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3 Things HR Can Do to Make a Difference

Jan 03, 2010 / Guest Blogger / Trackback

Guest Post by Peter Lanc, F.C.I.P.D. (Fel­low of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel Development)

We all remem­ber our math class and those inter­minable equa­tions. Well, for some of us it’s been a while but mem­o­ries linger like per­cep­tions!  I am often asked what do you do?  (You HR peo­ple!) It seems as long as I can remem­ber I have been asked that.

Here’s the thing, it’s a great question.

Just get a few HR folk in the same room and ask the ques­tion. I tried it once and we all said dif­fer­ent things. Blast and they talk about alignment!

I was momen­tar­ily speech­less, reflec­tive and then pas­sion­ately said,  “I am a cul­ture agent, I make a busi­ness grow and design a place where peo­ple want to be and give of their best. I work on the soft fluffy stuff, which actu­ally is the real hard stuff that is the glue to every­thing, and I remind my naysay­ers that not much fan­tas­tic hap­pens with­out peo­ple all work­ing together, enthused and engaged!”

As the con­ver­sa­tion advanced, eyes widened and I was given a curi­ous look. I thought to myself that we have much to do (as a pro­fes­sion), peo­ple don’t get it because we don’t get it.

We need to look in the mir­ror and ask our­selves how we are going to make a REAL dif­fer­ence.  Not by sim­ply respond­ing to a perception-functional role but how to fast-forward the time machine into the future state model.

I am a proud HR pro­fes­sional, it’s in my blood, and yet, the per­cep­tion of HR is get­ting old! Why do peo­ple still think we are the “wel­fare depart­ment or just hire and fire and work on benefits”?

What is it that’s old I hear you ask?  Well it’s sim­ply the bar­rage of insults the HR pro­fes­sion con­tin­ues to get!

And … I won­der are we get­ting the per­cep­tion we deserve?

After all, we are pro­fes­sion­als. We get diplo­mas and degrees and train­ing and edu­ca­tion and we have insti­tu­tions and chap­ters etc. etc. So why have we not bro­ken out of the mold?

I recently heard that the only peo­ple who go into HR are those that could not make it in busi­ness.  I also heard from a fel­low Twit­terer that it’s all in the mind of the HR folk them­selves!! Well that is a great dis­ser­vice to our thou­sands of pro­fes­sion­als out there on the front line. That view has to come from some­one who is as dis­con­nected as the “cur­rent state” I am seeing.

Oh no, I just had a flash­back to the movie Dirty Harry, to when he gets busted and is sent to H.R. Can any­one remem­ber those fate­ful East­wood lines???

The days of being sim­ply great at the trans­ac­tional stuff are long gone and in the words of Mor­gan Free­man, in one of my other favorite movies, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, “We have to get busy liv­ing or get busy dying.”

For HR it means get­ting busy adding value and engag­ing the tal­ent in our organizations.

It’s sim­ply wrong that engage­ment lev­els in the USA are a woe­ful 20 some­thing %. That means 4 out of 5 peo­ple are not giv­ing of their best. Now that is just not right, and what are we, the “peo­ple pro­fes­sion,” doing about that (and I don’t mean sim­ply con­duct­ing surveys!)?

It has been sim­ply too many years for us to be hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion about HR being at the Lead­er­ship Table.

“If we are still not there then we are not there because? (Look in the mir­ror!) Account­abil­ity starts with you!”

I have been think­ing about this for a while and thank Bob Tarver for send­ing me a great arti­cle on the sub­ject of  “HR as Change Agents”.  My thought when I read it was that change has sim­ply passed much of HR by.

Michael Lee Stal­lard, in his book Fired Up or Burned Out, enthuses us by talk­ing about con­nec­tions and the thrive chain. Right on!! Thanks for remind­ing us. Why do we need to be reminded I wonder?

