HR Guilt, Roles and Opportunities – a Series

[Note: this is a long series of five articles, primarily for HR managers, first published on HR.com]

Maybe HR is simply expected to do too much for too many. I rarely read a commentary or attend a party where I don’t pick up critical comments. This isn’t unique. But as a teacher, guidance counselor and later a retail executive, I would at least occasionally hear positive stories about my professions, albeit less than half the time.Somehow in HR, I come away questioning myself to a much greater degree than in earlier jobs.

The scope of HR responsibilities is vast. It’s rare even to have projects that actually finish. In most cases, they morph into some new form with new possibilities for the future; like HR intranet portals, which can grow endlessly, adding topic after topic for information-hungry workforces.

HR isn’t a career area of choice for people who need to feel satisfied upon completion of specific tasks. The work is never done. Fortunately, that also makes it enduringly interesting and filled with opportunity. The most obvious points for praise arrive when a merger or a union negotiation is well-handled. These distinct events can be appreciated. A great deal of our work arises in the context of daily routine and passes almost invisibly.

Recently, I was fortunate to interview Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School for HR.com (see interview).With careful thought, she noted that in the last 10 years or so, HR issues have come front and center in the minds of CEOs and senior executives concerned with company performance. However, she feels this wasn’t the result of HR’s efforts and that HR dropped the ball on a number of opportunities, including the quality movement and presently the knowledge management explosion, which have tended to be picked up by IT and other departments. Coming from a top-notch observer these criticisms are powerful.

It’s common to hear negative comments perhaps with some justification. HR does a lot of soul-searching and hand-wringing as a result. Of course, we can’t claim to have raised the profile of HR issues single-handedly, but surely we participated throughout. A steady stream of research reports and articles in the popular press have made the phrase “Human Capital” almost an everyday term. HR not only fails to get credit, but is frequently criticized for not doing enough or focusing on the right issues.

We’re blamed for not understanding the need for numerical measures for these newly-accepted key business factors. One wonders if accountants were subject to this sort of criticism before the invention of double entry bookkeeping 400 years ago. Still, it is nearly a hundred years since the advent of Taylorism with its time and motion calculations. How far should we have come toward measuring everything?

Throughout my years leading an HR function for a major corporation, I frequently felt guilty for all kinds of omissions. I came to see that part of this was the price of doing the job effectively. There are times when HR should clearly not intercede directly.

It didn’t bother me that sales people would often complain that HR ought to have ordered line executives to purchase systems and programs that both HR and the sales people believed would enhance company performance. HR’s role frequently entails making recommendations and looking for team support before acting, rather than making unilateral decisions. HR’s top role is team-building rather than becoming one more silo doing its own thing.

Sorry sales guys, it will remain the case that CEOs, other line executives and particularly senior teams are likely to have the last word on a great many expenditures. When approaching HR for support, sales people should anticipate the best result is to have HR backing them in a presentation to the corporate team rather than expecting a directly approved purchase order. If HR is doing its job effectively that support will not only be useful, but necessary before approval is given. It shouldn’t be a waste of time to lobby HR, it just isn’t the final step.

It also didn’t bother me to be criticized at times by both line staff and managers who each felt HR should’ve taken their side and told the other party to toe the line. HR’s role in many internal disputes is to get the parties together and ensure that issues get discussed between them rather than having HR act as a go-between, a police officer or final decision-maker. Of course, we have opinions about who is right or wrong, but it’s far more productive to help the parties learn to solve problems between themselves with a little encouragement rather than expect a third party to fix the situation for them. Leaving some individuals believing that HR ducks tough decisions is a small price to pay for doing the right thing.

There’s an enduring feeling, as we all know, among line managers as well as many academics that HR doesn’t always pull its weight. Is this just sour grapes on the part of individuals who once failed to get what they wanted from an HR manager somewhere? Or is it just part of what HR is all about that we don’t get appropriate recognition? Most HR departments that I encounter are doing their level best to keep up with changing trends without succumbing to fads. They’re trying hard to invent effective measures without reducing everything to the level of two plus two. They’re constantly researching, proposing better solutions and striving to be effective at the senior strategy table. Why don’t we get more respect?

My goal is to explore these questions concretely over the next few months and see if we can’t change our guilt to pride in every aspect of our operations. Let’s recognize our successes where they exist and figure out what the real shortfalls are so that we can fill those gaps, if any.

