HR

The power of five

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Five years ago, I posted my first blog post on this site. One of the worst kept secrets in HR blogging is that I used to run a different site with a little more “artistic freedom”..…but enough about that for now. Five years is a pretty long time in this modern world, things change and move on. So what’s changed in that time and what has (maybe unsurprisingly) stayed the same?

The mystery of performance management – ironically, the first post I wrote here was about the need to take a more human approach in performance management. So is the fact that corporate after corporate is rushing to deliver the headline grabbing news that they’re ditching their annual appraisals evidence that this is happening? Absolutely not. It’s all a load of bull and they’ll be silently reintroducing some sort of system in the next two years. The point isn’t that you don’t need any system, it’s that you need a human system. Two very different points with two very different outcomes. VERDICT: NO CHANGE

The death of Human Capital Management – Not long after my first post, I wrote an attack on Human Capital Management. It was probably the first post that I wrote that caught the attention. It’s a phrase and a term that is only beaten into second place in the hall of shame by Employee Engagement (more of that later). HCM and human capital metrics are as 1980s as my fashion sense….and neither needs to be subjected to the masses. Fortunately, big data has replaced HCM as the numptiness of choice. VERDICT: DEAD AND BURIED

Ethical business, trust and authenticity – A theme over the last five years has been around ethics, trust and authentic business management. Don’t get me wrong, I”m an unashamed capitalist…BUT that doesn’t mean I think we need to rip a second a**e in each of our employees. For too long big, corporate FTSE100 businesses have lied and lied and lied some more. The string of corporate failures over this time have shown us that this is’t rhetoric, but simple truth. And in return we’ve seen and increasingly humble and apologetic approach. A new dawn? Don’t you believe it. Just a pause, the vultures are circling higher than before, but don’t believe they won’t be back. VERDICT: CEASEFIRE

The engaged employee – I said I’d be back to it, so why the surprise? Engagement is simply the most poisonous and frankly dangerous management concept of the last ten years. It makes the Ulrich Model look like a warm, soapy cuddle in the bath. Put simply, in the time that we have been talking about employee engagement, the happiness of employees has decreased. That’s not me talking, that’s a fact. And yet we persist. That’s either stupidity, or insanity. VERDICT: STILL BREATHING, BUT FIRST UP AGAINST THE WALL

Our profession and our professional body – Ok, so I know this one is going to be thrown back in my face *assumes the position*, but I have more confidence in both the HR professional and the CIPD than I’ve had since I graduated back in 1864. We’re generally talking about the right things, we’re willing to have an open debate and discussion and we are hearing voices from outside of the small select group of organisations that previously dictated the agenda. It’s promising, really promising. But not time to pop the champagne just yet. VERDICT: ON THE UP

I’m not going to dwell on HR, social technology and the like. You can read that in countless free “books”, but five more years? I doubt it. By then I’ll be transmitting direct in to your brains. So enjoy the freedom whilst you have it my friends…

I’m saving the good stuff for then.

Disrupting HR?

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I wish I could be like the cool kids, all the cool kids seem to disrupt…..

You know when even the establishment talks about disrupting that you’re seriously missing out. That somehow there is a boat that has sailed, you didn’t even managed to work out was in the harbour.

Everyone is disrupting. We’re disrupting the disruption that was disrupted in the last great disrupt. We’re so disruptive that we’ve forgotten what exactly it was that we were trying to do and why.

Or alternatively, we’re enthusiastically employing the lexicon of another world without really understanding what it is we’re talking about and why.

Do we need to disrupt HR? I guess it depends on what you think HR is.

If you think that HR is a series of processes and policies and procedures. If you think that HR is a static system of interventions that exist in isolation of the organisational ecosystem. If you think that HR is a practice which has failed to evolve, develop and adapt.

Then yes, maybe you do want to disrupt that.

But do you think that? Is that what we really think our profession is? A set of processes. Is that the value you add? When you talk about disruption, is that what you wish to disrupt?

What if HR is the strategic approach to managing people to deliver business performance. If it is about helping people to be better, be happier and deliver more. If it is about creating an adaptive system that changes, develops and grows as part of the organisational system within which it exists.

