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Leading the Way

Leading the Way | Human Resource Executive Online Expect a seat at the table -- and then show that you belong. That's the advice to HR leaders from Richard Antoine, the newly named head of the National Academy of Human Resources.

Antoine takes the post after 39 years with Procter & Gamble, but only 10 years as its human resources executive. His background was with the operational side of the business.

By Michael O'Brien

When Richard L. Antoine, the newly named president of the New Canaan, Conn.-based National Academy of Human Resources, was asked by Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper in 1998 to lead the organization's massive global HR function, he could not believe his ears.

"My first reaction was: 'Who? Me?' " he says, and it's not hard to understand why.

Antoine had spent more than a quarter-century on the supply side of the company (he holds a chemical engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin, as well as an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago) and he had just one HR assignment in that time period.

"One of the rationales [for Pepper's recommendation] was that the operations side had more than half of the people in the company," he says, "and all of us in supply chain needed to know how to work with and motivate and get results through our people."

The experiment was a success, and after 10 years as senior vice president of HR at Procter & Gamble, Antoine retired in 2008, ending a 39-year career with the company. He was elected a Fellow within the NAHR in 2005.

His goals as president of the NAHR are two-fold, he says: to work with the fellows of the national academy to improve the capability and skills of the country's HR professionals and to improve the reputation of HR within the business community.

"We should assume we have 'a seat at the table' and then we should demonstrate that we deserve to be there," he says. "It's up to us to demonstrate that we deserve to be there."

Antoine says he plans to continue building on the educational aspect of his predecessor, Charlie Tharp, and he advises new HR professionals to explore the ways HR processes affect a business' bottom line.

"They need to combine their understanding of HR systems [with] how they apply those systems to help move the business forward," he says.

March 2, 2009

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