Bold mission gives HR a lucrative spin

By VICKI JAYNE

Mariner7 has blasted off - again. The mission this time is a little closer than Mars, although it's probably fair to say that the commercialised spin-off of Carter Holt Harvey's human resources division is exploring some new territory.

HR departments of large corporates are more typically regarded as administration rather than profit centres. In this case, the transformation to a stand-alone business could be seen as an outcome of the leadership model it started introducing through the company midway through last year.

"Great leaders," says Carter Holt chief executive Chris Liddell, "have the courage to significantly change their businesses, their people and themselves."

Back then, Carter Holt's HR manager, Heather Miles, described the programme it was designing in terms of those three elements.

"We want our people to lead the business forward, so they need to think strategically, be commercially astute and act decisively.

"We want them to challenge and inspire people."

A strong sense of self-worth was also vital - "without [it], people don't manage their own life/work balance effectively."

Now, as chief executive of Mariner7, the name given to the commercialised HR arm, Heather Miles sees the new entity as one outcome of a culture shift that encourages innovation and leadership.

"It's all about creating opportunities for people to grow and develop, having business units that are more autonomous, allowing more entrepreneurship, getting people closer to customers, having more profit accountability - all of those good things."

She is confident that the tools developed to create culture change within Carter Holt have commercial value in the wider business world.

Mariner7's two key products are "talent manager" and "talent finder." The second, a tool to identify those recruitment candidates who are technically and personally best suited to a particular role, will not be launched until mid-year.

Talent manager, available now, is the model that has been developed for Carter Holt. Its innovation has been in bundling several useful resources, tailoring those to a particular individual's needs, setting up a system for the process, and making the whole package readily accessible via the web.

"The advantage of using the web is that we can put all these resources in one place and link a whole lot of things together that previously haven't been linked," Heather Miles says.

"It sounds so simple that it's extraordinary it hasn't been done before, but we basically had to build it ourselves, which is why we're going external and selling it."

The model consists of two main elements: "performance management" and "leadership development."

An important aspect of the former is that it helps achieve the crucial alignment of individual performance and behaviour with company objectives, she says.

The "leadership" aspect is all about identifying specific leadership traits, and both measuring and developing leadership ability.

A 360-degree assessment provides feedback that becomes starting point for a growth journey, with the net providing a simple click-through map of relevant behavioural skills, available training, and related books, articles or videos.

It also provides the communication channel for reporting, booking training sessions and setting up meetings.

"All that can be done in a format that managers find easy and quick ," Heather Miles says.

Mariner7 is set up on an ASP (application service provider) basis. It hosts the system software on a server - all clients need are internet access, a web browser and e-mail.

There will be a charge to set it up, plus fees for hosting and additional consulting as required. The model can be linked to a customer's existing human resource information systems.

"This is not something that will replace good human resource people but give them a tool to help develop and motivate their people."

Mariner7 is already attracting interest from both investors and customers and expects to have its first external customers on board within a couple of weeks, she says.

As a wholly owed subsidiary of Carter Holt, it has a long-term contract to keep providing its HR resources and will be jointly developing new products with its parent.

Within Carter Holt, its leadership model has now been presented to about 60 of the top managers, as well as cross-sections of the business down to supervisory levels at some of the mills.

"In all cases, we've had extremely positive feedback. Regardless of what results people get in their report, they're finding it really powerful to use, says Heather Miles.

"It's a pull, rather than push, method in that it taps into people's innate desires to improve themselves."

That last one has proved pretty universal.

"Everybody wants to grow and when given the tools they grab them and really run with it."

* Vicki Jayne can be contacted at vjayne@iconz.co.nz