The REAL purpose of HR

The Real Purpose of HR
At a recent offsite with a group of highly skilled Human Resources executives, I asked the toughest question of the day: “What is the purpose of HR in a company?”
The silence was deafening.
Then, slowly, as the stunned crowd came back to life, a few muffled answers surfaced. “To hire and fire.” Decent, but shortsighted. “To ensure compliance with employment law.” Not quite. “To recruit top talent.” A partial answer.
None of these executives fully knew what Human Resources departments were designed to do. Why was HR created? What value does it add in an organization? How could we know if the HR department was a good one or a bad one?
This problem is all too common. Some companies choose to outsource HR entirely and just hire contractors until they have to pull HR in-house. Because HR has lost sight of its purpose in modern companies, it becomes ill-defined, often lackadaisical and sometimes ridiculed.
The answer to this malady is to restate and re-instill the purpose of the HR function: To hire, train, motivate and support productive employees. This means that various tasks fall to HR which can be measured. It is not the wishy-washy, touchy-feely area it might seem to be.
HR departments should:
1. Hire good people. Qualified people hired and working can be measured.
2. Train people to do their jobs correctly. People in their roles who are fully trained to do them can also be measured, as can various training modules on the way to full competency.
3. Motivate employees. This means removing barriers to productivity. This can be measured by tracking each employee’s productivity.
4. Support productive employees. This can be measured by compliance with policy and law and by retention.
Most HR departments cover #1 nicely. #2 is often sketchy and only sometimes effective. #3 and #4 are fertile ground for further discussion.
How does one motivate employees? Motivation can be defined as a willingness to do something. Willingness is the greatest tool any person has to accomplish goals. What gets in the way of willingness is too many barriers and too many failed purposes. An effective Human Resources department can remove these barriers for the majority of the company and watch as productivity rises.
Barriers can be conflicts in the workplace, employee relations issues, pay problems, and a host of other possible topics. Human Resources professionals have to be highly trained in handling conflicts and bureaucracy to accomplish this step. If HR isn’t able to track each employee’s productivity, it will be difficult to assess whether barriers have been removed.
Imagine this utopian example. Joe is a Director of Marketing for a major division of a large retail chain. He has been working on a project to increase customer engagement through targeted marketing and has been successful at doing so. Customer engagement in his target market is up 6% over last quarter. His boss, the VP of Marketing, then tells him he is ineffective and that he should stop the project and work on a social media marketing campaign.
In a perfect world, Joe goes to HR and explains the situation. HR sets up a conference with Joe and his boss, bringing the graph showing Joe’s recent success. The confusions are resolved and Joe is returned to his prior project and someone else is put on the social media campaign.
A few key points come from this example. 1. The VP of Marketing should have known Joe was successful. Since he didn’t, it is HR’s job to let them know he is a good employee who should be protected. 2. HR should be skilled in negotiating difficult human interactions, as this one could potentially have been, especially if pressure to do a social media campaign was coming from further up the org chart. 3. No stop or stall in production should result from this problem. HR should act swiftly and accurately to keep production moving. 4. If the VP of Marketing himself is having trouble, HR should note this and help him to remove barriers to his production as well without pushing confusion downward to his team.
The key point here is that Human Resources is the backbone of a productive, happy organization. Why? Because nothing in a company is accomplished without its people. Skilled management of the people and support of their productivity is a vital foundation for the rest of the company. So get your HR department functioning correctly now and reap the rewards down the line.

Don't Take That Message!

I arrived in the office yesterday morning to the following message on my desk: “Company X cancelled Project B. Thanks.” What a bad way to start the day. Turns out, it was not even true. Company X had simply called to move the start date of Project B and wanted some information about how to change the contract. Now, I could say no one is to blame for this poor communication or for Company X wanting to change something. Or I could assume it was a simple mistake. I am a bit more demanding. I prefer to look at the bigger picture on what types of communication I should accept and, in fact, demand, of those who communicate with me.

Executives and business owners are juggling many balls every day. In truth, we do not have time for mistaken or upsetting communication. It drags down our morale and wastes precious time to clarify the situation. Stacked up over many instances, it cripples our businesses. What if we only accepted certain types of communication? What if we demanded people communicate with us in better, more concise, more positive ways? It’s a new view on time management.

Here’s the idea. Only accept communications that provide a) valid information, b) requests for authorization of well thought-out proposals, c) confirmation that something got done, or d) great news.

Next, go even further and reject communications that a) demand you make a decision about some issue that you know very little about, b) give reasons why something cannot be accomplished, or c) relay bad news.

Try to imagine your day free of those negative communications. Sound idyllic? While it might take a little work and a little re-training of your contacts, it can be done.

Here are the four simple steps to implement this plan in your office:

1. Inform those with whom you communicate most frequently of your new “Good News and Information Only” Policy. Use the paragraph above to show them the types of communications you expect and give them short examples.

2. If you get an illegal communication like the one in my example at the beginning of the article, send it back with a short, polite note to the writer. Example, “Sue, thank you for this note. I am unclear what happened here. Please rewrite this message explaining exactly what happened and a possible solution. I appreciate it!”

3. Watch your mood improve. You are in control and your office is already more positive.

4. Share this plan with other executives and business owners who can also improve their situations.

I look forward to hearing your good news as you implement this time-saving, mood-saving plan.

Over-Correction

Part IX: Insanities in Business

Over-correction

When something goes wrong in your business, you probably want to solve it. There is a little-known tendency, though, that you may have fallen prey to at one time or another. It is to over-correct. Over-correction is a very specific action which creates the opposite of the intended effect. It creates more problems.

Imagine how you would feel if you were told to increase your customer base by 5% and you did it. Then, you were told that the way you went about it was incorrect, that you should have tried this method or that method. That you should have called Bob in Accounting. And why didn’t you check with Ingrid in HR before you sent out that email? You achieved the goal but were over-corrected on insignificant details. A manager who does this will end up being labeled a “micromanager” (or worse), not because he was pushing a direct report to get something done, but because he corrected the WAY in which things were done.

Give your employees some freedom to do things as they want to do them. Only ask that they deliver and help them sort through any barriers or stops. Don’t overcorrect. You will both be happier and more productive.

Part IV in the Executive Coaching Series

Insanity: Hiring People and Not Utilizing Them

Did you ever hire a person to do one job and have them do another job? It is very destabilizing to the person and the organization.
It is made worse if the person is trained to do a job and then later plugged in somewhere else. A very bad case of this is called "musical chairs". It's death for an organization. In fact, a very covertly hostile person I knew once kept moving people around in her division. The person hired to do the marketing was working in production. The frustration level in the office was quite palpable, but no one detected the root of it. Moving people around destabilizes them. Hiring them, training them properly and then letting them do their jobs works wonders for competence and stability.

I've mentioned to many of you that production is the basis of morale. Productive people are happier! It goes against some of the modern thinking about work/life balance, but it is true. Many of you have read the study about the life span of executives who retire: 33 months! They stopped being productive. No more "game"! So keep productive, and keep your people productive in the jobs they were trained to do.

You will all be happier!