Blow Up HR Again - Rethink Your Business

I thought this was important enough to re-post this for all in HR 

I was on vacation in Europe for 2 weeks and had a lot of time to think, design, evaluate, and reset my HR thought process. During that time here is what I came up with, and guess what so did the HR Executive.

HR has been denigrated, criticized, scoffed at, laughed at, bureaucratically maligned organization since the 1950's. My guess is that if the current practitioners do not see the writing on the wall they will at some point be out of a job and scratching their heads asking why. Well, let me tell you now that I have an outside view looking into organizations. The have the following key flaws:

• they take time away from business from line managers and employees
• they still do not understand the business from the inside but try to use business speak as their entry into it
• there is really not a clear mission for the group and how it ties to the business
• expectations are impossible to say the least
• people really do not know what HR people do
• the systems and programs that they establish or use are counter to business  productivity
• people in general do not trust HR people (you know that drill - when they see an Hr person milling around all they can think of is bad news is coming)
• employees do not think HR is objective - only a management speaker
• what managers and supervisors don't want to handle they send to HR - sound familiar?

I can go on and on but those are some of the salient points I wanted to make. So as I was sailing in the Mediterranean this all came into real focus and I had that "a ha moment". Blow it up and start over in 2012 terms not what has been built up over the last 50+ years and multiple retooling that really did not fix the core problem.  

So I will reiterate what Jac Fitz-Enz said in the September issue of HR Executive. Solution, break up HR and restart with four distinct groups: 

1. Governance - this should fall under the CLO
2. Record Keeping ( Administration) - this should fall under the CFO 
3. Employee Relations - this should fall under the COO or Operations 
4. Strategic Development - this should report to the CEO 

From there you that the specialty functions and fit them where they best belong ( comp under the CFO, staffing under the COO etc). In today's real world business environment I feel this is what we should do with HR. I know a lot of you will not agree with this approach since it puts your job in jeopardy but if you really think about it this is a 21st century strategic approach and that is what this blog is all about. 

How to Understand the Big Picture

This quick post is really for those HR professionals who are not at the VP, EVP, or CHRO level. 


Make sure you see the big picture in your organization and not be fixated on the lower level HR issues you deal with on a daily basis. To do this you need to understand the "Big Picture" and understand the cornerstones of the strategy, technology corridors your company plays in and the frontiers your organization will play in and blaze new trails. 


So how do you do this when you are confronted with the day-to-day issues and projects you have to deal with to meet your VPHR's or CHRO's objectives. I found that the best way is to make sure you and your fellow HR staffers understand the strategy from a grass roots basis. What do I mean from that, here is what and how to do it:

• make sure you staff meetings have on the agenda the overall strategy of the business,
• ensure that your head of HR also provides a detailed map of how the company intends to address each strategy component, and how that effects your direct HR responsibility,
• understand completely what the competitive issues are and how the organization will address them,
• make sure that the cornerstones of the organizational strategy is linked to your division or line of sight responsibility, and 
• make sure that the managers and superiors you manage have the same understanding.

I have found though my many years of HR experience that the "Big Picture" is only understood by a choice few and the information does not always flow down stream the way it should. I have also found that if you are not excited about what you do and the company you work for your interest is not where it should be and for that reason, you should move on or get lost in the maze. 


A quick word to the wise - be aggressive, assertive, and intelligent on how you get the information without making waves along the way.