Well, it’s true, “Com­mon sense is not very com­mon and busi­ness sense is even less com­mon.” And, both are crit­i­cal com­pe­ten­cies that we share with a CEO! Stallard’s wis­dom was con­sol­i­dated when over the week­end I watched that fas­ci­nat­ing movie Into the Wild and in the words of the young Chris McCan­d­less, “Rela­tion­ships come from every­thing we do – not sim­ply peo­ple– God gave us the world.” The great­est leader of all time gave us a clue over 2000 years ago!

Both Stal­lard, and then Ulrich and Brock­bank in their book The HR Value Propo­si­tion, remind us that we need to look at the value chain.  They remind us that peo­ple don’t pay for what they don’t want! They only pay for what they rec­og­nize as valu­able to them. Why do we for­get that?

So I say, reverse the golden rule! I mean it works, but when I think of the golden rule I think of I will treat you like I want to be treated! Then I think to myself whoa… that’s not right. That means you don’t have to even bother ask­ing me what I want or find out what my val­ues are and assume I am like you! Methinks not!

So my plea is to treat me like I want to be treated. That means, you have guessed it, you need to ASK me what I want and what is impor­tant to me.

Another con­cept com­ing up:

“Ask the cus­tomer what they want and when you give it to them you have started the process of “like­li­hood to recommend.”

Trans­late that mes­sage into how we serve and impact what we do for our stake­hold­ers inter­nally and exter­nally includ­ing the com­mu­ni­ties in which we live and sud­denly rela­tion­ships and busi­ness get bet­ter! Believe me, per­cep­tions will change and the seat at the table will become avail­able, you will have not only earned it but they will want you to be there.

So what do we in HR need to do? Boils down to three things!

My 2010 Decade List

Ask our­selves three Ques­tions – Green Yel­low and Red Lights

  1. What we are going to start doing?
  2. What we are going to con­tinue doing?
  3. What are we going to stop doing?

Get these three things right and we will change per­cep­tions and we will be mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in our pro­fes­sional and per­sonal roles. Now that’s some­thing to shout about! And inci­den­tally, it will give us the voice we seek and the lead­er­ship role we absolutely should aspire to.

So start mak­ing those lists and share them in the com­ments. We will do a fol­low up posting!!

Peter is a highly regarded, suc­cess­ful and per­son­able Business-Human Resource Leader with achieve­ments in deliv­er­ing strate­gic H.R. and change man­age­ment pro­grams in Europe and North Amer­ica. He has worked in num­ber of busi­ness sec­tors includ­ing tele­coms, auto­mo­tive, health care, tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing, lean advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, edu­ca­tion and the pub­lic sec­tor. His brand is “Turn­ing strat­egy into real­ity”. Peter enjoys life, net­work­ing and build­ing life long rela­tion­ships, read­ing and golf. You can tweet with him at @peter_lanc.


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  • kather­inemoody

    As a recruiter who does a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of my exec­u­tive searches in the HR func­tion, I love this post and hope every HR pro­fes­sional reads it and takes these thoughts seri­ously. I think HR has an addi­tional chal­lenge in an orga­ni­za­tion in that the HR lan­guage is not the lan­guage of the CEO. So HR has to be able to trans­late for those exec­u­tives who do not under­stand how the good work HR does actu­ally trans­lates into the bot­tom line of a thriv­ing busi­ness. Should it be evident/obviously/no-brainer? Dis­cus­sion for when we all have tall drinks with fruit and umbrel­las in them. For now, please be able to leap into the CEO’s world. It helps when you’re sit­ting at the table where you truly belong.

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      kather­inemoody — I vote to have a fruit and umbrel­las for the tall drinks at the recruiter com­mune bar. In the mean­time thanks for push­ing the chair to the table.

  • http://www.michaelleestallard.com/ Michael Lee Stallard

    Peter,

    Thank you for ref­er­enc­ing my book. This dis­cus­sion has been helpful.

