I am truly honoured today to be able to welcome one of the foremost US HR bloggers as the latest contributor to our series addressing the following topic: "If I could change one thing about HR...". Sharlyn Lauby, SPHR, CPLP is the HR Bartender. Her HR Bartender blog - voted one of the HR bloggers' blogs of choice earlier this year is described as "a friendly place to discuss workplace issues". When she's not bartending, Sharlyn is president of Internal Talent Management (ITM Group) which specialises in employee training and human resources consulting. Sharlyn can also be found on Twitter.Sharlyn Lauby: If I could change one thing about HR...
...it would be the perception that an HR pro needs to be all things to all people.
I've been in human resources for close to twenty years. And for twenty years, people have been talking about strategic versus tactical human resources. They've talked about transformational versus transactional HR. Even after Keith Hammonds famous Why We Hate HR article, we continue to debate. Maybe it's time to recognize that HR can't do it all. They can't be everything.
If we took this example to a different part of the company, no
management team would allow this discussion to go on for this long.
Let's say we have an employee who is responsible for the computer
hardware and software for the business. But in reality, they can't do
both. One or the other is always falling short. If the hardware is
working great, the software needs updating. If the software is up to
date, the hardware is breaking down.
Do you really think a company would allow itself to operate this way for five, 10, 15 years?! Of course not. At some point, they would recognize they need to have one person focusing on hardware and another focusing on software. They would redefine responsibilities so both employees could be successful.
Now, back to human resources. There's this constant chatter about people who are awesome at the transactional side of the business - employees get paid correctly and on-time, benefit plans are communicated well, used properly and utilization is high, etc. etc. You get the point. These activities are important. They are essential. Why are we telling the people who are totally rocking these tasks that they aren't good enough and they need to go off and "be strategic".
Meanwhile, we have individuals who are terrific at strategy. They're able to assess talent both inside and outside of the organization, build cultures that can grow and excel with the business. This is also important. Not necessarily more important. Because the reality is, if we can't pay employees on time and company benefits stink, there will be no future workforce to worry about.
The strategy and the tactical (or the transactional and transformational, whatever you want to call it) are both essential to the business. But like our computer employee, it doesn't have to be the same person. Or even in the same department.
I know it could be a difficult pill to swallow in breaking human resources into two departments. HR pros have been lectured to death about having a "seat at the table". They might view it as a personal failure if they weren't a part of the "strategic" department. Strategic is just a word. We have compensation strategies, benefits strategies, talent strategies, etc. They are all important and essential to the business.
As human resources professionals, my guess is we all have a discipline we like best - maybe it's recruiting... or maybe it's HRIS. My suggestion is that HR pros pick one and be the best they can be.
Will human resources continue to be one department, one function? Who knows. Although I can't help but wonder how many years the C-Suite is going to listen to the whole strategic versus tactical debate before they make the decision for us.
The real question is should human resources define its fate or wait for someone else to do it for them?
Do you really think a company would allow itself to operate this way for five, 10, 15 years?! Of course not. At some point, they would recognize they need to have one person focusing on hardware and another focusing on software. They would redefine responsibilities so both employees could be successful.
Now, back to human resources. There's this constant chatter about people who are awesome at the transactional side of the business - employees get paid correctly and on-time, benefit plans are communicated well, used properly and utilization is high, etc. etc. You get the point. These activities are important. They are essential. Why are we telling the people who are totally rocking these tasks that they aren't good enough and they need to go off and "be strategic".
Meanwhile, we have individuals who are terrific at strategy. They're able to assess talent both inside and outside of the organization, build cultures that can grow and excel with the business. This is also important. Not necessarily more important. Because the reality is, if we can't pay employees on time and company benefits stink, there will be no future workforce to worry about.
The strategy and the tactical (or the transactional and transformational, whatever you want to call it) are both essential to the business. But like our computer employee, it doesn't have to be the same person. Or even in the same department.
I know it could be a difficult pill to swallow in breaking human resources into two departments. HR pros have been lectured to death about having a "seat at the table". They might view it as a personal failure if they weren't a part of the "strategic" department. Strategic is just a word. We have compensation strategies, benefits strategies, talent strategies, etc. They are all important and essential to the business.
As human resources professionals, my guess is we all have a discipline we like best - maybe it's recruiting... or maybe it's HRIS. My suggestion is that HR pros pick one and be the best they can be.
Will human resources continue to be one department, one function? Who knows. Although I can't help but wonder how many years the C-Suite is going to listen to the whole strategic versus tactical debate before they make the decision for us.
The real question is should human resources define its fate or wait for someone else to do it for them?
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