Change HR to Human Process?

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Aug

It seems as soon as you write something like “let’s not change the name of HR” as I did just a few posts ago, the idea comes back to bite you. My point was the name “HR” reflected a true step up from Personnel and the limited administrative duties that implies, but there seems to be no step up intended in changing the name HR to People Department or something like that. Instead what most people want is simply that HR live up to its promise of drawing together everything that would make people happy and productive into one place.

I’ve rethought that. There is another step strategically for HR to take and I think it would be reflected in a term like Human Process. If HR becomes the Human Process Department and we rename its leader to VP, Human Process, I believe there should be a different strategic meaning attached.

The missing strategic step is that bosses can conveniently forget they are involved in human process every Business process always involves people single day, that humans carry out the work and they operate according to processes that need to be understood and managed every single day… but not by the HR department, which certainly cannot be everywhere at once.

The problem with the term HR was fundamental. It implies, not too subtly either, that one executive and department owns and is responsible for everything to do with people in the organization. So if something is wrong, call HR to demand a fix. This is as dumb as saying Finance “owns” all the numbers; call finance to fix sales or cost.

We understand that every manager owns his or her own numbers. sales numbers, cost numbers and so forth, while Finance simply helps with the strategy and systems. But with HR countless employees and bosses seem to expect HR to magically fix everything – “go tell my boss” or introduce a new salary or bonus plan, a training program or, worst of all, a brand new performance appraisal system… won’t that surely take care of shortfalls in performance or better salary increases??? And HR falls into the trap time and again.

HP on the other hand would seem more likely to imply an executive with specialized knowledge and supports for human processes everywhere, but make it clearer that HP does not “own” these processes from start to finish. They must inevitably occur throughout every operation. Bosses carry out a continuous performance management process. Do they know how? Are they up on best practices? Are they managing it every day as they do with their budget numbers? Can they just turn it over to HR to create the perfect form and then fill in the blanks? Not if we understand it is a “process.” In other words, someone has to take an employee through a process to get a better result. That someone is not HR, nor is it a lock-step, check here process, hand back the form process.

So unless you expect HP to take over your department, be there every day and manage your employees, you don’t see HP as the owner of results. But you might expect HP to assist you in understanding how best to manage your employee processes based on the systems set up – the salary scales, the bonus plan and, yes, even the performance appraisal system, presuming these are designed to fit the organization, its culture and objectives.

What do you say?

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