HR leaders 'increasingly ready' for public company boards.

• Author: Foulkes, Fred
• Position: BOARD SKILL SETS

Given the increased focus on talent, succession planning, executive compensation, company culture, and change management, it is not surprising that a growing number of business-savvy current and former human resource leaders are being invited to sit on corporate boards.

In 1975, in a draft for an article for Harvard Business Review, I proposed that an HR person (then called "personnel") could, under certain circumstances, be a good addition to a board. The late Ralph Lewis, the editor at the time, refused to publish the article if it contained this statement because he believed, based on the HR people that he knew, it was a "stupid" idea and that the article, with this statement, would lose credibility with the reader. We reached a compromise and the sentence was changed to read, "It would be a sign of recovery from both ineffectiveness and prejudice should board members one day be found to come more often from personnel." [See "The Expanding Role of the Personnel Function" by F.K. Foulkes, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1975.]

But, happily, much has changed in the 40 years that have followed. It was once the case that the late Bruce Carswell, SVP of HR at GTE Corp., was the only head of HR who was a company director. He was an inside director of GTE. But, as inside directors have been replaced by outside directors as part of governance changes, I have identified dozens of HR leaders, active and retired, who are directors of one or more public companies (see exhibit for a sample of names and companies).

This change seems so logical and likely to accelerate. It is a sensible development because the knowledge and experience base of business-oriented HR leaders fit so well into the current and future needs of large global corporations. Executive search firm Spencer Stuart reports that 2-4% of its U.S. board placements each year are present or prior heads of HR.

When a prominent CHRO was asked for an assessment of his board experience and contributions as a board member, he said the following:

"The right CHRO can focus on strategic assessment of leaders and we all know that superior talent adds to the differentiator of the competitive process. It is also the case that many effective HR leaders tend to be of very close counsel to their CEO and that skill is easily transferable to other CEOs. It is also the case that many CHROs are tasked with leading significant, sometimes transformational, change efforts. I believe I was put on one board...