I spent today at HR Tech in Chicago. Generally some very favorable impressions. It’s a small world we operate in, I tell you. You see the same faces over and over, but there’s definately a sense that what’s happening in this space is really exciting.

In any event, I sat in on a couple of sessions today. The first was one with Levi Strauss and Accenture  entitled "How HR Helps Drive Business Performance At Levi Strauss."  For the most part, the session was about outsourcing – how Levi’s and Accenture worked together to achieve impressive results. And, indeed the results were impressive.  But there were a couple of bits of wisdom I thought I would pass on.

- Fred Paulenich, SVP of HR at Levi’s, made the point that there’s a lot of talk these days about HR becoming a “strategic partner” in the business. He thinks this is a little bit of hogwash. At the end of the day, someone has to be in charge. He feels the challenge should be reframed into something like “how can you help the business run better through good HR practices.”

- Fred also had a good slide discussing how Levi’s decided which processes to keep in house and which to outsource. It basically came down to this: things that were “strategic, value-added and unique,” while things to oursource are “routine, administrative and operational. Perfomance management? Strategic.

- Outsourcing processes doesn’t mean outsourcing accountability.