In many corporations Human Resources and Training are looked on as non-essential departments. Senior level executives will talk about their importance, but when the tough economic times show up, the first budgets to get cut are in HR and Training.

Why is that? The primary reason is that senior executives do not see HR and Training as driving better business results. Instead, they rely on operations, sales, marketing, and to a lesser degree, research and development. They view HR and Training as business costs, not business investments toward driving better results.

Remember that innovation is the process of identifying, combining, evaluating and implementing ways to add greater value to customers.

Let's examine some basic HR and Training functions through the filter of innovation. Take, for example, recruitment, selection, placement and orientation.

The first step in building a great organization is getting the right people for that particular organization in the right positions. In the book, Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap And Others Don't, author Jim Collins writes, "The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, 'Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.'"

HR is a business driver if it gets the right people in the right places. Consequently, I suggest that HR executives meet with the senior executives to determine the types of values, beliefs and behaviors that are desired in employees for different functions within the organization. Further, I suggest that HR executives develop a marketing approach and evaluation process that attracts and filters candidates until the right person (meaning the person who has the appropriate values, beliefs, behaviors and technical skills) is in each role. HR must be patient in filling positions. It is far more cost effective to wait for the right person than it is to put the wrong person in the job. The proper attraction, selection and placement of employees are the single most important factors in adding exponential value to customers. The right people in the right positions will make the right decisions. No strategy or brand or culture can redeem the value that a customer receives if the wrong employees are in the wrong positions.

Once the right people are in the right places, their orientation and on-going development must be geared toward delivering greater value to their customers. Training should never be about input (the development of a skill), but rather should always be about output (how employees can add greater value to customers.) Effective training begins with clarifying the desired output for the customer and works backward to develop the necessary skill within the employee.

In this way, HR and Training add extraordinarily to the delivery of better business results.

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