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Today I
Guest Post: Viva la Revolution!
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I like the revolution but I am wondering a couple of things. Where is the part about linking all of this to the business strategy. In other words we need our people to behave in a way that gets those desired results. Who does that linkage? Also, in performance management (strategic compensation) is that also measuring those behaviors that lead to desired results?
I think the new HR needs a new way of measuring itself. By not being accountable to the business, is how we got to be old HR.
In an “All My Life’s a Circle” nod to Harry Chapin, it sounds like there should be a movement to go back to calling our function what it was when I got in the field: Personnel. That always was a far more descriptive moniker, and the move to “human resources” in the ’80’s always seemed very hollow and self-serving to me. Chris is right: we manage people. We always have, we always will.
And with any good luck, SHRM still has boxes of ASPA letterhead in a basement somewhere!
@Cathy I think you’re right. HR (& the subsequent revolution) needs to be linked to a strategy; however, how many businesses have strategies, these days? Most companies use the word strategy when they mean ‘tactics’ or ’short-term business objectives.’ I worked for a pharma company that is losing revnue because their drugs are coming off patent. The strategy is to cut costs, reduce the workforce, and reinvest money into a dying and dry pipeline of crappy R&D products.
That’s not a strategy. That’s a big recipe for FAILURE.
So I would like to see HR and recruiting become a firewall for businesses. HR can drive strategy in companies instead of just executing on failed executive orders and assumptions. We focus too much on the how in Human Resources: how we get it done, how much it costs, and how to measure it. I’d like to focus more on the why. (‘Why’ can’t always be measured, either.)
Dude,
I declare this revolution kaput. It has failed in the past already and should be allowed to rest in peace. Changing the name of HR is in highly technical jargon “bravo sierra” (aka bovine fecal matter). Here’s a secret: Romeo was right, that’s why the words of Bill S. still ring true today. When something is right, you know it intrinsically, regardless of what it’s called. Changing what we call ourselves is a childish attempt to delay the inevitable. It’s this kind of smoke and mirrors that causes peoples intense dubiosity towards HR. “We’re not valuable? Well let’s call ourselves something else to confuse everyone, until they realize that our name has changed, but not our value, and then we’ll change it again. THE PERFECT CRIME (insert sinister laughter)” Personnel, HR, Human Capital, Recruiting, Work Force Planning, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, People Management, blah, blah, blah, the list goes on and on. Unless you can CLEARLY show your impact on the bottom line to the Executives and shareholders, then a name doesn’t matter. Have you every eaten sweetbread? Sounds great, but it’s still sauteed thymus gland.
Godin whiffed on this one: renaming HR Talent would be like renaming Finance Money. No need.
And by the way, you are a lot like the Finance dept.
The problem you have isn’t the name, it’s the level at which you’re attacking HR problems that leads to the lack of respect.
Stick with the Finance analogy: the Financial Controller manages the inflow and outflow of dollars. The nuts and bolts of financial transactions. The CFO, on the other hand, thinks strategically about the company from a financial perspective.
HR lacks a counterpart to the CFO. It’s *here* that names matter, because dubbing someone a CHRO does not a CHRO make.
The problem isn’t the need for a revolution, it’s a need to step up and start addressing issues from a strategic level that engages at political and interpersonal levels rather than a merely functional, nuts-and-bolts level.
You can “understand” strategy and still miss the boat. (Ask any manager who’s watched a newly minted build a gorgeous and completely unworkable strat plan.)
Stop worrying, stop looking for fight, stop beating yourself up. Start rolling up your sleeves and acting like a leader. Engage in the power struggles instead of whining about them or trying to stop them. If you’re company has more than one person in it, they won’t be going away. Live in the real world and stop trying to fix everyone all the time. This is what a CFO does: he doesn’t try to prop the dollar up if it loses value. He doesn’t worry that a bond might start to cry if he calls it in early. And he doesn’t think about money’s personal situation when he decides to fund with debt or equity. He simply makes the tough call.
That’s leadership, and that’s worth emulating in HR.
@Cathy – That’s definitely critical. Check out #1 in the section “The Revolution Starts Home.” I wrote, “Understand your organization
@Chris,
Great give me an example. If I invest $10,000 in “Training. The kind that influences behavior and isn
Godin whiffed on this one: renaming HR Talent would be like renaming Finance Money. No need.
And by the way, you are a lot like the Finance dept.
The problem you have isn’t the name, it’s the level at which you’re attacking HR problems that leads to the lack of respect.
Stick with the Finance analogy: the Financial Controller manages the inflow and outflow of dollars. The nuts and bolts of financial transactions. The CFO, on the other hand, thinks strategically about the company from a financial perspective.
HR lacks a counterpart to the CFO. It’s *here* that names matter, because dubbing someone a CHRO does not a CHRO make.
