Like recruitment, Human Resources is a profession that is ever changing and developing. We examine how the various evolving satirical characters of one Edmund Blackadder might have approached a career in HR?
Ahead of this, judging by some of the correspondence I'm receiving, I think it's time to be making two very important distinctions:
On the one hand I work with people who I'd refer to as HR Pragmatists who fully accept the necessary changes in their approach to hiring, readily taking onboard new ideas from outside of the HR profession. On the other, I also try to engage with their dogmatic HR counterparts; those resisting all attempts at reform as a challenge to their authority, irrespective of the negative effect their stance is having on the very organisations (hence employees) they are paid to serve.
Make no mistake, this campaign aims to support HR functions and get people issues squarely on the CEO's agenda. Anyone who is seeing this as a threat should, perhaps, take a long hard look at their actions and question whether they are acting as part of the hiring practice solution or the problem?
Personnel Manager The First
Meeting with recruitment agency suppliers today, I am struck at how far 'the recruiter' has evolved over the past twenty years, to the extent that most organisations have a relationship with one of more key recruiters, whom they trust with the most sensitive information and strategically important assignments.
I have always been a firm believer that the private recruitment industry is a by-product of the way organisations approach hiring their workforce. If the calibre of recruiters has evolved, then it stands to reason that HR has evolved too; meaning recruitment training no longer has to focus so heavily on sales techniques to get around old-style Personnel Managers, who would have rather advertised a vacancy twenty times than pay an 'unqualified' recruiter a fee.
HR Manager The Third
Moving on from the early staff welfare beginnings of Personnel, when research began to reveal that the early pioneers of good people practice were right , those Personnel Pragmatists found themselves being overtaken by a dangerous new breed of Human Resource Manager; one that seized the opportunity for power over all-things 'people' and, despite having not the slightest inkling as to the operational needs, politically manipulated themselves into a position where they were able to dictate organisational policy.
Human Capital Manager Goes Forth
The next part of the HR evolution sees the McKinsey entitled 'War For Talent' putting the HR profession in a state of trench warfare, with reports and articles firing great guns of criticism from all quarters at the HR Dogmatics', - and HR Pragmatists finding themselves caught up in the cross-fire.
- "Not in touch with the business"
- "Too bogged down by red tape"
- "Unable to support the needs of the organisation"
- "Insular and defensive in its thinking"
Having shouted for years about being marginalised as a department, now, all of a sudden when the accountants start to believe in the importance of people management to performance, everyone starts moaning to HR that it is too detached!
I know from personal experience that there are brilliant HR managers struggling against institutionalised apathy towards the need for a business approach to hiring practice. They would dearly love to have the time and top-down support to implement the kind of processes and practices that people like me share with them, instead of having yet another load of administrative and compliance tasks to look after, or their own performance measured by cost reduction as opposed to cost-effectiveness.
A (HR) Christmas Carol?
At a meeting in London last year of human resource thought leaders, the chairman drew the meeting towards its conclusions with the following comment:
"The stars are aligning for HR to take its rightful place of strategic importance and authority".
Agreeing wholeheartedly, I further ventured that ensuring organisations were adopting hiring practices that put the right people, in the right place, at the right time, was the most direct and tangible way of demonstrating value to those managers and executives who question HR's contribution. I'm not sure everyone there fully understood the relevance of the point.
There is a credibility war being waged right now, of which the War For Talent is just a sub-plot. HRDs probably need to concede strategic control of the hiring issue in order to achieve an overall victory. Defeat on the hiring front (which sticking to out-moded practices will virtually guarantee) could well mean that HR as a profession misses a glorious chance.
HRDs are the rightful managers of the hiring process, but they should not be the owners of it. Hiring problems are business problems NOT HR problems. We know this because, if an organisation fails on its objectives either in terms of productivity, profits or stock performance because of poor resourcing, it's the CEO, CFO or operational executives that will face the music.
There is no template strategy for HR to apply over the hiring crisis that is damaging the UK's productivity. The solution starts with the business plans and organisational objectives - the very part from which virtually the whole world agrees that HR is furthest removed.
This is a lighthouse principal that HR can either work around, or demolish its own credibility against.
Closing with the satirical theme, much like the character in the BBC's Blackadder's Christmas Carol, the HR profession faces choices that can either lead to glory or oblivion. HR Pragmatists can either be part of the solution and act on the Forwantofanail.org message- or they can allow the profession to be dragged back by the inertia of HR Dogmatics. Who knows how far that might set the profession back in terms of organisational standing?
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