HR Guilt, Roles and Opportunities – Part 2
Why isn’t HR given the recognition it deserves? We’re snubbed often enough to begin feeling it’s our problem. It’s not. At least not if we’re doing our jobs well and keeping up with changes… and most, if not all, of us are today. The image of the old-style HR administrator, more concerned with the policy manual than results is quickly disappearing. Maybe CEOs just haven’t caught up… or maybe there are other factors we need to look at.Finance and IT get razzed too, but in the end people fear the specialized knowledge needed in those areas. Such clear expert value isn’t perceived to exist in the HR field… in the minds of many people. They recognize important clerical knowledge in benefit programs and somewhat more in legal issues, but fail to see the value-add of what appears to them to be just “common sense” understanding of more complex HR issues.

Is HR just common sense? From the hiring interview, to assigning, coaching and evaluating an employee’s work, everyone imagines they know the best ways to handle HR tasks. Why not? It’s just conversation, isn’t it? Yet they’ve encountered HR professionals who told them something different, something they didn’t like or agree with or worse, treated them improperly in their view. Right off we have a problem – your common sense or mine! How can anyone admit their “common sense” is inferior to ours?

There’s the problem of all those “ridiculous HR laws” that prevent one from asking “obvious questions” in interviews, from freely and openly expressing one’s opinion of people in habitual, comfortable ways or from just firing employees on the spur of the moment when you feel ticked off. The HR policing role runs afoul of just about everyone in the company sooner or later. Where people may disagree with a financial policy, say for travel allowances, it will still be clear enough for them to comply. HR policies, when handled well, require more judgment than policy and it opens the door for people to argue.

Trying to nail everything in writing in manuals isn’t an effective answer today – not when we’re trying to introduce real “common sense” and flexibility into our workplaces. We must help people get visibly better at “common sense” – not the easiest task. I’ve lost track of whoever said, “It’s impossible to teach people things they believe they already know.” We stumble over that many times in HR.

This sets the stage for people at every level of a company to think they know at least as much or more than HR managers on any number of issues daily. We could hope CEOs see the value of logical process and trouble-shooting exceptions with care and understanding, but it isn’t always so. They’re about equally likely to see this as a big clerical role “that anyone can do” rather than a fundamental driving underpinning of the all-important “culture” of their company.

One description of culture is “collective habits.” Habits get taken for granted… and so do the HR folks who carefully shape the habits of the company through steady, logical application of policy, ideally preventing those policies from dominating, interfering or becoming so complex that creative behavior is stifled.

HR carries a burden of a huge job and even bigger expectations. People naturally trust their own judgment in what appears to be common sense matters despite the fact they’ve never worked in the area. Where they may not be able to comment on the latest memo from IT requiring specific technical procedures, they feel free to criticize HR practices and rules they don’t like – after all, aren’t they the customer? The problem is that there will be staff who disagree whichever way the policy is written and it doesn’t matter to some of them that the majority want it the other way. Then there are the times when the CEO is the “majority of one.” Driving effective HR policy against his or her judgment can be a challenge. We can individualize and offer cafeteria choices more, but we can’t simply allow anarchy or single-person rule and be effective.

Such issues are inevitably personal and emotional. We wouldn’t want it otherwise. People must be able to express opinions in an effective culture. We just wish they wouldn’t always be opinions about what’s wrong with HR practice first and foremost. Don’t shoot the messenger or the consensus-builder.

Opportunity lies within each of these challenges. We have the potential to be seen as the last resort for common sense if we play our cards right. That’s a big hurdle – one that surely warrants a seat at the highest of executive tables. To hold oneself out as the bearer of wisdom presents huge risks, representing as it does, a very high standard. Few sales executives, in that supposedly riskiest of all positions, rising and falling on daily, weekly, yearly sales targets, face the risks of being seen as a failure to the extent HR routinely does. If sales are up everyone applauds. Not so in HR. There will always be those who think it could have been handled better.

OK. We’ve established the job’s tough and we’re tough and smart enough to do it or we wouldn’t still be doing it. So what should we focus on to give our companies the biggest bang for the buck? How should we be measured? Incidentally, what would it take for people to actually notice that we’re good? Most of all, when the heck are they going to start giving us credit for having common sense… and how do we show them that? These views will be explored throughout this series.