    Here’s what I’m per­son­ally think­ing about these days on this topic. Cor­po­rate Exec­u­tive Board research shows that on aver­age only one out of ten employ­ees are engaged and aligned with their organization’s goals. For that rea­son, I think it’s wise at the begin­ning of each year for HR to help the lead­er­ship team to go back to the basics. Most orga­ni­za­tions miss the oppor­tu­nity to renew at the begin­ning of each year a shared annual vision among their mem­bers. The shared annual vision comes about from answer­ing the fol­low­ing ques­tions: where are we going?; why is it impor­tant?; how are we going to get there?; and, what’s my (each member’s) role? When a lead­er­ship team takes the time to answer these ques­tions and hold con­ver­sa­tions through­out the orga­ni­za­tion to help ensure that there is clar­ity about the vision and val­ues, it helps bring about strate­gic align­ment and improves employee engage­ment. In addi­tion, I’m find­ing that more orga­ni­za­tions are wisely invest­ing time through­out the year to dis­cuss the “how we will” get there (i.e. our val­ues) and, in doing so, mak­ing it clear “how we will not” get there (i.e. what behav­ior is not accept­able because it is incon­sis­tent with our val­ues). In these con­ver­sa­tions, par­tic­i­pants share exam­ples of how we are liv­ing up to our val­ues, how we are not and where we are at risk of fail­ure to live up to our values.

    Here’s another area that HR lead­ers might con­sider focus­ing on. Most orga­ni­za­tions are good at defin­ing what they expect of employ­ees in terms of annual tasks. They are not so good at defin­ing what lead­ers are expected to do for employ­ees then mea­sur­ing and hold­ing them account­able. Every orga­ni­za­tion should con­duct an annual employee engage­ment sur­vey to pro­vide account­abil­ity and the ques­tions in the sur­vey should express what lead­ers are expected to bring to employ­ees. A lead­ers per­for­mance review, pay and pro­mo­tion poten­tial must reflect their per­for­mance in the realm of employee engage­ment. I was just speak­ing at an orga­ni­za­tion that counts among its employ­ees some of the bright­est minds in the world and yet they were not doing this.

    These things sound basic, I know, but how many orga­ni­za­tions do these basics well? I believe HR lead­ers can and should take the lead in these areas.

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thanks for bring this to the dis­cus­sion. I agree with your thoughts. These may be the basics but are the build­ing blocks to tal­ent engagement.

      My chal­lenge to the HR world is lets get mov­ing! WE are the “change agents” in this role.

      Yet what best prac­tices are out there to raise engage­ment lev­els? Who is being account­able for the whole engage­ment process from hire through to job align­ment, achiev­ing excep­tional per­for­mance, rais­ing peo­ple to their high­est lev­els of com­pe­tence, ensur­ing the check and bal­ance on vision and job align­ment etc etc.

      As always Michael you bring wis­dom to the dis­cus­sion, for that I thank you. HR Lead­ers take head of these words and SRAT fig­ur­ing out what you are going to do!

      • http://karlaporter.com kar­la­porter

        I started to reply but it got kind of lengthy so I turned it into a post here http://sn.im/u101q.

  • shen­nee

    Great post Peter. I am look­ing for­ward to more con­ver­sa­tions with you!
    Happy New year~
    Shen­nee

  • http://twitter.com/pawspagal Margo Rose

    This is a super cool post. I love where you went with it, and I really like the points you made, and the ques­tions you asked. I will mull these over. Thanks for writ­ing such a won­der­ful post.

  • sak­ibkhan

    Some great points there Peter and I like your three questions.

    I think we need to be clear about the goals of HR. In broad terms we can say there are two main goals: one is of eco­nomic (help­ing the busi­ness to grow) and other is socio-political (or social legit­i­macy). Each HR func­tion needs to be clear about their own eco­nomic and socio-political goals within the con­text and then ask your three ques­tions i.e. iden­tify areas that are really adding value to the busi­ness and get rid of those which are not (sim­i­lar to lean concept).

