Hacking HR Founder Enrique Rubio Sees C-Suite Role for Human Resources
Having founded Hacking HR as a grassroots organization to advance professionalism in human resources, Enrique Rubio ponders both the future potential for human resources and his worldwide organization in this interview with ESM. The Secret Sauce—An Authentic Grass Roots Approach
The Next Frontier for Human Resources—A Path to the C-Suite?
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Enrique Rubio says he founded Hacking HR in 2017 as a community to help human resources professionals in the Washington DC area collaborate on how they could enhance the value they create for their organizations. Today, his ambition includes helping the profession once and for all earn a seat at the C-suite table and a pathway to becoming a CEO.
By most standards, HackingHr.io is an enormous success. Founded in 2017 with no budget by Rubio, an engineer by training who immigrated to the US from Venezuela in 2012 and ended up in human resources, Hacking HR today has grown from its first meet-up in a shared working space in Washington DC attracting a few hundred people to nearly 1 million community members, 1,500 learning programs around the world, and over 1,000 contributing experts, he says. It has recently launched a formal certifiation program.
The basic membership is free to access the newsletter and a library of free information. A $159 premium individual membership includes participation in all Hacking HR online events; access to all learning items in its content library and to over 1,000 HR certification credits (for Society of Human Resources Executives and HRCI), as well as to a digital Certificate of Participation for joining the event series and to its master's degree-like Certificate Programs. The Premium corporate membership is $139 per year per person, with a minimum of five individual members per corporate account. The education includes not just recorded by live training sessions with faculty.
The Secret Sauce—An Authentic Grass Roots Approach
A major factor in the organization’s rapid growth, Rubio believes, is the authentic focus on collaboration and sharing, rather than on finding new ways to make money. “I want Hacking HR to be a large community of people coming together supporting each other organically when people need to find expertise in a specific area; learn together from programs put together that reflect their current needs, or to find a mentor. We want Hacking HR to be a safe place to learn and share, where people can find answers to their most pressing questions.” He says “there are a lot of great programs out there. I want us to be the one that people always keep in when they have a question or when they need to connect with someone who can help.”
While Hacking HR has sponsors, it emerged as a collaborative model so that the content is practical, digestible, and non-biased, he observes. Rubio also sees the need for a sense of humor. Every week, the company publishes on Linkedin a short video capturing a day in the life of people in the front lines of human resources. “Not everybody gets them but that’s also the point. We want an open community with different viewpoints.”
Today, he emphasizes, the profession faces so many challenges and demands in terms of new regulations, disclosures, practices, systems, technologies, often with an international scope, Hacking HR remains dedicated to addressing the ever-changing need for information from experts with different perspectives. “Human resources is such a dynamic profession, you can’t just publish a 500-page book and call it a day...We want our community to use us to find the expertise they need, no matter what, from sources they can trust.”
The Next Frontier for Human Resources—A Path to the C-Suite?
For years, he says, the profession has spoken about its failure to earn a seat on the executive planning committee or to provide a direct career path to becoming CEO. After all, if employees are indeed a company’s No. 1 asset, why aren’t more CEOs a product of human resources? He believes the time is coming because there is an increasing amount of data demonstrating the impact of people on value creation. (See ESM library of human capital analytics.) “We are still in the early stages of this; maybe 1% of HR professionals grasp the opportunity. When there’s enough momentum, it becomes unstoppable. We’re not there yet; we are still trying to break the inertia, but we will get there because enough people are talking about it.”
He sees a new generation of leaders, not only in terms of age, but of a mindset that seeks to lead human resources differently. “They are solving complex business challenges with people solutions and a completely different mindset...If you are coming to the executive committee to just talk about HR and using jargon to explain why the organization can’t do something, or failing to present solutions from a people perspective, then you are not adding as much value as possible. Now, if HR is coming to the table thinking how can our people make this organization succeed, achieve its revenue or other targets, or whatever its purpose whether it be a for-profit or not-for-profit organization, then you are coming to the table with solutions leadership needs to hear. We must be the ones looking at achieving organizational goals from a people perspective.”
By shifting to a perspective focused on value creation—how employees can contribute to the achievement of the organization’s purpose, goals, and objectives consistent with its values—the CHRO automatically carries a lot more weight given the critical role employees can play in innovation, quality, service, collaboration, customer satisfaction, safety, efficiency, etc., he asserts--not to mention the fact they often represent 50% of an organization’s fixed costs.
“This is how I think HR will solve its challenge—from a solutions perspective. There is a small but growing cadre of people talking about this who will inspire others.”
Part of the challenge, he observes, is that the profession is in some ways monolithic and suffers from the effects of being told for so long that “you suck, or I hate you.” Demonstrating how human resources can create tangible value for organizations, he believes, can lift the entire profession, create a new career path to the C-suite and the position of chief executive officer, and, most importantly, enhance workplaces around the world.
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