What’s wrong with HR?

Standing up for HR means gaining CEOs confidence, becoming strategic. This question can be interpreted in two ways:  “What’s wrong with the HR profession in general?”  Or “What’s wrong with those (specific) people in my HR department?”  In most cases, it means the second question, but in many cases, it really implies the first — What’s wrong with the HR profession? Human Resource Management (HR for short) is not the easiest of management functions in our organizations.  The HR professional is expected to do everything from hiring a new employee “now!” to firing another “because I say so!” And in-between, they are perpetually fighting fires. What’s more, on top of all of this, the HR professional, like the American comedian, Rodney Daingerfield, “gets no respect.” 

HR, the least respected ?
Human Resource Management is possibly one of the least respected of management functions in organizations, and yet it is arguably the most important.  How come this paradox? One of the reasons is that most people don’t understand what HR is really about.  Many people, including CEOs and senior managers still think that HR is about organising family days and Christmas parties, recording sick and vacation leave and writing warning letters — the “soft” stuff.  Not that these are not important functions, but they are not the real stuff that modern HR is made of. With the growing recognition that human capital — people — are the new competitive advantage, Human Resource Management is evolving into a leading management function geared toward leveraging human capital for organisational success.

The “new” Human Resource Management is about helping to formulate corporate strategy and then contributing to the achievement of that strategy by attracting talented people to the organisation; developing retention strategies to keep them motivated, focused and challenged; helping the organisation to manage downsizing, outsourcing, reskilling, organisational transformation, and all the employee relations issues that these challenges produce. At the same time, HR is expected to do more with less — less people, less money, less time, less support. Human Resource Management is under pressure to perform and now has to “step up to the wicket”. 

Loss of confidence 
In a survey of local HR professionals conducted by Quality Consultants Ltd. at last year’s Human Resource Management Association’s conference, only 24 percent felt that their CEO had a lot of confidence in them.  As many as 18 percent believed that their CEOs had little or no confidence in them.  Even fewer HR professionals felt that their line managers had confidence in them and as many as 24 percent felt that their line managers had little or no confidence in them — and this is from the HR professionals’ own admission!  They didn’t fare any better with their employees.  In fact, they fared worse, with only 12 percent saying that they felt their employees had a lot of confidence in them and 35 percent saying that employees had little or no confidence in them. These are scathing results for the local HR profession.  No wonder, then, that in our biennial Employee Benchmark Surveys, HR tends to get a beating from employees.

When the HR professionals were asked what they thought was the greatest challenge facing the profession locally, most respondents cited acceptance of HR by their CEOs and line managers.  Responses included “being accepted as business partners,” “acceptance of the value of HR,” “getting CEOs and line managers to take HR seriously,” “credibility at the executive management and board levels,” “winning the confidence of employees in the organisation,” “getting everyone to believe that HR makes a difference.”

Winning acceptance                          
Interestingly, the second greatest challenge identified was being an effective HR professional.  Here professionals gave responses like “ actually putting into action what HRM is supposed to do and not just spouting the theory,” “understanding why HR does not have the impact on the line managers and executives that it should have,” “adding value at the strategic level,” “HR’s track record of late is not all that great locally,” “we spend too much of our time with the day-to-day issues. We have made some progress but too many of us still need to get with the programme.” So HR professionals know what the problem is — acceptance, credibility, effectiveness — and they also know the solution — the need to “get with the programme,” to add value, to contribute to the bottom-line, to become strategic, to have personal credibility, to deliver results. 

These are the “new” HR competencies that HR professionals need in order to be effective managers of their organizations’ human capital.  When HR professionals develop these new competencies and demonstrate them in their organisations, they will be more likely to win acceptance from their CEOs, peers and employees.  They will be more likely to turn what’s wrong with HR into what’s right with HR.

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Guardian Life. You are invited to send your comments to guardianlife@ghl.co.tt