structure

It doesn’t matter: It’s just HR

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When we spend time talking about ourselves, it is time lost talking about the things that matter to our employees, to our leaders and to our organisations.

  • it doesn’t matter where we report, or who reports to us
  • it doesn’t matter what we’re called, or what we’re not
  • it doesn’t matter which part of us are in, or which parts are out

Our obsession with the inconsequential is time we lose from talking about the challenges of the economy, the dilemma of organisational productivity, the challenges of wellbeing and grasping the individual business opportunities that exist.

Employees don’t care whether we are Personnel, HR, People, Talent or bananas. They really don’t. They have zero interest in whether L&D or recruitment are part of HR or not. And whether you’re a manager, advisor, business partner or officer, just doesn’t enter their heads.

There is zero value added through any of these debates or activities. And moreover, the internal focus represents a dangerous tendency to ignore or fail to understand the value drivers within the organisation.

Next time you find yourself talking about yourselves, try to define the value that will be added through the discussion and any resultant change. Try to think about the various stakeholder groups that you have and the evidence that supports there is any kind of problem.

And if you can’t find a compelling reason, a compelling argument or compelling evidence? Then stop wasting everyone’s time and remember why you’re paid and employed – to add value to others, not yourself.

It really doesn’t matter: It’s just HR.

Dump the internal customer

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When I hear people refer to “internal customers”, my hackles get raised. It dates back to my years in retail, my CEO then had a mantra that there was only one customer – the one that came in to the shop. It’s a logic that really sticks with me and something that I hold dear to this day.

Put simply, I HATE the concept of an internal customer. And I DOUBLE HATE it, when referring to HR and “the business”.

I get the allure of referring to a customer service mentality, and the seeming simplicity of applying this to assuage the views of HR as bureaucratic. But when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. And in this case, the simplicity hides a number of major faults with this approach which makes it more of a distraction than a cure.

Customer implies a value transaction and yet in most organisations, this doesn’t occur. There are some that engage in internal charging models, but this tends to become more a bureaucratic source of dissatisfaction. How much would a pay award cost? Is there a mark up on it? What’s my cut?

Customer implies a choice of whether to transact, but in most cases we’re not suggesting any level of choice. “Do you want to use the disciplinary process or not? It’s a bargain I promise. In fact, I tell you what, if you buy one I’ll throw in a second one for free”.

Customer implies a power imbalance. What happens when HR is serving someone from IT, but that person is serving someone from Finance, who in turn is serving someone from HR? Who is the customer and who is the provider? Or are we back in the world of bartering? “Give me some training and I’ll fix your PC”, “Wait, I can do better than that, fix my PC and I’ll turn a blind eye to your budget overspend…..”

And therein is my biggest issue with internal customers, it makes an industry of the internal machinations of the organisation and takes us away from our true focus on the customer, the consumer, the procurer or purchaser. Whatever industry we are in, we are there to provide something to someone external. That is why we exist. If HR wants to be commercial then it would be better off getting the business to focus outside, rather than in.

I don’t have customers. I don’t have a customer service mentality. I have colleagues, team mates, co-workers, friends and collaborators. Together I want to work hard to deliver the best for the business and the people who interact with us.

Because they’re the real people we serve.

Diagnose, don’t dream

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Our ability to influence and to develop the human agenda within organisations depends on our ability to deliver successful solutions in to our businesses. Yet far too often, I see and hear of interventions that start from the solution and not from the diagnosis.

We have the answer before we know the questions.

Part of the reason for this is our eternal fixation with HR best practice and part of it is a need to feel that we are “delivering”. But I also think there is often a fundamental disconnect between our understanding of why we are in an organisation and the real value that we can add.

I’ve written before about the importance of marketing and also thinking about the impact on the end-user. And these have to be underpinned by a robust approach to diagnosis.

What are we trying to achieve?
How do we know that we need to achieve this?
What is the data that informs this?
What would success deliver?

I have a simple belief that in HR our “value add” is to make the organisation perform better. In order to do this we need to observe, sense and understand the areas of tension or friction, we need to relate these to the organisational system that we operate within. Then we need to be clever and creative in finding ways to drive improvement.

The simple benefit of doing this is that we can clearly articulate the need for the specific piece of work that we are doing, we can provide the context within the organisational system and then we can measure the impact. We base the need in the organisation, not in the HR department.

Influence comes from the ability to articulate our value, and that becomes a whole lot easier if we start with the diagnosis and end with the cure rather than just dreaming up need and repeatedly telling people what’s good for them.

Because none of us need that. Do we?

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.