The HR strategy and the business strategy at business software provider SAP are indivisible. Rarely is a significant business decision made without first checking the HR implications of that decision, and vice-versa.
For Jo-Anne Quirk, SAP's vice president people & HR strategy, this hand-in-glove mentality is crucial to her love of her job. "I really enjoy the challenge of getting to understand what the business priorities are and then being able to map them to HR-related and people-related solutions. I also enjoy being able to see results from HR efforts translated into business results," she says.
The path so far
Quirk has spent the majority of her professional career in both specialist and generalist HR roles. She graduated from university as a clinical psychologist but after 18 months working in hospitals she was keen to explore other areas. She landed a position at the then Public Transport Commission of NSW as a trainer and organisational development coordinator, which enabled her to move into a new area while still leveraging off her behavioural sciences background. The commission had recently benefited from funding increases for its learning and organisational development unit following the Granville train disaster of 1977.
Prior to joining SAP in 2003, Quirk held positions at Unisys and American Express, and also spent time running a human resources consultancy. Her initial role at SAP was HR director for Australia-New Zealand. In 2007 she was given additional responsibilities in Japan. She is now responsible for HR and people strategy across the Asia-Pacific region.
"A large part of my role is heading up the HR business partner group for Australia and New Zealand. Ultimately I'm responsible from the A/NZ perspective to understand what the key business drivers are, what the key business issues are, and then prioritise and map HR solutions against those," Quirk explains.
Across the Australia and New Zealand hub, SAP employs over 500 people. Worldwide, this swells to 43,800 people in more than 50 countries. It is the world's largest business software company and the world's third-largest independent software provider overall. The local SAP HR model follows the global model, which sees HR operating across three pillars. Those three pillars are: the HR business partner group; several centres of excellence that include total rewards or cost benefits, and learning and talent management; then HR shared services centre which is located in Singapore and provides HR transactional support both to the employees and also the HR function.
"My HR reporting line is through to Singapore but the head of the business is my most significant customer. Each of my HR business partners work hand in glove with the line managers that they support," she adds.
It's all about strategy
When Quirk started with SAP in 2003 the company was aiming to redefine and align its HR strategy more effectively with the business strategy. In terms of SAP's people strategies for A/NZ, all HR programs now concentrate on talent management. In the same year, three broad areas were targeted as HR priorities. Quirk explains: "Firstly, we wanted SAP to be a place to grow for all our employees; we wanted to attract, retain and refresh top talent, in fact we wanted to get our unfair share of top talent in the marketplace; and we wanted to build a winning and sustainable high performance culture that celebrated success and recognised and rewarded our values. They were the overarching goals we set in 2003 to support our business growth objectives."
Tied to those priorities were two overarching goals that were set to act as the measures of the company's success. The first was to double the size of the business by 2006, which was achieved despite a 10% budget blowout. The other key success factor was to be recognised internally and externally as an employer of choice. Hewitt's Best Employer methodology and survey mechanism was chosen as the method by which the company would participate and judge progress. Again, the company hit its target. "In 2007, based on our 2006 results, we were named a Hewitt Best Employer," says Quirk. "From those early days we set out to make SAP a really great place to work for our employees - an organisation where employees would find challenges through their day to day activities and an organisation where employees could be successful and part of a winning team. I think we've achieved that."
Word is spreading too. Quirk says that alongside a solid industry reputation as an employer of choice, over 40% of SAP's external hires are direct approaches - in other words, the company has not gone searching for talent.
Creating a high performance culture
There have been a number of SAP initiatives launched locally with the aim of contributing to a high performance culture. One of these was the refining of the company's employee value proposition (EVP). The EVP is effectively a 'deal' between SAP as the employer and the company's employees. "What we wanted to do was get very clear on expectations, both what our expectations were for employees and what they could expect from us. The EVP states very clearly that our expectations of employees are that they will own their own careers and professional development. At the same time, our commitment to them is we will provide them with the opportunity, coaching, guidance and tools to help them be successful. We do have high expectations of our employees - we expect that in a high performance culture - but we've got a great deal for them in return," Quirk explains.
The importance of leaders
As an example of SAP's end of the deal, the company has focused on creating world class leadership development programs and attracting the best leaders to the organisation. Quirk sees leadership as critical to organisational success and says she has sat alongside leaders during the recruitment process and witnessed first hand how inspirational leaders can act as "talent magnets" for candidates. She believes it's so much easier to recruit great talent if the person they'll be working for is inspirational - especially if the candidate feels they can learn from that person.
"If you have significant growth aspirations you will not achieve those without the best and brightest leaders in the field. Leadership development has been crucial for SAP. We believe that great leaders truly create an environment of success. They bring teams together, they get the best out of teams, they value teamwork and cross-silo involvement and collaboration," she says.
Professional development
SAP has also invested heavily in online learning solutions, including a skills on demand e-learning program which - through a third party provider - offers hundreds of courses and resource material that every employee can use. "It's a one-stop shop of information, books online, and courses to support employees in their L&D needs," Quirk explains.
In 2007 the company launched a Careers Success Centre, which is an online, interactive portal. Employees can go in and see everything they need to know about developing their career with SAP, including what job opportunities there are, how to prepare for an internal interview - everything they may need to know about progressing in their career. In 2008 this was joined by the Manager Success Centre, a support tool for managers. "Our employees are busy people - they don't always have the time they would like to attend classroom training," says Quirk.
Reward & recognition
SAP's reward & recognition program is founded upon the company's core values - being customer-centric, having a drive for results, focusing on teamwork, innovation and having a community focus. "We called on employees on a monthly and quarterly basis to nominate colleagues that they saw demonstrating those values and also having success - success on behalf of a customer or success on behalf of a team. That program has been in place for four years and almost without exception each quarter we've had more nominations than the quarter before. That program is about recognising our employees doing great things and reinforcing the importance of the values they demonstrate and also celebrating with them," Quirk explains.
Building business relationships
In 2008 SAP sponsored an Economist Intelligence Unit study focusing on Talent Wars: The struggle for tomorrow's workforce (see boxout). One area of that research caught Quirk's attention: the fact that management strategies were devised and implemented by business units themselves and supported by the HR function. Clearly, having good business relationships is a goal to strive for. "SAP's HR divisions in Australia and New Zealand have a very strong partnership with our business. We have strong, experienced and strategic HR practitioners on the team and I see that it's not an either/or situation - either the business or HR taking a leadership position on some of the key talent initiatives. Instead it's a very strong partnership between the two," she concludes.