HR as a Discipline
One of the core problems in getting the most out of people is that HR gets treated as a kind of black art. Everything is wrapped in a veil of compliance, secrecy, and touchy-feeliness (I made that word up). The HR practictioner’s are often generalists who are trusted (they deal with compensation information) and well liked (that’s what HR is about isn’t it), but there is a lack of business discipline in their approach.
According to Workforce.com’s new article, HR Dinosaur’s, some HR departments view HR as an "art" rather than management science. The article advocates technology as a solution. While I don’t agree that technology alone will solve the HR problem, there is a need for systematic approaches to managing the talent in the organization. Here are four key problems from the Workforce.com article that arise from a lack of business discipline in HR.
- Silo’s: As long as their jobs remain a mystery, they are powerful. They build power by limiting information and controlling access to management on anything HR related. They use the need for secrecy around compensation and HR issues to drive this secrecy. But the strategic power of HR doesn’t come from compensation, compliance, or handling behavioral issues. There needs to be consistency, transparency, and partnership between HR and the organization when it comes to getting people in the right jobs.
- No measurements: What are the result metrics associated with HR? There don’t tend to be any. If there are any, the metrics are around how quickly jobs are filled. Not around how well the jobs are filled. Or, they are around legal and compliance issues. Everyone has the training required by law and all the paperwork is in place to protect the business from law suits. There is no value add in this, just risk management. This is like everyone else showing up to work. The metrics should be to make that there are no Knowledge, Skill, or Ability related obstacles to successful job performance. HR should be making sure that qualified people are getting hired, placed, developed, and measured so the organization can achieve its strategy.
- Relationships rule: Instead of using business results to determine HR investments, they are made based on who has the best relationships with HR. Want more money for some special training you think will benefit your employees, take the HR person to lunch and smooth talk him.
- They are not experts: This is my favorite quote from the article. They are just "highly paid HR assistants who help general managers fill out forms, get through the performance appraisal process and handle troublesome people issues."
We have reached tremendous value in organizations through process improvement and technology. In an economy that is moving towards service and knowledge as the accelerators of value, we need to establish systematic ways to leverage the talent in our organizations. This is done through the application of systematic business discipline to placing, developing and measuring the peformance of the people in our organizations.
Is HR serving a purpose beyond compensation, legal compliance, benefits, and behavioral issues in your company? Does your organization have a systematic method for ensuring that the right decisions about talent are being made? How important is this to your company today? How important will it be in the next five years? Is it time for your HR organization to start running HR with business discipline?