Recognizing Rewarding Talent

Birches Group LLC is a specialized HR consultancy focused on compensation and benefits in the public and private sectors. They also have an innovative organization development practice that provides job design, organizational design, job classification, competency modeling, and performance management solutions. Birches Group is a Limited Liability Company that began operations in May 2005 and is registered and headquartered in New York, with additional offices in Europe and Asia.

Lourdes (Lulu) Belen is one of the four founding partners of Birches Group, LLC. Being of Asian descent, Lourdes has always performed her duties while observing the norms and culture of the country (the USA), which she decided to be a citizen of while at the same time ensuring that she maintains the traditions of the country of her birth. “I was born and raised in the Philippines and moved to the United States after obtaining a degree in business administration. At the start of my career in the United States, I pursued a job at the United Nations where I immersed myself in an entirely different environment,” says Lourdes. “Being in an international organization was a useful learning experience for me. I learned about work practices of a large international organization and also familiarized myself with traditions and cultures of people from various countries through co-workers – managers and colleagues. At the same time, working at the United Nations showed me the path that I wanted to pursue. I learned about human resources in general and I found the work on compensation and benefits to be interesting and important since it directly affected the lives of people from any country or culture.”

In Birches Group, Lourdes and her management team recognize that each team member should know they matter to the company. This is achieved through the programs and tools on performance evaluation and skills assessment that they have developed, specifically their talent management solution called Community™. The staff at Birches Group go through performance evaluations and skills assessments using Community™. This is the same approach that Lourdes tries to impart to the clients so that they may achieve a better workforce by recognizing and rewarding the talent and contribution of every employee/team member.

Birches Group has recently developed a program called Community™ which is an integrated management solution focusing on four primary areas of human resources (Jobs, Market, Skills, and Performance). Client organizations are currently applying this approach to support a full range of human resources management functions: Jobs and Market form the structural components of the organization – jobs and pay, while Skills and Performance define the capacity – the knowledge and capacity of individuals and the measurement of performance.

In performing her duties as part of the partnership/senior management team of Birches Group, LLC, Lourdes has learned that when it comes to their salaries or compensation, people, regardless of background or profession they may be in, become sensitive when discussing this topic. Since this subject matter affects the lives and livelihood of people, the functions Lourdes performs enable her to be more sensitive to how her position affects the lives of people who benefit from their job and the staff of their clients who seek the company’s guidance in its area of expertise.

As part of its mission, Birches Group states that “the human resources function must constantly uphold the integrity of organizational policy, build cohesion across the workforce, and align capacity to the mission. Through their Community™ approach, Birches Group aims to support organizations across different sectors to recognize everyone’s contribution holistically. Anchored by a purpose-driven organizational framework starting with jobs, which drives both employee growth and achievement, Lourdes and her team’s approach brings insight and integrated solutions that help shape the workforce of any organization to achieve its purpose – its mission.

For the days to come, Lourdes is pleased with the company's continued growth, which is now in its 19th year of existence. “As we grow, our aim is to provide more products and services to our growing list of clients. We are prepared to share our expertise with a wider range of global organizations from both the public (international organizations, NGOs, not for profit operations) and private sectors so that they in turn will be able to achieve their own goals and missions,” explains Lourdes. “In the future, we hope to expand our services, develop new products and introduce innovations to human resource practices. At present, all these can be achieved through our integrated workforce management solution. We will not stop there; we will introduce innovations and improvements based on ongoing reviews and discussions within our team.”