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thanks for your insights. I try to keep things sim­ple and con­tinue to ask myself a num­ber of basic questions:

      1.What is it that I do to make a dif­fer­ence and add value to “my” busi­ness”
      2. Is what I do make a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic or strate­gic dif­fer­ence,
      3. Do I help man­agers do their jobs bet­ter,
      4. Do I do things ( includ­ing poli­cies and prac­tices and pro­to­cols) that engage peo­ple in ways that the could only dream of.

      So I agree! Thanks. On the sub­ject of lean man­u­fac­tur­ing processes they are key : the real suc­cess fac­tor though is the cul­ture required to drive
      the changes

      • http://karlaporter.com kar­la­porter

        Whether HR changes or not, thank you Peter for get­ting peo­ple to visit the site and leave com­ments — some­thing I have largely failed at =)

  • paris22

    Peter, great post! Here are a few imme­di­ate prob­lems that need to be addressed. First one is that HR needs to rec­og­nize there is a prob­lem, which I don’t believe many HR Pro­fes­sion­als do. I recall lis­ten­ing to a Blog Talk Radio show a cou­ple of months ago when an indus­try pro­fes­sional com­mented that the only peo­ple who keep talk­ing about HR being dead is HR, so if they stop talk­ing about it the prob­lem will go away. Very wise com­ment com­ing from some­one who holds a promi­nent posi­tion within the lead­ing HR Orga­ni­za­tion in the coun­try and some­one I would want on my team (NOT). Sec­ond, peo­ple who have been out of the indus­try longer than Ronald Rea­gan or Bill Clin­ton have been out of office need to stop tout­ing them­selves as HR gurus or pro­fes­sion­als. I talk to peo­ple every day who are in HR and are still look­ing for that so called seat at the table. It reminds me of the quest for the “Holy Grail” where the search seems to always fall short. Lastly, it is time to get new blood in com­pa­nies, try some new ideas and start mov­ing indus­try for­ward. For too long HR has been run with a closed door pol­icy where only the cho­sen have been let in, where every­thing is sug­ared coated enough to make you ill. Please does HR Pro­fes­sion­als really believe that peo­ple can’t see right through the phony facade many por­trait. In too many instances HR is man­aged by peo­ple who only hired peo­ple that think like they do. You were either a fol­lower or you were an out­sider.
    In a time when many of the func­tions of HR can be eas­ily out­sourced you have to won­der if change doesn’t come soon will it ever as many com­pa­nies are learn­ing to man­age with sig­nif­i­cantly smaller groups.
    For all those who are truly try­ing to bring change for the bet­ter to the indus­try, I wish them all the suc­cess they need in mak­ing it hap­pen for every­one else time for a career change!

    Look for­ward to your fol­low up post.

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thanks Paul. I AGREE the Pro­fes­sion needs to get out there and see what is hap­pen­ing! They need to do what we ask all of us to do, talk to the cus­tomer and find out whta is hap­pen­ing at the grass roots.To off­set the dis­cus­sion like a curve ball is miss­ing the mark.

      Account­abil­ity starts with the Pro­fes­sional groups who espouse the the­ory. and and talk a good story. They are so mis­aligned it would appear that the very pro­fes­sion­als who are doing their very best have no lead­er­ship. Reminds me of a story : “There are my men I bet­ter has­ten to catch them as I am their leader”

    • http://renegadehr.net/ Chris Fer­di­nandi — Rene­gade HR

      Paris,

      Great insights in your com­ment! I can’t say all aspects of HR should be opened up (and for legal rea­sons, many of them can­not), but I agree that as a pro­fes­sion we’re far too secre­tive about far too many things.

      If we think we’ve made a sound busi­ness deci­sion that we would stand by, why not just be hon­est about it and offer full dis­clo­sure to employ­ees. And if that’s not the case… per­haps it’s not the right decision?

      Cheers!