HR Guilt, Roles and Opportunities 3 – Who Has Common Sense?
OK , I’m venting. HR is taken for granted. At best we’re seen as just using common sense and everyone else feels they’re just as good at that and often better. But are they?

Elliott Jaques recent passing reminds me that our strategic tasks include some of the longest, if not all of the longest-term endeavors in any organization – ultimately to change the entire culture to something more effective. Jacques argued the highest job is reserved for the executive who has to struggle effectively with the longest term strategies. I vote for HR, especially with all the short term focus now plaguing organizations. We’re about the only people left with truly long time horizons. Are we out of step for that? Or is that part of the job and part of the reason for us being unrecognized? To a certain extent we legitimately have to overlook some small, immediate stuff to promote bigger goals.

We now know from research and from growing interest by CEO’s in having executive coaches that pressure at the top is getting to senior executives. The heaviest pressure comes from short term thinking forced by the tyranny of quarterly results when people would prefer to strategize for the long term. Daily pressure builds for quick solutions. HR answers are anything but quick in most cases. This frustrates everyone, but it’s a fact.

True, we win points when we merge two company cultures successfully (or what sets things up in the short term to create success), when we beat the latest union drive, when a particular training program gets great feedback or when we rapidly provide the CEO with the benefit information needed for their kids’ dental work. But lots of daily stuff swoops by with its ups and downs while the projects we long to excel at come along only occasionally and usually take a long time to unfold. We often feel left out because we’re still quietly integrating the last five projects while the top team has moved on to plan the next coup.

HR roles range from sublime to ridiculous. It’s easy to see why we’re an add-on at strategy meetings. Senior line executives need to believe it’s possible to staff properly to meet whatever strategy they come up with. For instance, the fact that there may be a shortage of trained people is simply a hurdle that must and will be overcome… by HR. That’s the job, right? Planners take lots for granted. In this worst case scenario, they expect HR to create a strategy of working with training institutions and schools to set up new programs and expedite new graduates that can be hired.

Such HR programs are strategic, but they’re not considered driving or limiting strategies. Many senior strategies get put together will less than detailed attention to such “minor” challenges. They flow from decisions at the senior strategy table to move the business in a new direction that needs more new graduates, to follow this example. The best an SVP HR can expect is for the top line people to look down the table and say, “You can do this, right?” No one is expecting a “no,” nor are they likely to pay a lot of attention to it. They’re equally expert in “common sense” remember. They know.

For the people part of any puzzle executives depend on the fact that human beings are flexible and trainable and can be motivated to do almost anything… and soon… or so they think. Frankly they’re more suspicious of long term HR strategies. That results from the fact they’ve never seen one carried through. With short term pressures, rapid changes of direction and the expectation that HR will “show its business acumen” by switching its programs to visibly support the latest vision and mission statements, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that long-term HR programs are rare. We get accused of following fads, but we know who reads the latest management book, wants that author as a speaker at the next annual conference and expects HR to apply those ideas right now. Remember process re-engineering as an example.

A great consultant, who writes regularly for HR.com was not above commenting in a recent column on what’s wrong with HR people. His comments struck me rather pointedly. He blamed an HR director for not telling off a CEO who asked for leadership training for a group of senior executives who “eat presenters alive.” He had no advice for the presenter. He doesn’t blame the CEO for failing to discipline the rowdy executives or for requesting something that may not be reasonable. He blames HR, assuming that it’s HR’s job to tell off the CEO (maybe) and that HR didn’t (unlikely – in my experience – though perhaps not as forcibly as some blustery line executive might need or respond to).

Certainly HR can get caught in the middle without having done its job. Chances are this HR director did tell the CEO it would not work. Chances are the CEO, who doesn’t fully regard HR as worthy of a “seat at the table,” told the HR director to get it done. I used to be told regularly by any number of my 70,000 associates that I “should say” x, y or z to the CEO and if it wasn’t agreed to I should threaten to resign. People love to say, “Someone should tell them.” If I’d resigned every time, I’d have had an endless string of jobs lasting no more than a few weeks. Instead, of course, I soldiered on, making some things work that surprised me (occasionally those CEO’s are right) and accepting that mediocre results would stem from even the best college try in a few other cases.

