Most people I work with have a tough time figuring out HR. I mean, what it does. People get the mechanical pieces, like hiring, payroll, benefits administration, stuff like that. But beyond that, they're confused.
HR likes to talk about "being a strategic partner," and "having a seat at the table" with the other business leaders. Which is great in theory. But then those other business leaders see who the HR people are who are sitting in those seats, and think, "what are they doing here?" Why is that? Because most of them have no credibility with the other people sitting around the table. All too often the HR representative doesn't have a clue about the business leaders' real problems, and doesn't have any bold, creative ideas about how to help solve them, let alone any accountability for making sure they really get solved.
In too many places, HR has become ineffectual, kind of like the UN.
The UN is a place where lots of weighty issues get talked about but where nothing substantive ever happens. Important committees and commissions, made up of important people, talk about important things, but in strangely detached ways, in peculiar tones and odd, politically correct language. Everyone knows they have no power to make things happen. Like the UN, HR feels vestigial.
Which is a pity, because companies need talented people working together effectively now more than ever. If there ever was a time when the quality of the interactions that take place in a company directly affect results, now is that time. The network that is the modern corporation needs to be in touch with itself more intensely, more authentically, more informatively than ever before. This because the corporation has to quickly gather customer feedback (numbers, feelings, impressions, ideas, anything we can think of) and decide what to do about it (more, less, different kinds of products, services, experiences)...fast.
This should be HR's top priority: figuring out how to help business leaders to talk with one another and everyone else in the organization in ways that make important information zoom around the network; help business leaders create the social system of relationships that assures information movement, not information hoarding (think: recent accounts of the relationship between the FBI and CIA).
Instead, HR is more likely to be tangled up in its underwear describing this year's "initiatives," which usually require four more FTE's to manage things like data flow between outside recruiters and hiring managers. Sort of like the UN overseeing the "oil for food" program in Iraq.
But, like the UN, this could be a defining moment for HR. Its leaders could courageously break away from the safety of "talent pipelines" and "performance management" and step into the swirling waters that their colleagues face every day. And, in doing so, reclaim their rightful seat at the leadership table at the same time.
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