      Chris

  • trishm­c­far­lane

    Peter– very inter­est­ing post that will make each of us think. As I see it, there are two camps of HR pros. The first camp is per­fectly happy being known as the group that han­dles the admin­is­tra­tive and func­tional aspects of human resources. I think we need these peo­ple and I ques­tion whether you would ever get these pros to want to think strate­gi­cally. The sec­ond camp is the one who wants to be con­sid­ered a major con­trib­u­tor to how a busi­ness is run. For pros with this drive, they grav­i­tate to orga­ni­za­tions that value HR in this way. These are the peo­ple who know how to speak the lan­guage of busi­ness and demon­strate the value of HR from a finan­cial stand­point. Many orga­ni­za­tions do not have a cul­ture that sup­ports HR pro­fes­sion­als behav­ing in this way, so it can be chal­leng­ing to find a fit. I think we’ll always have this divi­sion in HR.

    So the real chal­lenge is for each of us read­ing your post to deter­mine if we’re “Camp 1″ or “Camp 2″. Then we can deter­mine if our start, con­tinue, stop list matches the orga­ni­za­tion we are serv­ing. If not, move on. If it does, do great things. Either way, HR is alive and well in so many forms. I wel­come the chance to see how each of us embraces 2010 and the changes it may bring!

    Really enjoyed your post and look for­ward to other comments.

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thank you very much for your gen­er­ous wisdom.

      I really like the idea of the two camps. That is where the chal­lenge is there! I mean I won­der if Camp 1 becomes a resource that can be region­al­ized or out­sourced. There are many call cen­ters already in place on other ser­vices, why not in this arena. I am con­cerned that this trans­ac­tional focused group has much of a long term life ( I think (?) it does but in a dif­fer­ent frame­work over the next 10 years. To bal­ance this I am all for retain­ing the high touch areas of HR and that is an area for review as well. So alive and well today may look very dif­fer­ent and has to be shoudl we be hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion in 10 years. Thank you immensely for your comments

      Camp 2 I agree, we all need to focus on the added value areas and as long as we see engage­ment lev­els in the USA as low as they are we need Camp 2 folks to fig­ure out what they can do to raise these lev­els. I have not even touched on the crit­i­cal area which is explod­ing before us .. that of hav­ing the low­est lev­els of trust ever in our busi­ness world.

      • Joan Gins­berg

        While I agree with you that there are cer­tainly two con­cep­tual camps — does the HR pro really have to decide WHICH camp they belong to? I am think­ing, as usual, of the small busi­ness prac­ti­tioner. Many busi­nesses just can’t afford to have a Camp 1 and a Camp 2, and I am really wor­ried that out­sourc­ing every­thing will bring an end to a lot of HR prac­tice, par­tic­u­larly in the small business.

        I would much rather see an attempt to teach the Camp 1 trans­ac­tion­al­ist (did I make up that word?) why they should begin to think about Camp 2 strat­egy and why it is impor­tant for them per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally, and for their busi­ness in the long run. While I am sure that there are some that will resist, I really think that most are just uninformed.

        I keep going back to my per­sonal expe­ri­ence. While I was a work­ing HR solo prac­ti­tioner, I WISH I knew about some of this stuff. I wasn’t resis­tant, just igno­rant. So I am going back to my 2010 HR Mantra: REACH OUT. Help oth­ers find a bet­ter path.

        • http://karlaporter.com kar­la­porter

          Joan — My per­sonal thoughts on small busi­ness is that there will always be a place for HR Gen­er­al­ists. Some­times that may be com­bined with being the “Office Man­ager”. My office has 25 and I am not the Office Man­ager (we have one) but we do out­source pay­roll and ben­e­fits (to local providers). I’m per­fectly ok with that, it allows me to focus on the orga­ni­za­tions strate­gic goals. Help me out.… am I miss­ing some­thing? Thanks for your visit and par­tic­i­pa­tion in this great con­ver­sa­tion! ~Karla

          • Joan Gins­berg

            I guess I didn’t explain myself well at all — sorry! My con­cern in a truly small busi­ness (less than 100 total employ­ees) is that some­times the only rea­son a busi­ness owner (and these busi­nesses are all gen­er­ally pri­vately owned) is even will­ing to hire an HR pro (defined by me as some­one who spends more than 50% of their time on HR) is for the trans­ac­tional stuff. This is the work that scares and intim­i­dates the own­ers — get­ting the proper paper­work done. If the busi­ness out­sources too much of that — then they don’t see why they don’t just out­source ALL of it. And around me the small busi­ness does out­source all of it — they use PEOs. These PEOs have no strate­gic com­po­nent what­so­ever,
            but they sell them­selves to the small busi­ness by claim­ing that they save the employ­ment cost of an HR per­son. Most of the small busi­nesses around me are using PEOs.