The problem isn’t the need for a revolution, it’s a need to step up and start addressing issues from a strategic level that engages at political and interpersonal levels rather than a merely functional, nuts-and-bolts level.
You can “understand” strategy and still miss the boat. (Ask any manager who’s watched a newly minted build a gorgeous and completely unworkable strat plan.)
Stop worrying, stop looking for fight, stop beating yourself up. Start rolling up your sleeves and acting like a leader. Engage in the power struggles instead of whining about them or trying to stop them. If you’re company has more than one person in it, they won’t be going away. Live in the real world and stop trying to fix everyone all the time. This is what a CFO does: he doesn’t try to prop the dollar up if it loses value. He doesn’t worry that a bond might start to cry if he calls it in early. And he doesn’t think about money’s personal situation when he decides to fund with debt or equity. He simply makes the tough call.
That’s leadership, and that’s worth emulating in HR
@Jimmy – far too many unnamed variables in that question. What’s the training for? Is it even necessary? What behaviors are you looking to change or influence? Why 10,000? Couldn’t it be done in-house for far less?
@Jason – KILLER response!
I’ve noticed that everyone who’s responding seems to be focusing very heavily on the “change the name” aspect, which is partially my fault as I made it the lead or hook in the article. But a majority of the article focuses on what HR/Talent Management/Personnel/Those-assholes-who-keep-whining-about-getting-a-seat-at-the-table should be doing DIFFERENTLY…
Understanding how your company makes money. Determining what your people need to be doing to support that money making strategy. Understanding how to influence employee behavior so that they actually DO the things you need them to in order to support the strategy. Inspire them to do great things!
I don’t know how to correlate a specific bottom-line ROI on that. There’s far too many other variables in a business – consumer trends, great or horrible product releases, a bad economy. I do know that people like Mark Huselid have built careers on drawing those correlations, though, and have tons of data to show that they’re possible.
Our business, in my opinion, has an indirect correlation on the bottom-line, which is one of our bigger challenges. We’ve got data saying employees who are more engaged lead to higher profits. We can measure engagement. We can measure profits. Unless you’re a ROCKSTAR statistician, it’s not easy for the average HR pro to prove that the increase in engagement is what caused the increase in profits and not the 100 other variables that occurred that quarter.
To get back to Jason’s point, at some point, yea, you just need to roll-up your sleeves and get to it.
@Chris–Actually in the pre-regulatory era of the late ’70s and and beyond, “Personnel” spent a significantly greater amount of time on true people management and organizational design kids of activities than we’re able to do now. Before there was COBRA, FMLA, ADA, HIPPA, etc etc etc, Personnel’s function was significantly different than it is today, even at the strategic level. Face it, 90% of HR now involves regulatory compliance, and that’s only going to get worse. Jason makes the point about a CFO not worrying if a bond is going to cry if you call it in early, but the CFO doesn’t have to worry about the bond suing the company. If we as a profession are going to be honest with ourselves, the real value that orgainizations perceive of HR is that of mitigating legal liablilities. That’s probably our true strategic and financial contribution and maybe that’s our only necessary metric.
If you think I’m wrong, ask yourself why it is you don’t let line managers handle their own hiring process, for example. Do you really think a CPA can’t figure out how to hire a decent accountant?! The reality is that you’re afraid the CPA might say or do something that’ll get the company sued successfully. And such it is for pretty much everything else we do.
I’m not saying that this isn’t significantly important to an organization. It is. But let’s stop trying to think we possess some kind of secret greater knowledge about “management” than any other manger in an organization. I think that will give us much greater respect at the executive level.
@Chris, that’s a great HR answer. There are always to many variables to define success and show results. Again, it’s just smoke and mirrors. Give me a quantifiable actual example of a training like you’ve described. What was the training? Why was it needed? What was the cost? What was the measurable return on investment in US dollars?
@ScottS – I didn’t realize that (I’m Gen Y, so my knowledge of HR spans back to maybe the late 70’s at the earliest). And to answer your recruiting question: I actually think a lot of hiring managers go for people they know or what they “think” makes a good employee over real data and valid selection tools. You could label that a compliance/legal issue, but I think it’s more than that. And I think compliance belongs with the legal department.
@Jimmy – If you have such clear disdain for HR, why are you reading this blog? Bottom-line return – I don’t know. As I mentioned in a comment above, HR’s impact indirectly influences the bottom line, not directly.
That doesn’t mean you can’t define success though. You asked me a pointed question: What’s the return in US dollars. Answer: Can’t tell you. If you asked me, “how do you measure success, and why do I care?” I could tell you.
