What if HR worked like this…
November 3rd, 2020
One of the popular mantras in HR circles over the past years is “putting the human back in human resources”. But how well do we really manage these “resources”?
Traditionally, the practice of HR mostly involves the administration surrounding staff: hiring, firing, benefits, training, employee activation, engagement and branding. And while in recent years, we care more about how the humans are feeling about their work, there still seems to be a disconnect from the work the human resources are actually doing.
Why is this important? Price’s Law tells us that half of the productivity comes from the square root of all the contributors. That means if you have a staff of 25 people, 5 of them produce 50% of the output. This becomes scary at scale: in an organisation of 10 000 employees, only 100 of them are responsible for 50% of the output. And if you lay off 1 000 people, how do you know you’re not firing the 100 productive ones? Would HR know who all of these 100 heroes are? Often the answer is that they don’t and would seem to be one reason why large companies tend to accelerate toward failure when large layoffs start happening.
Employees typically speak to HR when they’re either sick, unhappy, have questions around their contracts or need time off work.
How do the humans feel about their workplace?
The HR professional will send out an anonymous survey to employees.
How do the humans feel about their colleagues?
She’ll schedule feedback training and culture workshops.
Are the humans approving of their colleagues, managers and company?
Another anonymous survey please!
But what if the HR manager managed her human resources the same way a mechanic ran his workshop? Or the way a systems engineer managed his network? Or the analyst checked in on her dashboards?
Ironically, very little of traditional Human Resources touches the actual work these human resources do. If asked, “are our humans productive?”, it’s unlikely that HR would be able to answer accurately (beyond quoting attendance stats).
What if the HR managers were precisely aware of all the contributions every human was making on a project so that the unsung heroes among the humans are automatically recognised for their effort?
What if the HR managers knew how much time each employee was spending in meetings each week? And considering that around 33% of such meetings are unproductive and lead to anger, cynicism, frustration and lower self-esteem, what if HR drove initiatives to improve conditions?
What if instead of questionnaires before career development talks, HR trained the humans in improving their negotiation skills?
Some ideas for inviting HR back into the work:
- When working with designers and developers: Inviting HR into Github repositories so they can see the exact contributions each developer or designer makes to their projects.
- Letting HR see calendars and spot opportunities for better quality meetings and time-blocked allocations for focused work
- Sharing timesheets with HR, instead of only line-managers or finance.
- Link pay rises to performance, not status
- Having HR understand and improve internal workflow and bottleneck issues in the organisation: which projects are stalling, why, and how to unblock the humans from internal politics and bureaucracy.
Now, what would you add to this list to help the humans in human resources?