            I agree that we need less paper push­ing — but I think that HR pros need to reach out to those paper push­ers and HELP THEM under­stand what they could do dif­fer­ently and how they could help their busi­ness own­ers grow. I don’t see the value of ask­ing the belea­guered HR pro to choose up sides. Or their own­ers may choose up for them.

        • Wool­ly­lanc

          Thanks Joan. I think as you say the busi­ness has to decide what it needs. I do also believe the HR per­son also has to iden­tify his/her strengths and align them with the needs of the business.

          In recent work with a cou­ple of retail­ers ( small busi­ness own­ers,) what was of value in addi­tion to the basic HR stuff was the busi­ness sense.

          I agree that the trans­for­ma­tional — basic work needs to be done. I think it is term lim­ited when it comes to remain­ing in house.

          My ques­tion always is what does an HR per­son “do” that could be done in house or con­tracted. The more strate­gic and aligned the work the more it will be part of the busi­ness team.
          There needs to be much more aware­ness — edu­ca­tion by the HR pro­fes­sion of the impli­ca­tions of the role of HR. and so I agree with your point. I want to see more Busi­ness minded HR peo­ple, we do not need pen pushers!

  • Wool­ly­lanc

    Ok Chris I will give you a starter, this list to be defined and devel­oped to make it your own. Also some per­sonal to do’s to sup­port the how!

    Start: work­ing the tal­ent process and the intan­gi­bles. And cre­atively imag­iner the trans­ac­tional stuff into effi­cient processes that sup­port busi­ness per­for­mance. I know that some of this is still nec­es­sary but it should not be all consuming!

    Con­tinue: To ask ques­tions like: “If this was my busi­ness what would I do dif­fer­ently?” How would I pri­or­i­tize for fast gain?

    Stop: accept­ing that what we do today is all that we can do. There is no future in that and today’s per­cep­tions will con­tinue to haunt us.

    Also we need to think what it is we need to work on– after all we can­not take care for oth­ers if don’t take care of ourselves:

    So here are some per­sonal “to do’s” things to work on as HR Professionals

    1. Develop our lead­er­ship skills – give direc­tion and a sense of hope
    2. Develop Busi­ness intu­ition– busi­ness sense and start con­nect­ing the dots
    3. Eval­u­ate every­thing with a business-leadership bias
    4. Start using your con­nec­tions– a leader under­stands that they can­not do it alone
    5. Reflect that how you see your world is a result of who you are
    6. Lead­er­ship is as much an art as it is a sci­ence (maybe even more so!)
    7. You develop cred­i­bil­ity when you begin to show peo­ple that you gen­uinely want to help and care
    8. Treat the busi­ness as your own and treat peo­ple how they want to be treated
    9. Har­ness the hearts and minds and increase engage­ment as a result
    10. Take the dif­fi­cult deci­sions and do it fast

    (Adapted from the 21 Irrefutable laws of lead­er­ship – John Maxwell

    So there you have it!

    For 2010 I chal­lenge HR to define its des­tiny as those who can look into the eyes of our fel­low human beings and say we had the courage and lead­er­ship com­pe­ten­cies to make a dif­fer­ence and we did it! We achieved suc­cess for the good of all we served.

    I leave you with a quote which I really like its by Alan Cohen when he said “To grow, you must be will­ing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your his­tory is not your destiny.”