Example: I gave an in-house training on career development. I didn’t use slides filled with bullet-points and charts. I used simple, engaging slides a la Presentation Zen (http://presentationzen.com). My delivery fee was $0, and the only real cost was man-hours in the training. Since the audience was exempt, the cost for that was $0 as well. Since exit surveys for this group indicated that lack of development was a primary factor in why people leave, this was an effort to correct that. The organization I was with at the time had significant development ops, but it seemed people just weren’t aware of them.
I wasn’t there long enough to see the long-term effects of this training (ie. did turnover decreased, specifically the claims that development ops were the cause). However, let’s assume turnover did decrease. I could say, “Turnover decreased, causing a savings of XX dollars in replacement fees.” But replacement fees vary by the level of the position. Also, did turnover go down because of my training, or because of a bad economy and people not wanting to leave. Or did they go down because our profits were higher this quarter so bonuses were bigger?
What I do know is that people are more satisfied with the development ops. That means they might also be more engaged, another benefit. We know these things add value, but I don’t know if it’s possible to put a specific US dollar amount on that.
@Chris, not a disdain for HR per se, but a distain for the charlatans and snake oil salespeople that infest the profession. I’ll give you an example of how to make a business case. My profession is recruiting. I’ve worked both third party and in-house. My last in-house employer said we need to hire 400 additional sales people in this particular year. I asked if quantity was the important factor or quality. Based on this companies current model, having a butt on the street was more important, an open route cost the company about $1000 a day, the position didn’t require a great deal of skill, turnover was stable, but the time and cost to hire were killing the company. Based on their current time to fill they were looking at missing out on over $12M in revenue. The recruiting budget when I walked in was (including salaries approx $300K). I said give me an extra 150K, I’ll add one body on the team (comp plus carrying costs at approx 100K) and I’ll use the rest on tool (cost me $38K in the end) to allow for some push campaigns and better CRM, and I’ll get you your 400 in under a year. I provided metrics and reporting to show our day to day, week to week, month to month and Q to Q progress. We reduced cost per hire (by more streamlined process) by an avg of $700 (variable included individual compensation of interviewers amortized over interview hours), reduced time to hire in half, and recouped the potential lost revenue.
If you ever want to see more detailed metrics to dollars analysis (my patience for typing is limited), let me know. I speak at many events for recruiters and would be happy to send you an invite.
@Jimmy – awesome break down. I actually think that training is one of the hardest things to show a bottom-line ROI for. I’m open to anything you want to share, and thanks for forcing me to stretch my brain a little bit this morning. My email is managerssandbox@gmail.com. Looking forward to hearing from you!
I want to read Jimmy’s blog.
“…not a disdain for HR per se, but a distain for the charlatans and snake oil salespeople that infest the profession.”
Truer words have not been spoken.
@Bryan – “I want to read Jimmy
Jimmy has no blog, Jimmy is still learning that the internet has uses other than online poker and youtube. Not sure how to start a blog, any suggestions would be welcome. Also, Jimmy unsure as to why he is not referring to himself in third person.
After the discussion here, some rereading of comments and such, it’s pretty clear to me that one of the big missing components from my article is metrics.
In the article, I mentioned a few functions that people management pros should perform. Do you think metrics is a separate function/group that analyzes for all, or that every function should track their own?
Like all things, I think the answer is “it depends” (in this case on organization size, structure, etc.), but generally speaking, I’d say whoever does onboarding should track onboarding metrics, whoever does recruiting should track recruiting metrics, and so on.
Reminds me of Jason Lauritsen’s 2009 Challenges to the HR Community: #7 Measure everything. (http://twitter.com/jlauritsen/status/1100403234)
@Chris, I’ve either tracked my own metrics or had a metrics person on my team. I prefer having someone else based on the level of detail we get into. Example: we do standard source effectiveness, whereby we take spend per source vs. hire per source. But we also drill deeper to measure new hire effectiveness against source effectiveness, and that’s beyond my ability to manage the data gathering. That being said, we are exploring having a seperate shared service focusing on HR metrics, but that is at least a year away.
@chris I do think the person who does the function should create the measures and track the metrics.
Good gravy, Marie.
Chris – is it Talent Management or People Management? I got lost somewhere along the way.
When I see the name Seth Godin in blog posts, I hit the snooze button.
Let’s call working in HR what it really IS: A soul-crushing job with hacks in the c-suite, whiners in middle management and bewildered and weary people on the factory line. HR has responsibility but no authority, a dose of common sense specializing in nothing.
Managers need to manage their people according to what they do & HR needs to get out of their way.
TALENT is a circus tent.
@Jenn – if you hit snooze, I’d encourage you to go back and read it again. That said, you’re absolutely right: HR is, at many organizations a soul-crushing job. Many HR pros have lots of responsibility and no authority. Many HR pros specialize in nothing.
And then there’s the ones who “get it.” The ones who stop whining and take action. The ones who try to change things.
Viva la revolution!
@Jenn – best definition of talent ever!