Surely the role of HR is to keep the long term in focus while struggling to impact the short term thinking around them. We aren’t going to win every debate about short term, quick fixes… and we shouldn’t. Sometimes people are quirky. In the consultant’s example, perhaps the right presenter can help those “eat ‘em alive” executives see some light. If the choice is try it or resign, I’d generally recommend the HR director try it. If they’ve stated their reservations and it fails, they might even win a point.

Great HR people who understand what is and isn’t possible in terms of changing their company’s culture are scarce enough. In this example, the director should advise the presenter, coach what they can, offer support and sympathy if it doesn’t turn out perfectly and try to make sure everyone learns something. It sounded to me like that’s what was happening.

It’s easy to express our frustration that people aren’t perfect and list what else could be done. It’s also important that those of us who have worked at senior levels of this profession take a stand in pointing out that HR’s biggest role is finding a balance in tough situations – in ways that help everyone learn to be better next time. Clearly some of us have been doing that job well or the statistical reports wouldn’t be proving, as they are, that HR makes a difference to the bottom line and share value. We need to remind ourselves that overall there’s some success showing in HR results! Keep it up and we might even win respect.

HR Guilt, Roles and Opportunities Part 4 – “Answers”
The many challenges faced by HR and noted earlier in this series were confirmed by readers. Others also offered solutions and interesting comments. At times it feels we don’t get sufficient respect. We may not be included in senior decision-making although we believe our organizations would be better off if we were. The good news is that we can win what we need – though not always what we want – so what’s working?Stock market analysts and line managers are beginning to recognize HR as more important. Increasing proof now surrounds all businesses that improving HR today improves financial results tomorrow. Studies such as Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index and employee attitude research have convinced most observers that HR produces value. Companies have limited ways to prove they have great HR practices. Just options such as getting rated in surveys like Hewitt’s “Best Companies to Work For” reports. Another of their studies reinforces the real economic value to companies of developing better leaders and leadership. For the small number of participants that’s a good message.

HR leadership itself is an issue. Though every department and level of every function in every company has someone we designate a “leader,” many fewer people actually live up to that description than we could hope – and that includes HR. Even among ourselves, we’re quick to point out bad examples. Though we ought to be saying they’re the minority, it may be we don’t believe that.

We know it’s been incredibly easy for HR people to be promoted because they’re good administrators and program operators, yet they may have fewer strategic skills or vision. This is not only true HR. The tendency continues in many companies to promote some who perform their technical functions well, but have few strategic or even people skills.

Since HR was regarded as a junior function until more recently than many line operations, this was magnified. We noted also in earlier articles that HR is perhaps the most complicated department, subject to the most varied, often fuzzy and nearly always less-tangible demands of any group in most organizations. If anything our HR leaders need to be stronger, not weaker, than average.

Today’s legacy HR, then, has tended to suffer from weaker leaders in the most complex of functions at a time when the operation is being raised to prominence and placed in the spotlight. Small wonder HR executives are expected to prove their worth again and again… in an area where tangible results are relatively harder to come by and where multiple goals are more common than the simple goals we find in other areas. In Sales – get that one single sales number up! Finance and operations – get costs down, meet deadlines! IT and similar areas – hold costs, deliver promises! HR – hold costs and deliver… what? How many objectives could we list? I once tried to imagine just how many measures we could develop to measure effective HR. I got a headache.

The challenge is also an opportunity. HR will stretch anyone to become better at a wide range of skills. In some companies, HR experience is essential for senior leadership positions. The oft-repeated theory that HR should be staffed by line managers rotating in cuts both ways. Those managers learn tremendously from the experience of so many competing expectations and intangible requirements as much as they bring a business point of view into HR. We may not rotate many people into finance or IT, but we certainly should into HR, just to ensure they have the insight that these tasks require.

Right now there is a tendency for some CEO’s to think that the place to rotate business managers into HR is at the top – to ensure HR’s strategies mesh with business needs. They need to be thinking more in terms of rotating people in at lower levels to learn early in their careers what HR challenges are about. Giving people this broadening experience at a formative time is essential for many.

At the top end, any senior HR executive who doesn’t understand the need and the processes for integrating HR strategy with line business goals should never have been promoted to begin with. We shouldn’t, but still will for some time to come, see senior HR people out of touch with business vision. Ouch! This stereotype still has too much truth behind it. Let’s first of all make sure each of us is doing everything we can to get rid of that.

The next article in this series will target some of the basic things top HR executives need to focus on to show they’re the sort of leaders who deserve and are seen to deserve the respect and inclusion everyone wants.

