It is becoming all too clear that organisations are moving towards a new employee-centric operation. The work that has sustained HR teams for decades has disappeared down the optical cables of new technology. The activities we felt HR were technical specialists at are now in the hands of a new breed of line manager who is equipped with the skills to manage people and the desire to do it well.
So as we are finally about to divest ourselves of the baggage of process and procedures the real question is are we ready to enter a new and exciting role where our influence on employee engagement, talent management and career succession become part of the new domain for HR. A domain where we no longer measure our importance by the size of our team but rather by the level of influence we have on our organisations. This challenge will require a leap of faith to take us beyond the realms of being a department into being the very philosophy of our organisations.
Question time
I recently posed this challenge in a debate with a group of HR directors from a range of organisations at the recent Human Resources Forum on board MV Aurora.[1] To aid our debate we considered a number of discerning questions:
- Has HR changed much during our career?
- Does HR as a profession have ethics?
- Do HR rules help an organisation or hinder it?
- Does the primal survival instinct of HR replace positive human interactions?
- If HR had never existed would anyone have noticed?
- Is the future direction of HR about strategy or character?
Our debate accepted from the outset that there is no such thing as the eternal job and just like the Luddite movement of the 19th century[2] we concluded that HR is in danger of fooling itself into believing that we could survive simply by existing. Here we are living in an age than none of us could have imagined even ten years ago. Just as the mechanised looms replaced home industry we are seeing changes in our world of work as varied as self-checkout counters replacing staff in grocery stores to military robots and ‘unmanned systems’ replacing front line soldiers. Which of the myriad of high street DVD rental retailers would ever have imagined their real competition would come from an online competitor offering DVD rentals with no late return fees?
Innovation
So what careers are secure from the onslaught of time and innovation? Ben Goertzel says those that “involve transferring knowledge from one area to another, or thinking broadly, creatively and integratively, because these [tasks] require powerful general intelligence, not just narrowly specialised intelligence."[3] And for HR, it means the future is not about being technically competent it is about our innovation making such a difference we become irresistible. Innovation does not of itself make a difference. The secret is to ride the inevitable crest of the wave when the innovation initially becomes irresistible and then riding it for all it is worth before it peaks and becomes the norm.
The mobile phone, the walkman the iPad have all been irresistible, and have made fortunes during the finite time period when they have been desired and before others bring alternatives out. So the big question is can we move HR from being a department and make the philosophy of HR irresistible to everyone.
Defending the un-defendable becomes all too apparent when we honestly answer the question “has HR changed much during our career?” For too many HR teams we have been influenced by little more than the words in a new book or the latest guru craze to make fundamental changes in our methods of delivery. No wonder we struggle to convince others we have the capability and reputation to deliver a new credible HR role in modern commercial life.
All things to all men?
HR is currently balancing the demands of several different roles including:
- business partners;
- internal consultants;
- operational and administrative experts;
- recruiters;
- disciplinarians;
- employee and employer advocates; and
- welfare officers and mediators.
But in attempting to be all things to all men the sustainability of this approach is clearly in doubt. The values of staff management dissipate when we are asked to honestly answer “does HR as a profession have ethics?” Sadly as the discussions progress we concluded that our multiple HR trades do little but create too many "HR Jacks" and Not enough “HR Masters”
What do employees think?
If questioned I often ponder what HR department's reputation would be in the eyes of their employees? In testing the viability of HR it would be very revealing if HR managers were to ask their workforces “Do HR rules help or hinder your organisation?” The answers will reveal just how much respect and value is placed in the HR team. The recent debate revealed even more as we also discussed the likely response if we asked staff and managers “What does the HR department do?" When HR is mentioned, do managers picture strategists, or bureaucrats, pleasant, people-pleasers or changemakers? Do employees understand and appreciate the importance of the HR department in furthering the organisation's mission and objectives? Does the HR department make an effort to market its services to the organisation?
Sadly the conclusions reached did not stretch much further than HR being seen as “those people who handle problems and do interviewing”.
And even when there was an alternative argument that suggested HR can add more of a consultative input we could not escape the challenge that the primeval survival instinct of HR people replaces positive human interactions.[4] The consequence is we fail to hold to principles and instead we develop the ability to identify what management wants and replay that back to them by telling them what they want to hear.
Which leads so obviously into the next discussion question If HR had never existed would anyone have noticed? It is easy to be flippant and suggest of course you would not miss what you have never known but as we reach deeper into this question we begin to appreciate that without HR and without the values and core principles we can uphold there is no guarantee this will be picked up by others resulting in a sterile and shallow workplace.
Sea of change
So we conclude with the question Is the future direction of HR about strategy or character? Whether we like it or not, the HR King Canutes have vanished beneath the waves and the time has arrived when we are being divested of the safety blanket of process and procedures. This precipitates us into either a new exciting phase of HR or a gradual drift away as others step up and deliver what we used to do and doing it faster and cheaper than we could.
An irresistible HR provision is built on a philosophy that sets organisations on fire. By our actions and programmes, we can promote the HR department as a flexible, adaptable, solutions-oriented partner, the first choice to whom the organisation can turn when it needs problems solved.
Editor’s note: Graham raises some huge issues for HR here. Do you agree? What are your opinions? Please share them on our LinkedIn forum.
[1] www.hrforum.co.uk
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
[3] www.forbes.com/2009/06/18/technology-obsolete-jobs-opinions-contributors-artificial-intelligence-09-myers.html
[4] Something highlighted by Mark King in his article ‘HR – your friend of foe?’ in The Guardian, Saturday 28 May 2011.