Getting Beyond HR Cliches

As I was growing up, in order to earn money to fund studies and other needs I had many different J-O-B-S. However, they were all pretty menial, some very menial. While they may have given me many very valuable lessons for life they gave very little insight in to companies and big organisations. After I graduated I landed a job with the division of a major high street bank that serviced the financial planning needs of its wealthier customers (clients). This was really the first time that I started to have personal insight in to what went on in big organisations. Along the way, I started to realise that I had a lot of assumptions and beliefs – some of which turned out to be right and some very wrong.

I was aware that lots of companies and organisations made big issues of the importance of their people. Most declared to the world that their people were critical. So, I expected that the HR department of a company would be at the very core of organisations. I was in for a shock.

There are some interesting clues. While CEOs, COOs, CFOs and even occasionally marketing heads sit on the boards of companies, the Head of HR very rarely does so. Partly leading from that, it’s incredibly rare to see Heads of HR rise to hold the CEO position. Ironically, some of this is wrapped up in the complex gender issues that see a higher proportion of senior officers in companies holding the HR role. Somehow, in the hard-nosed world of Corporates it’s considered that the HR role is a good role for women, to address all those touchy-feely issues that can actually be irritants to those single mindedly focused on shareholder value and the pursuit of profits.

On e other thing that was memorable, was the way that the overall HR responsibility was split between two separate operations – HR and Personnel Departments. The latter dealt with all the administration of people; time keeping records, holidays, pensions, taxation, salaries. These are tasks that if a company does them right employees will never sing the organisation’s praises, but get them wrong and employee morale can quickly be undermined. This was really an Admin department related to people and arguably not an area of high creativity or flair. Focus is often on doing these things at the lowest possible cost, with the maximum efficiency.

The other department, on the other hand, was different, but still somehow secondary to those seen as more directly impacting the bottom line.  This dealt with manpower planning for the shorter and longer term, recruitment, training and professional development. I believe sidelining these functions and responsibilities, because their outcomes are less immediate is a mistake for most organisations.

For example, I’ve seen too many school situations where leadership treated recruitment as an irritant to be completed as swiftly as possible, so as to get back to the day to day running of the school. Insufficient thought is given to creative sourcing of potential candidates, thought out means of sifting those candidates who do apply and interviews are short and cursory.  If an individual has the qualifications on paper the interview is often more a case of the individual not losing the job offer than gaining one. Little regard is paid to their fit with the existing team, contribution, longer term goals and ambitions etc.

What goes on was summed up very well in a quote i came across from a UK company HR Head, “We hire people because of their knowledge and professional experience, but we fire them because of their behaviour.” Arguably, in many schools it’s worse – we hire them simply because they have they represent the least bad fit with regard to having the academic certificates required for the role. Now, I know here many school Heads will cry foul and say they have no choice because parents want to ‘see a body on the job’. However, have they ever, really, engaged in the open dialogue with their parent communities about the longer term implications of this? In my experience, within reason, you can ask parents to back you to take time to find the right candidate for the school, rather than jumping at the first qualified teacher.

For those who think this is a ‘waste of time’, they should just tot up the man hours and the untold cost of angst, bad will with other staff, parents and students when the wrong people are recruited. For any organisation to fulfil its vision with full energy and in a timely manner i believe it’s critical to have the right people on the bus. You can never make recruitment an exact science, but everything you can do in the short term to limit turnover or effects of bad recruitment in the longer term will have a massive impact.

I also believe that in any environment where employees believe they have choices it’s vital that there is an effective HR representation to work in collaboration with line managers to ensure that employees are appropriately motivated – both to deliver their best work, and to want to stay and not get tempted away by competitors.  There’s a need to understand the drivers and motivators for employees, to be clear about how reward packages match up to alternatives (inside and outside the profession) and that employees are getting the recognition, development opportunities, affiliation scope and rewards that make them feel motivated. Today, many workplaces involve different genders and broad age ranges of employees and line managers need specialised input on how to meet the differing needs of different stakeholder groups.

I was reminded of all these factors and more recently when reading a discussion forum on the ’12 Manage’ website. For those not familiar, this is an online resource that is well worth taking some time to explore. The link below is to the specific discussion forum on the myths and realities of modern HR. Users following the link may need to fill in some brief details to subscribe, but it’s free.

After seeing this interesting forum discussion you can explore the other resources and will find that it’s very extensive, with materials on almost every con ceivable topic on management and leadership.

12 Manage Forum – Old Myths About HR

Many of the users also provide external links to more in-depth material on the topics under discussion. However, within the website there’s an enormous amount of material and information available, as well as the forums where experts share their viewpoints in open discussion. What can make these especially interesting are the differing viewpoints and perspectives from around the world.

To conclude, I believe HR has to assume a far greater significance within organisations. That it hasn’t always is something HR people need to introspect on because they, more than anyone else, know the potential impact  – for good or bad – when HR practices and approaches serve the business needs.