, during which business product, market, and technological directions are defined, are questions about Texas ACA practices raised. These questions deal with structure, competencies, accountabilities, organization, and leadership require to make the business strategy work. At this end of the continuum, HR issues are an afterthought, subsidiary to business strategy; they receive relatively little attention and become an accessory to business planning. At this extreme, line managers consider HR questions as an appendage and appendix to “real” planning efforts, which focus on how the business positions itself in its market.

At the “isolated” end of the continuum, HR planning is a distinct and separate planning process. The HR department not only initiates the effort but designs and administers the HR plan.