In the past 10 years HR has been dominated by the concepts developed by David Ulrich which has resulted in rise of the HR Business Partner and a strong focus on measuring the impact HR has on organisations.
For many HR Directors this focus on partnering and measurement has been part of their “crusade” for Board membership.
Has this worked and has HR demonstrated that it is fit to have a seat at the top table?
A recent study seems to suggest that the profession has been unsuccessful in its endeavours. This research found that whilst more than eight out of 10 of Chief Executives view people as vital to all aspects of organizational performance fewer than a quarter believe that HR can play a crucial role in strategy formulation and operational success. Further a mere three percent of participants described their organization as world-class in people management and HR, while nearly half (46 percent) said that their capabilities are only adequate and need to improve.
This, I believe, is down to “The Business Delusion”; being the notion that you must focus on demonstrating where HR adds value to the business to get a place at the top table. HR departments have spent millions over the past 10 years not on the “pink and fluffy” but rather focusing on developing suites of HR metrics and service level agreements which they believe demonstrate that the function has a firm grasp on the “hard stuff”.
I wondered how best to explain the business delusion and asked my colleague Julian Burton to help me visualise the phenomenon.
Whilst we not suggesting that HR should stop looking at the numbers what we are saying is that spending too much time on the numbers distracts HR from their primary role creating “meaning” in the workplace (more on this topic soon). HR should be clearly be focusing on the people within the business.
My own experience supports the quoted research and I am often told by executives that their greatest challenge is people management. Perhaps this is a better picture of reality in organisations?
4 comments:
Hmmm... Scott, in my experience we need a good combo between the hard [number] and soft [people] skills. If we have too much emphasis on one or the other, our organization's productivity can stall.
Interesting images your artist drew for you, Scott. I like the fact that you have fresh images to depict numbers in two ways.
"the greatest challenge they face is people management" - sorry if this has been misquoted from the bottom of the post.
My first boss once told me something which is very true
"Managers get the workers they deserve"
Meaning you can't talk to and treat people like sheep and then wonder why they won't stay extra to complete a key project or whatever
I completely agree with you Scott. Of course, HR needs to be seen as credible by the business, and if it doesn't understand the business, finance, metrics etc, then it's not going to be credible.
But HR doesn't gain ever more credibility by developing ever more understanding of the business. It's unique contribution has to come from an understanding and ability to engage and develop capability of people.
I think Jeffrey Pfeffer said it best:
‘Equipping human resource managers with additional analytic tools and language is all to the good, as far as it goes. In the end, however, all one accomplishes is being a more skilled player at someone else’s game. By so doing, one buys into the ultimate sensibility and reasonableness of the basic measures and ideas in the first place; this is often a mistake. Being skilled at the wrong game is not a very promising strategy for either the company or the human resources function. It is unlikely that human resources will ever be able to win playing the number games against those with much more experience who also get to set the rules. Even if they do win, the victory may have extracted a large cost in terms of losing the distinct perspective and competence of human resources in the process of becoming like other staff functions… If all human
resources becomes is finance with a different set of measures and topic domains,then its future indeed is likely to be grim.’
(See
http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2007/07/hrs-role-in-strategic-people-management.html ).
But I love your pictures too.
Jon.
Thanks for the feedback folks and especially for the quotes and experiences.
What worries me about much of what is done in HR at the moment is what we have depicted as the two people with the question marks above their heads.
How can HR create meaning in the workplace if it is busy with the numbers?
Bit like that correction to the bible I have suggested previously,
...Do unto others as they would have done unto "them"
Simple really!
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