Diane Weston remarked: "I would love to have the chance to work with a
company ready, willing, and able to rethink HR in concert with other
corporate goals and strategies..."
Diane, the usual obstacle to this in organizations is the HR professionals
themselves. HR professionals tend to come in one of two general kinds:
The "specialist" (i.e., compensation, recruitment, benefits, training,
etc.) or the "generalist" (i.e. HR strategist, change agent, etc.). In my
experience, regardless of category, most HR people are very separated from
the actual work of the enterprise. The role of specialists is about
equivalent to the role of the airline ticket agent in my vacation -
essential in one way but irrelevant in all ways that matter. The role of
most generalists is gadfly - "reminding" operations folks about the
"people" side of things, and gauging managers on their "people skills".
For example, if you ask most HR people to design a developmental program
for executives or managers, very few will include cross-functional
operational learning, and even fewer will include in-depth study of the
individual's operational disciplines. Many HR executives pride themselves
on their knowledge of the business of their organizations, but very few
can tell you what steps they have recommended or taken to manage the
workforce as "our most important resource" (check out the pages of
Personnel Journal or HR Executive). Indeed, many that I have encountered
are ignorant of resource management in general, and think of "human
resource management" as a concatenation of personnel skills. Staffing
forecasts are often the extent of "stategic thinking" in HR in my
(admittedly limited) experience.
This is now changing quite rapidly, as senior management teamwork becomes
the new paradigm for enterprise management. Right up through 1994, the
Baldrige criteria looked at HR (very rigorously, by the way) in terms of
proliferation and implementation of concepts which were understood to
impact the company's overall performance (well-trained people do a better
job, so look at how well the company trains people). Shifting to reflect
more wholistic ideas of business performance, the 95 criteria focus more
on business outcomes. It would not be at all surprising if in the next
couple of years companies which treat the workforce as both human and
resources through structures and strategies aimed at tapping the energies
of all participants in the business were to become the model for the next
crop of faddish business books...
--Jack Hirschfeld What do you see when you turn out the lights? jack@his.com