What can I say? The name is a result of conversations over a number of years with hundreds of human resources professionals at all levels in all sectors.

What became obvious is that the role that human resources plays in an organisation is open to a fair degree of interpretation. Clearly human resources – like most organisational roles – is evolving and along side this, there is a personal or organisational predisposition for human resources to adopt a certain role.

Bottom line, I found three broad human resources “generations”

HR provides administrative and legal support to the business to make sure everyone gets paid on time an the company complies with local employment law

HR provides the above plus various employee service, such as training, counselling outplacement and employee surveys
human resources worked as a business partner and influenced how the business was managed to ensure the organisation benefited from “its most important asset”

David Ulrich in his book Human Resource Champions has explored this far more rigorously -if you haven’t read this book yet it’s a must read.

What's more, I found was able to offer far greater value to organisations that were looking for human resources to play a strategic role; for human resources to align all human resources practices to the achievement of organisational objectives.

So 3G human resources reflects the fact that we work most effectively with organisations that either already are or aspire to be 3rd generation - organisations that recognise that