Thinking With No Boundaries - Red & Green Lights

I attended an HR conference last week in Atlanta and was  amazed at the number of senior HR practitioners who were so set in their thinking. The topics ranged from how to acquire talent to how to organize the HR department. Most of the participants had at least 10+ years in HR with a minimum of 6 in a senior management role. 


So what was so amazing? Let me tell you my observations and what I see as an outcome from them:

• managers were not interested, for the most part, to use social networking as a recruitment tool, not even Linkedin - my outcome from that is they are missing key passive job seekers and not utilizing the latest technology to get to talent. 
• Many were not even beginning the process of looking at the changes in health care and how it would affect their current plan designs - outcome is they will miss out on savings and current tax advantages. But with the changes in the mid-term elections they may have saved a lot of time of the Obama health care agenda is repealed. 
• Most still have a traditional HR department designed organization - outcome to me is the HR managers reporting to these people are not on the line and cannot get to problems and solutions until the issues become full blown fires. Where are these people and how can they be at the table with the CEO recommending solutions.
• Some, more than some, do not have a clear reporting relationship  with their CEO - outcome is they do not have the CEOs ear and the issues are softened by the reporting relationship (IE: reporting to a CFO, COO, or CLO)
• Most have not challenged their organization with employee self-service - outcome is this will keep the HR department in a more administrative role than a strategic role.
• Most of these HR practitioners do not know the full scope of their product lines - outcome is how can you be a business partner if you do not know the business?
• and finally, most are still doing the managers job in performance appraisals, compensation and salary administration - outcome to me is they are doing the managers job and he/she should be doing these things with HR as the final gatekeeper. 

I would be interested in what you think about these issues and how you would resolve them in your organization.