Do you really want or need to disrupt that?

I’m all for better. I’m all for evolution. I’m all for improvement.

The funny thing about successful organisations, successful practices is that they change, develop and evolve before the need to disrupt them occurs.

Maybe there are areas of our world that need a shake up. But let’s stop the lazy deployment of terms that we don’t really understand and don’t really mean, just to keep in with the in crowd.

You go ahead and disrupt if you really want to, I’m going to adapt, develop and grow.

And when the dust settles, we’ll see who’s further ahead.

You may be invincible, I’ll be in the background.

And that’s ok.

Let’s groove on, ‘cause it’s time to move on

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I’m bored.

I’m bored of people telling us we don’t need policies.
I’m bored of people telling us we need to be on SoMe.
I’m bored of the “humanisation” of HR
And I’m bored of the endless frigging debates about performance reviews.

I’m bored of HR people being boring.

Sure, we’ve nudged on slightly over the last five years. The debates became more thoughtful, more challenging, more creative.

Then they became more boring.

Why?

Because we’re still talking about the same things we were back then.

Do you need policies? Probably. Do you need a debate about it? Probably not.
Do you need to be on SoMe? No. Do you need to write another “book” about it? God no.
Does HR need to be more human? Yes. Do you need to shut up talking about it and do it? Yes.
Is this the end of the performance review? No

There we go. We’re all done.

So how about we move on and talk about some of the things that really matter?

Increasing alienation in a fragmented society.
Technology permanently disfiguring the labour market.
Our socio-economic, demographic time bomb.
The collapse of the global education system.

And of course, the impact of Christmas jumpers on the global sheep farming market…..

Actually, how about each one of us talks about something different? How about me have a million, a billion different ideas – a cacophony of thoughts, ideas and feelings?

Agree, disagree, argue, challenge and dissent. But think. Think free, think true and don’t listen to the nonsense that I and other “voices” in the space proffer. We need more thought, less consensus and much, much less blogging.

What we do is important, what we can achieve is transformational, yet at the moment, all we talk about is the past.

Uber, Netflix, Facebook and Google teach us nothing

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Where once the FTSE100 and Fortune 500 were the darlings of the industry, lining up to share case study after case study. They’ve now been replaced by the new generation of corporate clones – those organisations that “disrupted” the previous incumbents.

You can learn to “Uber” your recruitment processes, reinvent HR the “Netflix way”, learn to manage “Facebook talent” and, of course, create the company that everyone wants to work for thanks to Google.  Without mentioning taking time to remove your management in order to be like the Z word that cannot be repeated.

As we watch even the mainstream companies rush to be the first in their sector to do away with performance reviews (they’ll be back…..mark my words), what should you be doing? How can the average HR practitioner keep up with the heady trend of HR reinvention and disruption?

Well, you can start by doing nothing.

Zip, diddly squat, nada. Talk a walk, enjoy the autumn leaves, watch the squirrels bury their nuts.

Remember how you hated being told how to do it like RBS, HSBC and Marks and Spencer? Remember how GC, Diageo and Mars made you feel inferior just by standing in a room?

It’s the same thing. Just with a new type of shiny.

The key to successful HR management is the same as interior design. Be sympathetic to the structure, think about practicalities, have an eye for creativity and a drop of flair. But remember what your budget is, where you’re starting from and always, ALWAYS get planning permission.

Because in the same way that you wouldn’t apply explicit geometric design to an 16th Century coach house, or brutalism to a Tudor mansion, nor should you necessarily try to apply holacracy in a traditional engineering business, or values based leadership in a tobacco company.

What is missing from our profession, isn’t a new set of case studies it’s a sense of creative thinking, innovation and invention. By all means look at what other people are doing to inform and educate. To give you ideas and to provoke thought. But find your own solution in your own business.

Uber, Netflix, Facebook and Google teach us nothing, they just show one way. Rather than lining up to be the next one to swallow the Kool Aid, why don’t you try to create something for yourself? Not only will it be more rewarding, it’s a hell of a lot more likely to work.