organisation

Stand and deliver

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We all have a friend, or someone we know who is a little bit flaky. They say they’re going to meet you for lunch and then send a text at the last-minute. You invite them for dinner and they arrive 45 minutes late. You need their help and they’re far too busy, despite the fact that you spent the whole of the previous weekend doing something for them.

And we know how much it sucks.

One thing I’ve noticed about HR teams over the years is that they can be the organisational equivalent of that flaky friend. On one hand demanding that the rest of the organisation complies with their timelines and timescales (performance review cycle, anyone?) and at the same time committing and not delivering and being sloppy with turnaround times. It’s a hypocrisy that isn’t lost on other parts of the business.

I don’t think there is one reason why this happens, I think there are multiple causes. HR tends to be the recipient of lots of bitty work. For the employee or manager that “bit” is important, but for the department, adrift in a sea of “bits” it can often get overlooked. Also, HR tends to lack completer-finishers, the people who will go that extra mile to make sure that things are delivered to perfection. And finally, we just tend to do too much “stuff”, mostly unimportant, fabricated, self-serving stuff too.

HR teams that are valued, that add value and are well-respected, analyse, identify, commit and deliver. On the big and the small. They can deliver the really big important initiatives on time and to spec, but they can also handle the million small things that make a difference to the individual employees within the organisation. And they can do it day in and day out.

But most importantly of all, the team needs to value delivery and take pride in making things happen. Too often failure to deliver is blamed on external factors, stakeholder reaction, lack of resource or “too much on”. When the real cause is a lack of focus, attention to detail and pure passion to deliver excellence. It doesn’t always go right and sometimes we need to hold our hands up and accept that, (as one of my team recently said, “we didn’t cover ourselves in glory there”) but realising when things go wrong, means you know what “right” looks like.

Professionalising the HR function and focus on service delivery doesn’t require it to be outsourced to “experts” who will work to a process manual but really don’t give a damn about your organisation or your people, it requires us as professionals to instil the right mindset.

We tolerate the flaky friend because we like them, we might even need them, but we LOVE the friend that is always there when they said and exceeds our expectations. And if HR wants to be taken seriously, it needs to be THAT friend.

True choice is sacrifice

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The simple truth is that we cannot have everything. Too often we sell the idea, the dream that it is possible to have a little bit of everything and reach the ultimate state of perfect happiness.

Sadly it just isn’t so.

I saw this drawing recently and it whilst it raised a smile, it also highlighted a perfect point:

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Somewhat coincidentally, the same diagram (with different choices) came up in a conversation I was having with the brilliantly clever Deborah Rees from Innecto. This time in relation to compensation (I paraphrase).

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Perhaps the biggest area that I see this most obviously manifest is in work life balance. I’d draw it something like this:

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But the point isn’t one about work life balance.

The point is that choice is about sacrifice as well as it is about selection. When we positively opt for one thing, we ultimately reject another. Whether we can accept this, that is our challenge.

Too often we place the responsibility on others, the company we work for, the government that runs our country, our friends and family.

To much of our organisational focus has historically been on trying to pretend that everything is possible and we can provide and fulfil employee needs on every level, even when they’re conflicting. That we can offer everything, without sacrifice and, as an unintended consequence, ultimately disempowering the individual.

When, logically, choice should be wholly individual, have resultant consequences and require sacrifice. And as HR leaders, our job is to explain and facilitate that, not try to pretend that it isn’t so.

As we set about designing the organisations of the future, we should be creating environments where transparency, choice and genuine empowerment flourish, where individuals are aware and accepting of the pros and cons of their decisions.

The choice that you make will be different from the one that I make and that’s absolutely fine. The challenge is to understand and be personally accepting of the compromise that we will inevitably have to make.

Because we can’t be and we can’t have everything, we will always have to choose.

We are our choices

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Can you imagine being told by your supermarket what you had to buy? Or your hairdresser telling you how your hair should be cut? How about local bar or pub deciding what you wanted to drink? I know for one that I wouldn’t put up with it and I guess is that it wouldn’t take long for you to get fed up either.

Because we like the choice. We like the feeling of control. We like to be in charge of our own destiny. Now of course, we could debate for hours, whether we are actually in control, or having the living daylights manipulated out of us on an hourly basis. But stay with me.

It’s well known that the idea of a “war for talent” makes me want to self castrate with a rusty set of hair clippers. I’m also not going to go down the Gen Y debate, because there are too many haters out there and I can’t be arsed.

But. And this is a big but (no jokes please). I do think the relationship is changing between employers and employees.

Yet, so much of what we do is still grounded in the paternalistic past where the boss knew best. How we pay, how we offer benefits, how we train and develop. How we promote and manage careers.

We provide very little choice in organisations, very little flexibility and very little responsibility. Instead we standardise, homogenise, process and commoditise the employment relationship. Partly because it makes things easy for us, partly because it retains control.

But it misses a trick. If the future of employment relationships is less permanent, less linear and generally more two-way. Then shouldn’t we be designing our organisations to genuinely give choice and ownership to employees? Not merely paying lip service to it.

It is nice to talk about the way that management is going to change. The way in which the organisation is going to change. The way in which careers are going to change. But how is the organisational infrastructure going to change and who is thinking about it?

That’s what I’d like to know.

Because you’re worth it. Aren’t you?

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The nature of my life is such that the topics of conversation can verge from the sublime to the ridiculous, to the completely unexpected. A case in point is that last week I managed to discuss the array of deviant sexual practices and the financial model of HR services within the same 24 hours.

Go figure.

Whilst I’d love to tell you all about felching spoons and the fetishistic objectification of nuns, I’m not sure that would be the best use of your time, please the internet censors, or be particularly wholesome. That said, if you catch me over a glass of wine or two, who knows what could happen….

But that’s not the point. Or maybe it is. But it’s not THIS point.

Most HR teams are set up as cost centres. They’re overheads. Essentially this means that as a user, you get what you’re given. And you pay for it, whether you like it or not. There are advantages to this. Sometimes we have to do things that people don’t want, or don’t know that they want. Sometimes we need to do things a little bit differently to how people want.

But what if we were profit centres? What if we charged for our services and then other departments could buy them? How would that work? And why are companies increasingly looking at this?

I can immediately see some advantages. Instilling a mindset within the HR team to focus on value generation would be helpful. Allowing managers to define the value they want from the HR team could be insightful. And perhaps most of all, reducing the number of pointless and failed initiatives that drive employees and managers up the wall would be a huge benefit.

Still, it can’t counter the unease I have about the whole idea. Firstly it assumes that procurers are experienced, educated and knowledgable. And that isn’t always the case. Secondly, it creates unnecessary internal markets that detracts attention away from the real purpose of the organisation. Finally, and for me most importantly, it suggests HR is there to serve the budget holders and not all employees. Which worries me.

I think HR can gain all the benefits that are derived from this way of operating, without having to change the financial model and incur the associated down sides. It doesn’t seem to me a huge leap of faith or thinking to do that.

Ask yourself, every day, “Would I pay for my service?”

And if that doesn’t work and if things get really bad. Console yourself that what ever might happen, “we’ll always have fisting”.

Yeah. That.