    • http://renegadehr.net/ Chris Fer­di­nandi — Rene­gade HR

      Peter (I’m assum­ing Wool­ly­Lanc is you, anyways),

      Thanks for the robust response! Some great, action­able stuff there. One quick follow-up: What does, “Work­ing the tal­ent process and the intan­gi­bles” mean?

      Thanks,

      Chris

  • http://thehumanracehorses.com Michael Van­Der­vort

    Great post, Peter. Glad we just con­nected with each other on Twit­ter. It is always great to dis­cover strong, crit­i­cal thinking!

    Thanks for get­ting this posted here, Karla! Great stuff!

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thanks Michael, Its all due to Karla, she is a great rela­tion­ship builder

  • http://renegadehr.net/ Chris Fer­di­nandi — Rene­gade HR

    Peter, inter­est­ing post. I have a few thoughts:

    1. I some­times think that focus­ing on HR as a pro­fes­sion instead of peo­ple as HR pro­fes­sion­als actu­ally does our pro­fes­sion a dis­ser­vice. “HR” doesn’t need to do any­thing to improve. HR pro­fes­sion­als do.

    We need to have a clue how our orga­ni­za­tion makes money. We need have a deep under­stand­ing of how you inspire peo­ple to do amaz­ing things. And then we need to make sure that our man­agers are inspir­ing peo­ple to do things that make the busi­ness money.

    I worry that by focus­ing on “HR” instead of “Me, the HR pro­fes­sional,” it become too easy to put blame on some­thing big­ger than one­self. Know what I mean?

    2. “For HR it means get­ting busy adding value and engag­ing the tal­ent in our orga­ni­za­tions.” What does that mean in plain eng­lish? These kind of buzz­words sound nice, but often don’t actu­ally help peo­ple under­stand what it is they need to do. I think I know what you mean, and I think I agree, but the words you’ve cho­sen obfus­cate your point (ironic use of the word “obfus­cate” intentional).

    3. Is it pos­si­ble we’re over­com­pli­cat­ing what we do? That’s not to say that what we do isn’t impor­tant — I pas­sion­ately believe it is. But as HR pro­fes­sion­als have fought to prove our value and worth to orga­ni­za­tions over the last few decades, it seems as though we’ve cre­ated a per­cep­tion that our pro­fes­sion is so com­pli­cated that you need a PHD to do it effec­tively. A lot of what I would con­sider “good HR” is actu­ally just com­mon sense (that unfor­tu­nately isn’t all that com­mon). It’s a throw­back to small/family busi­ness values.

    The most pow­er­ful piece of your post — your “three ques­tions” — unfor­tu­nately gets buried at the end of the arti­cle. I would love to see you expand on those three, as I believe that’s were real change for us as indi­vid­u­als and as a pro­fes­sion will take place.

    Thanks again Peter! I love when an arti­cle causes me to think (I haven’t writ­ten a com­ment thing long in some time, so kudos for get­ting the gears to really start turning!).

    - Chri

    • Wool­ly­lanc

      Thanks I do agree. Both the pro­fes­sion, which appears to be “blind” to the per­cep­tion and thise that prac­tice have to get out­side of the box.

      There is way to much dis­cus­sion on the process with many thou­sands of dol­lars in con­sul­tancy fees think­ing up clever dia­grams and models.

      My worry is that the pro­fes­sion is defin­ing what HR is all about and that is lay­ing the seeds for the future pro­fes­sion­als. In Europe the con­cen­tra­tion is less about acad­e­mia and more about the busi­ness impact.

      I agree with you we do over com­pli­cate what we do.

      My 3 ques­tions? yes I do have prac­ti­cal advice and that is the mate­r­ial for another post­ing ( if asked back).

      Thanks for your feed­back. My worry ? HR pro­fes­sion­als don’t care enough to get their hands into the busi­ness and take some risk! It’s easy to work inside the tra­di­tional role and be asked.

  • http://karlaporter.com kar­la­porter

    Thank you for the awe­some guest post Peter. I believe your decade list of ques­tions is actu­ally timeless :-)


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