HR Guilt, Roles and Opportunities Part 5 – Conclusion
HR represents the longest-term, most complex strategy area that companies struggle with in our “do it now,” fast-paced world. While we struggle with day-to-day issues constantly, as other departments do, we must learn to keep our eyes on a distant horizon.

With CEOs turning over in 2.6 years on average (continuing the trend to more rapid change), we need to be both quick in responding to new needs and adept at building long term health into our organizations. We need to be survivors, to last through changes above, below and around us in order to provide long-term consistency to our organizations.

Both increasing change and more technology have made HR more challenging. Yet our key goals have become clearer and will not change: to attract, develop, engage, align, excite and retain the best people for our organizations’ purposes.

New technologies must be managed to effectively reduce cost and move the pure transactions of HR to self-serve. This requires ability within HR to anticipate technology, plan for its arrival, evaluate cost/benefits and ensure we get early savings, but that we don’t buy technologies before they’re ready – programs that aren’t yet capable of delivering results or are too costly to operate. This is an entirely new task that ties closely to outsourcing decisions as means of accessing technologies that are too complex to handle cost-effectively in-house.

The strategy-building aspect of HR is ultimately the one area that can’t be outsourced. Anyone can go out and buy training, benefits management, consulting services, recruitment, health and safety support and even OD help to work with groups on specific changes and go after savings. Ultimately, however, you have to live within a culture to fully appreciate its benefits and weaknesses… and see what needs to evolve and in what directions. No company can afford to buy all the separate services at once, let alone rely on people who don’t know the company to guide its most important resource – its people.

Outsourcing everything separately will ultimately prove too costly as each function operating independently will create a lack of coordination and escalation of cost. Outsourcing all of HR to a single service company may get the transactional stuff done efficiently for some companies, but leaves up in the air the questions of how overall directions for HR should evolve.

The phrase “high tech/high touch” reminds us that as we become more sophisticated at building and blending outsourcing and technologies into the HR mix, we need to re-focus on the “high touch” aspects of our work. How people relate to each other becomes our true long term focus as HR specialists. Any savvy group of managers can work out cost/benefits of systems with a little help from their finance and IT departments. It may take HR departments a while to get as good at this as needed for today’s “high tech” world, but it’s closer to a technical function, not a strategic one in the sense that the “high touch” challenges are.

The challenge of achieving greater “high touch” and relationship development in companies increases the requirement for each person to accept greater accountability and develop greater self-management and self-leadership. Modern “complexity theory” makes it clear that organizations only reach peak performance when most members operate with autonomy and self-management as full individuals. The days of the old “machine bureaucracy” – of cogs within wheels in mechanical hierarchies, blindly following orders – is over. Even the military has evolved past that model.

People can’t be ordered to take responsibility and act thoughtfully. The only way to increase “high touch” overall in companies is to get everyone doing it. Coordinating their own best interests with those of the organization takes time to learn and skill to manage. It takes someone figuring out and monitoring the right environment. It takes leadership and coaching, trained into every manager at every level, by master coaches who understand how the larger picture is evolving. This is the true job of strategic HR at every level. How many people it takes in a given company and how efficiently it can impact the entire structure will dictate the size of HR departments in future. The rest is mechanics.

Ultimately none of this evolution can work without support and understanding from line managers from lowest levels up to CEO’s. It would be nice to say just don’t take an HR job in a company that doesn’t have a sympathetic CEO, but, hey, that’s our challenge. Let’s make sure the next generations of CEO’s and senior line executives understand and clearly see the value and power of aligned, energized teams and leaders… and the HR role in making that happen.

Proof of the financial value of HR exists everywhere today. Now we need to build personal strategic credibility so people believe we know how to achieve the full goals of HR. One factor is accepting and learning to maximize the cost/benefit value of technology and outsourcing. Another is demonstrating that there is a lot more to effective HR than that.

Just remember: we can and will live through several generations of CEO’s over just the next ten years at today’s rate of change. It’s an opportunity to reach the up-and-coming line managers and show them the power of leadership and coaching, encouraging self-managed associates at every level, and being clear about the environment it takes to achieve that.

The next challenge – and the next series for this researcher – will be to look at how and why this “high touch” side of HR is so complex, how we can simplify it and what the power of it is to change organizations. It ultimately represents the true future of HR within organizations and the true task of future HR executives.

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