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Bernardo Quinn: "The only thing we have to contribute to in human resources is that the business goes well".    

By: Aitana Mendicute , Jeanne Vorger , Andrea Pinilla and Elisa Palau.

Bernardo Quinn, Industrial Engineer from high school Tecnológico de Buenos Aires and MBA at Harvard, currently a professor at major universities around the world, was for almost nine years director of Human Resources at Telefónica. Last November he participated in the sessions: "My experience managing people", where he shared his learnings with the students of Master's Degree in Personnel Management Service in Organizations.

The executive said that his long career in Telefónica was mediated by different challenges and opportunities, among the main ones was to move from leading a corporate strategy area to be the head of the people department . A change driven mainly by the successful work that he assumed managing people in the different countries where Telefónica had presence.

The discussion paper held at the Madrid headquarters of the University of Navarra focused on three main lessons: the challenge of managing a area of which everyone in the companies has an opinion, the axis of HR as a business driver and the need to see in the changes opportunities for the business.

The first learning, as Quinn states, is the need to change the perspective that, "everyone at business has a voice when it comes to HR." To achieve this, the challenge must be taken on board to manage change within department and guide proposals in line with what the business demands.

The second challenge that Quinn shared with the students was derived from Dave Ulrich's famous statement: what is the most important thing that HR can give your own organization? To which he replies: The only thing we in HR have to contribute to is the business doing well. Reaffirming the previous idea that HR must align with the business and coordinate to address a common goal , otherwise it will be isolated from the business.

 

Finally, he explained that change is one of the most important challenges facing people areas and companies in general: "the pace of change will never be as slow as it is now. Changes are exponential, which implies that people must adjust to it, because not doing so is going to have an impact on all levels of the business. A clear example is digitization in organizations, generating more and more people learning at an accelerated pace. As Quinn pointed out, we live, not in an era of change, but in a change of era.

Taking the example of his experience at Telefónica, he said that when he worked there there was a time when business found it difficult to embrace a change mindset in its strategy and policies. To address this, Quinn engaged the sense of urgency that business lacked and focused on demonstrating, through the business, the importance of change He used the department of Human Resources as a driver for transformation.

One of the initiatives that the speaker developed in Telefónica and that summarizes the three lessons learned was to create the Telefónica Corporate University, as a lever for change. This was successfully embraced by the members of business, and has been considered a pioneering and pioneering institution. It is currently described by business as "the heart of the new learning innovation ecosystem".

The executive was able to see the opportunity of the future of the business in terms of digitalization and promote a technological and creative space where all members of the company had an additional training in order to learn, reinvent themselves, develop human and digital skills and especially to be aligned with the profitable future of the business.

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