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wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBO Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. I am back again with Amy Bernstein talking

about the July August 2015 issue. Amy, thank you so much for coming in today.

Always a pleasure. So the spotlight this month is HR and we have a couple

really interesting articles actually and one of them I wanted to ask about in

particular is by Ram Sharon Dominic Barton Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey.

Tell me a little bit about this piece.

Right, well that is an all-star lineup of authors, right?

So it's Ram Sharan who has written for us and many others before about the role of the chief HR officer

Dominic Barton the global managing director of McKinsey and then Dennis Carey

who's the vice chairman of Corn Ferry. These are three authors who know where of they speak.

Every CEO under the sun says that people are our most valuable asset, yet research shows that

most CEOs undervalue their HR function. No wonder then that

managing human capital is the top challenge for companies. They say so in research study after research study and it's really becoming urgent now that the supply of professionals with rare skills and potential is so tight, right? So to deal with this, say the author,

CEOs have to redefine and elevate the chief HR officer role. As Ram and plenty of others have argued in the past, the CHRO really needs

to delegate the administrative and compliance functions of HR. That's managing benefits and all that stuff.

And instead needs to focus on strategic contributions.

So Ram and Dom and Dennis point to three specific areas of focus.

...