Building a Talent Pool? Former BlackRock HR Exec Jeff Smith Says, ‘Don’t Forget Your Own Organization’

Jeff Smith HR
5 min readSep 4, 2024

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Finding and retaining top talent is a core requirement for any business that hopes to prosper. The new post-globalization paradigm has changed not only the way in which companies operate day to day but also exponentially broadened the reach of the human capital pool. Deft management of human resources in all phases, from recruitment to retention, is crucial to creating and fostering a thriving corporate culture and a healthy bottom line. However, according to former BlackRock human resources director Jeff Smith, the efforts of HR teams can be hampered as leadership chases success, downplaying or undervaluing HR contributions in the process — often much to their company’s detriment.

Jeff Smith believes if you want to build an exceptional corporate talent pool overall, it helps to create an exceptional internal HR organization with exceptionally talented people. “The job of HR is hard enough, one of the hardest, and without great talent, it has no chance of success,” he says, adding, “The HR talent pool has not been the deepest in the past, so you need to focus on hiring the best of the best and ideally, making HR a destination for great people in the business to come and make an impact.”

When Just Saying ‘Yes’ Isn’t the Best Answer

Jeff Smith goes on to note a common trap he’s observed top HR management too often fall into is getting caught up trying to continually satisfy the myriad demands of their boards as well as the urgent and numerous dictates from upper management. When this happens, HR leaders may lose focus on their own strategy and organization, which Smith believes can prove costly in the long run. Human resources, he says, “is the key to getting it all done,” however, this form of counterintuitive capitulation is the reality for many heads of HR departments and the business partners to whom they report.

“Most leaders don’t like conflict and want you as the HR person to have all the conversations and do the dirty work,” Smith explains. While a pattern of appeasement may seem the easiest course of action, Smith argues that not challenging higher-ups to keep from rocking the boat isn’t a sound business strategy. “You need to balance giving leaders what they want with helping them develop the capability to give constructive feedback and have difficult conversations, to learn to nurture and shape their employees, and to hold them accountable.”

Why Putting Human Resources in the Back Seat Is Bad for Business

Smith reports from his own personal experience in observing organizations he’s seen HR isn’t as respected a profession as he believes it should be. “It’s [viewed as] just there for administrative purposes and to support the business,” he concedes, “but I think HR is a business in its own right and literally enables every single thing that happens in a company — who you hire, creating performance standards, developing leaders, aligning incentives and compensation, and creating the right culture for the business to work and thrive. It is something that needs to be fought for.”

The forces behind the well-regarded all-in-one HR and payroll software solution provider Eddy concur with Smith’s assessment. “Too often, the HR department isn’t seen as strategic or relevant when it comes to running the business. This couldn’t be further from the truth,” they claimed. “When given the proper tools and the trust to be empowered and make decisions, HR can be one of the most vital voices at the table … HR teams who are in sync with employees, who understand engagement levels, who understand company culture, and who know how to get the best out of people will always add tremendous value to their business.”

In an Apr. 24, 2018 conversation with Quartz, Dominic Barton, current chairman at Rio Tinto and LeapFrog Investments, former global managing partner of McKinsey & Company, and co-author of the book Talent Wins, contended that for companies to succeed in a dramatically changing environment, the whole human resources landscape needed to make a dramatic shift toward the center. “HR has been seen as the sleepy backwater where the admin is done. Often HR people aren’t even on the same floor, and that has to totally change,” he said. “At the companies we looked at for the book, we saw it.”

Prioritizing HR Holds the Key to Better Business Outcomes

Maximizing the effectiveness of an HR department is no small task, and at the end of the day, Smith says you have to be prepared to do a job well done without necessarily getting the credit or the kudos you deserve. “The amount and diversity of work is incredible,” he says. “People are complex, the conversations and work are never-ending, and it is rare that the [powers that be] are ever going to be fully satisfied with your work, so you need to truly believe in it.”

As anyone who’s ever flown in a plane knows from the preflight lecture, survival can depend on putting on your oxygen mask before helping others. A similar rule applies to corporate survival. A company is only as viable as the people who run it. A human resources team is there to ensure the rest of your talent not only survives, but thrives, and must therefore be robust as well as revered. Smith’s Rule №1: Don’t forget your own organization.

“It’s critical to step back and find the time to make sure we are doing all we can to do what we need to do for the HR organization,” Smith asserts, “[otherwise, how can we do what we’re supposed] to do for the rest of the organization?”

Originally published at https://priceofbusiness.com on September 4, 2024.

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Jeff Smith HR

Jeff Smith is a human resources expert. Previously, he worked at BlackRock as Head of Global Human Resources.