A stakeholder is any group or individuals who are impacted by, or have an impact on, the work of the HRD professional.
Garavan highlights the range of those within an organisation who have a stake in HRD: ‘Line managers for example, may be concerned with business issues whereas lower level managers, and employees may have more operational or personal concerns when it comes to HRD issues’ (1995, p. 15).
Other stakeholders that an HRD professional might need to consider include:
Other HR professionals or individuals working in HR type roles within an organisation
The professional community at large (including the HR profession but also potentially other professions depending on the focus of the work in hand)
Providers such as consultants, trainers or coaches
Unions and other employee or employer representative bodies
Groups involved in campaigning in areas of relevant to their work (for example, a group relevant to the activity below is the campaign group Intern Aware)
Those involved in regulating or legislating areas relevant to their work.
Activity 5.2:
Interns and stakeholders
5.4 Managing professional relationships
For today’s HRD professional it is essential to liaise with a wide range of people inside and outside the organisation to get things done.
Being able to manage your professional relationships has become an essential aspect of an HRD career.
It is interesting to note that in the BBC news article you read on internships above (Baker, 2013), there was criticism of people (primarily parents) using their contacts to secure internships for others (usually their children).
On the negative side this resonates with concern about ‘old boys’ clubs’ (and occasionally ‘old girls’ clubs’), membership of which appears to offer a passport to success within an organisation or profession.
From a conceptual perspective this could be described as making the most of our ‘social capital’.
Social capital has been defined in a classic paper by Adler and Kwon (2002, p. 23) as ‘the goodwill available to individuals or groups. Its source lies in the structure and content of the actor’s social relations. Its effects flow from the information, influence, and solidarity it makes available to the actor’.
Its source lies in the structure and content of the actor’s social relations.
Its effects flow from the information, influence, and solidarity it makes available to the actor’.
This social capital is both embedded in and mobilised though our networks of professional relationships.
A network can be defined as the pattern of ties linking a group of people.
Professional networks can develop at work in all sorts of ways including from common interests, as a result of membership of professional bodies or from the contacts made while studying a module such as this.
There is growing recognition that who we know has an important impact on how we get on at work.
Networking is thus an essential skill for many professionals.
It is important for HRD professionals to consider this not only for their own career development but also to think about how networking initiatives might be included within the HRD strategy for their organisation.
For example, using project assignments and secondments within a management development programme might be considered not only from a knowledge and skills development perspective but also in terms of facilitating network development for those involved.
Activity 5.3:
Thinking about networks (TFG)
Audio transcript 5.1 - The World of Work’ - (BBC Radio 4 Networking Nation).pdf
After you have listened to the programme, identify one occasion when you have made use of your own contacts or networks in order to help you with something you wanted to do in your personal life. For example, you might have asked a friend to suggest a solicitor or plumber, or a relative to recommend a school or childminder.
Think about how you went about using your networks – did you turn to your closest contacts and speak to them personally?
Did you post a message on an online networking site that you belong to so that all your contacts could see your request?
What influenced how you used your networks?
Do you now feel indebted to whomever helped you?
Now ask the same questions but thinking about a time when you have made use of your own contacts or networks within a work context.
Compare and contrast your answers to the questions above for each context (personal and work). When you have done so, go to the tutor group forum (TGF) where your tutor will have started a thread for this activity and post your findings from this activity. You should also read the postings made by other members of your tutor group and try to respond to at least one of these. This thread will continue during the next activity and you will have an opportunity to return and add further observations.
In the activity above you explored both personal and work networks. According to research about networking, it is important to understand that different characteristics of networks can confer different advantages to their members. Each person within their networks can be described in terms of their links or ties with other people in the networks. These are categorised as either ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ ties:
Weak ties are generally those that are occasional and outside your regular social or work contacts.
Strong ties are those that represent frequent and intense connections with others.
Both these types of ties are important but they offer different benefits. Weak ties can be important as ‘bridges’ between different networks and offer opportunities for generating new knowledge. Strong ties are important for the development of trusting relationships at work. Research into strong ties has concluded that these enable personal learning and value sharing as there is greater intimacy and more frequent communication (Higgins and Kram, 2001). The different patterns of ties within a network is sometimes referred to as the network diversity. This depends on the way and extent to which people in your networks are connected to each other and is an assessment of the variety of networks that are represented in your personal networks (for example work, study, social, etc.). Higgins and Kram (2001) found that networks with high diversity and strong ties increase access to information and resources.
Networking has undergone a dramatic change in recent years with the advent of social networking technology in both work and social contexts. Social networking technologies include well-known brands such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (see Figure 5.1). These virtual networks can extend and reinforce ‘real’ (face-to-face) social networks and particularly open up the opportunity to create almost endless numbers of ‘weak ties’.
