When Jeff Smith took the reins as BlackRock’s head of global human resources, he inherited what many companies consider a largely administrative function. Smith holds a deep belief that human resources should serve as a driver of business success rather than a background support system.
“HR has broadly not been a respected profession and is often seen as just being there for administrative purposes and to support the business,” Smith notes. “I think HR is a business in its own right and literally enables every single thing that happens in a company. Who you hire, creating performance standards, developing leaders … aligning incentives and compensation, and creating the right culture for the business to work and thrive. It is something that needs to be fought for.”
From Psychology To Corporate Leadership
Smith’s journey to HR leadership wasn’t a straight path. After studying psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he initially went to play soccer, Smith was inspired by a professor of industrial-organizational psychology. This discipline, which applies psychological principles to workplace issues, provided the foundation for his approach to HR.
“I think being ‘psychologically minded’ is very helpful in terms of thinking through interpersonal dynamics and not just focusing on the business issue at hand but on the people who are dealing with the issue,” Jeff Smith explains. “I always found it most helpful in building strong relationships and also in building teams.”
His background in psychology also equipped him with quantitative skills that proved valuable in business settings. “The other thing that is very useful that people often don’t associate with psychology is you actually have to be good at math — statistics in particular,” Smith points out. “In doing research … so that helped a great deal with business.”
During his career, Smith navigated significant corporate transitions, including the merger between AOL and TIme Warner and the acquisition of Barclays Global Investors by BlackRock in 2009. This experience at the intersection of organizational strategy and human capital management informed his holistic take on to HR leadership.
Critical Priorities for Modern HR
Smith identifies five critical priorities for modern HR departments — leader and manager development, HR technology and data analytics, creating an intentional culture, managing careers, and building the HR talent pool. These priorities reflect his view that HR should proactively shape organizational strategy rather than merely implement it.
“Leaders need to drive change and help drive strategy and create culture,” he emphasizes. This involves not only developing leaders’ skills but also designing the right roles and incentives to motivate high performers to take on leadership responsibilities.
“It is critical to have exceptional technology to make processes better and more efficient, for culture and risk management, and to help provide data and insight to make decisions,” he states. However, he cautions against uncritical adoption of established platforms, advocating instead for thoughtful evaluation of the rapidly evolving technology landscape.
Smith’s perspective on artificial intelligence in HR reflects this nuance. “In its best form, it will enhance decision making through providing insights and data analysis in a faster, more efficient way to ideally be processed and used by humans,” he says. “AI should augment human abilities.” While acknowledging the displacement of jobs through automation, Smith emphasizes the need for careful consideration of ethical implications.
Culture creation represents another priority area for Smith, who notes the increased complexity of culture-building in hybrid work environments. “Culture is everything — it is what you stand for, how you do work, what you are held accountable for and how it feels to be somewhere,” he states. “Talk about it — say it out loud — then try to implement practices that create the culture you want. Don’t just let it happen, which it will anyway.”
Fundamentals Before Innovation
For Jeff Smith, effective HR leadership requires both vision and pragmatic implementation. “I think getting the basics right and executing them is far more important before you are innovating,” he advises. “Pay people right, have great hiring practices, develop your leaders, have a culture of feedback, ensure leaders know their expectations, have good solid processes, then innovate on top of that where it is important to the business and where it is going to work because there is a foundation to innovate on top of.”
Smith’s belief that HR is a critical asset, not an administrative necessity, provides a compelling model for organizations seeking to leverage human capital for competitive advantage. By prioritizing leadership development, thoughtful technology implementation, intentional culture-building, flexible career management, and HR talent development, companies can position their HR functions at the center rather than the periphery.
Smith’s emphasis on evidence-based practices and psychological principles differentiates him from more traditional HR leadership. His background in industrial-organizational psychology informs his focus on measuring outcomes while acknowledging the inherent challenges: “The difficulty of measuring human characteristics and HR outcomes … You need to make sure you are measuring things through employee surveys and metrics associated with hiring and retention, but you also have to have some faith and belief in your practices because it is imperfect in terms of measurement.”
As Smith puts it: “I prefer to work in and grow companies that actually care about people as much as most companies pretend to care about people.”