While there are many benefits of social networking technology, and many of us would find it difficult to imagine life without our digital friends, research has highlighted a number of areas of concern. An important issue for those using social networking technologies to develop professional networks is ascertaining the authenticity of digital ties. It is possible to set up multiple identities across different virtual or digital networks, which may or may not bear a relationship to an individual’s ‘real’ identity. Moreover, it is important to consider the way in which online interactions through social networking sites may be more or less secure and leave a trace of our activity. For this reason it is important for individuals to be aware of their ‘digital footprint’. Digital footprints are the (almost permanent) trails created through our own interactions (and by those who reference, link, discuss these) via the internet and other networks.
You will have the opportunity to explore your own digital networking in the activity below as you continue the examination of personal networks that was started in Activity 5.3. You will also have the opportunity to discuss this further with your peers in the TGF thread that was started in Activity 5.3.
Having discussed professional relationships in the previous section, here we focus on a specific type that is increasingly prevalent in the work of HRD professionals: the consultant–client relationship.
This is important to consider because many HRD professionals work in consultancy roles, either within their own organisation (called internal consultancy) or in a consultancy organisation that offers services to others (Egan and Hamlin, 2014).
Moreover, HRD professionals are often tasked with sourcing or managing consultants for specific projects or to provide specialised services working alongside consultants.
Therefore both the consultant and client sides of this relationship are relevant to the work of the HRD professional.
Internal consultancy may adopt either a product orientation or a process orientation. (This was considered in some detail in B863, which outlined the role of an internal consultant.) Each of these orientations has implications for internal consultancy from an HRD perspective.
A product orientation
To consultancy can be described as an ‘expert’ or ‘doctor-patient’ approach. In both approaches it is the consultant who develops and proposes a solution to the client.
A process approach
Is one in which the consultant and client are seen as collaborators in the exploration of a problem and the generation of a solution. Here, the consultant’s main role is more as a change facilitator. Of course, the facilitation can usefully be informed by the specialist expertise, but the emphasis is on the client owning the solutions and ensuring that they are right for their business.
Within an HRD context, the advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches are presented in Table 5.3.
Box 5.2:
Aims of the internal HRD consultant
The internal HRD consultant should be striving to create an organisation which:
(a) Places high value on individual (and hence organisational) learning.
(b) Works towards full utilisation of all individual and group potential for learning and adapting to meet organisational objectives and in a way which fulfils the needs and aspirations of employees.
(c) Removes inhibitors to learning and replaces them with supportive systems for continuous learning.
(d) Creates a climate conducive to continuous learning and improvement.
Achieving these goals will involve HRD consultants in building up power bases, using political awareness and skill to wield influence and win over key supporters at all levels of the organisation especially line managers (and not least budget holding senior line managers) who will champion the ‘learning’ cause. The HRD consultant model also requires practitioners to explore the whole HR policy package and ensure that all disincentives to development and learning are removed.
(Adapted from Turner and El-Sawad, 2006, p. 322)
From internal to external consulting
So far in this section we have focused on internal consultancy roles in which HRD professionals employed within an organisation act in a consultancy role to different areas of the business. However, there are also a wealth of specialist firms and independent consultants who offer a range of HRD services to organisations acting as external consultants. Some of these might provide specialist services (as is often the case in areas such as executive coaching) while larger firms often provide HRD services as part of a wider range of HR or business offerings. As with internal consultants, the approaches adopted and the types of work performed can vary hugely.
External consultants may also employ either product or process approaches but a critical difference is that external consultants usually arrange a more explicit and definitive contractual arrangement for the services delivered. This contractual arrangement often recognises the distinctive expertise, capabilities or service delivery that goes beyond that perceived as available within the organisation by those who are paying for the consultancy services.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that this division between internal and external consultants can be blurred as, for example, ex-employees and employees of partner or associate firms may take up consultancy roles and consultants with long-term associations with organisations may be regarded as internal over time.
Some other considerations in the use of external consultants are explored in a discussion between a range of expert HRD practitioners, consultants and coaches in Video 5.2.
In the following activity you will explore these issues further and also consider the advantages and disadvantages of using either internal or external consultants in a range of hypothetical HRD scenarios.
In the above activity you reviewed the factors that might impact the decision to follow an internal or external consultancy route for a particular HRD initiative. In reviewing the benefits and drawbacks of these options in different scenarios it is clear that a detailed analysis of the business case will usually be required. The need to assess costs and justify investment is an essential aspect of the HRD professional’s work and this will be the focus of the next section.