Today’s PRHR guest post is brought to you by Chris Ferdinandi. Enjoy! – Laurie
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Today I’m launching a revolution, and I want you to be part of it.
A month or so ago, Laurie wrote a controversial article advocating the destruction of traditional HR. Her article spawned some interesting discussion and a healthy handful of spin-off articles either promoting her ideas or shunning them as SHRM blasphemy.
Viva la Revolution!
Romeo once asked, “What’s in a name?” The truth is, a lot. Romeo also ended up killing himself – probably not the best person to take advice from.
I’m going to be blunt: Human Resources, and its preppy cousin, Human Capital, are crappy names to describe what we do. I’m not a parts supplier – I don’t manage resources. I’m not a financial controller – I don’t manage capital. I manage people, and help them do amazing work with the skills they bring to the table.
A while back Seth Godin wrote an awesome article on how HR could better market itself. He said,
Change the department name to Talent.
The reason this makes some people uncomfortable is that it seems like spin, like gratuitous double speak. And, if you don’t change what you do, that would be true. BUT…
What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)
Seth is spot on. But of course, some places already call their people function the Talent Management department. As a name for what we do, talent management great step in the right direction. I actually call myself a talent management professional.
The thing is, though, that I don’t exactly manage talent, either. I manage people. People who have talent. Lots of it. But still… people.
People Management
Our jobs should be about one thing: Helping our people do extraordinary work to drive business success.
What does People Management look like? My version differs a bit from Laurie’s. I think, for example, that what we do is about more than just attracting and retaining key people. And I think generalists can play a critical role in the function.
Here’s my list:
- Sourcing & Selection.
- Employer Branding. Using Web 2.0 technologies is a big part of this.
- Onboarding.
- Training. The kind that influences behavior and isn’t horribly boring to sit through.
- Performance Management. This means using strategic compensation to motivate people (but not exclusively).
- Cultural Stewardship. This is where the people formerly known as generalists come in. Their new purpose is help create an environment that maximizes their peoples’ potential. Remember, it was a pair of generalists who created ROWE at Best Buy.
Some of these topics (sourcing and selection, employer branding, and onboarding, for example) could be lumped into one broader category (like recruiting). While I think the individual tasks could be handled by the same function, they all warranted individual mention.
Out With the Old
A stronger focus on these tasks requires us to get rid of some old ones. Much like Laurie, I recommend that whenever possible we outsource (or get rid of completely) things like benefits administration, policy writing, and dealing with employees who act like children. These things are all important, but they don’t inspire people to do amazing things, and that’s what People Management is all about.
Human Resources, even when strategic, still had a huge hand in cost-saving for the organization. And while that’s certainly important, it’s pretty limiting. People Management is about adding value by helping your people do extraordinary work.
The Revolution Starts at Home
Want to bring the People Management Revolution to a workplace near you but don’t know how? Follow this handy step-by-step guide:
- Understand your organization’s business strategies, and what people need to do to support them.
- Understand what motivates people. Develop more holistic approaches to performance issues that go beyond a Performance Improvement Plan and the threat of being fired (fear is a horrible motivator).
- Treat people like grown-ups. They may surprise you and start acting like it.
- Don’t tolerate people who act like children. Bad attitudes, unethical behavior and other child-like behaviors kill the culture and drag down entire teams. The most successful organizations have a low tolerance for people who act like kids.
- Stop talking HR-ese. You sound like an idiot (seriously).
- Stop talking Business-ese. You sound like you’re trying to hard.
Welcome to the revolution!
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Chris Ferdinandi is a writer, entrepreneur and talent management pro based in Boston, MA. He’s also a poor man’s renaissance man: Mediocre musician, weekend-warrior athlete, day-dreaming philosopher and hippie humanitarian.
He’s the creator of Manager’s Sandbox, a free blog about recruiting great people and inspiring them to do amazing work.
4 Comments on “Guest Post: Viva la Revolution!”
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Posted on 19. January 2009 at 07:20
You are mentioning training as part of a suggested new People management function … Just because I am a bit biased as an OD practitioner I would argue that training is just a small part of a much bigger area of organizational effectiveness and development and should not be part of HR at all… We should be working together but PD should not be reporting into HRM .. if it makes sense at all?
Posted on 19. January 2009 at 09:03
Ok Chris.. a question. Who do we outsource all that “stuff” too? Who do you trust to develop your company policies? Who do you get to do deal with your “children?” I am curious about how you would do those things.
Posted on 19. January 2009 at 17:53
Chris,
You are spot on for both the key functions of people management as well as how to “Start the Revolution” at home. I would also add leadership development as many fields are weak in this area (technology and HR included) but other than that great read. Thanks for the the post.
Posted on 20. January 2009 at 10:19
@Anastasia – I agree: training is part of a bigger area of organizational effectiveness. What I don’t understand is why you think that’s not something that should report into HR? I think a majority of what HR spends it’s time on right is crap. OD (What I call cultural stewardship) is a core part of where we actually add value. It’s all about inspiring people to do amazing work. Training is a part of that.
I’d love to hear you explain your thinking on this topic a bit more – looking forward to your reply!
@Michael – I don’t neccessarily have a problem with HR handling policies. I just think in many companies, policies are a bulk of what HR does, mostly because many companies have far too many. Do you really need a policy dictating how your employees dress? If they’re not smart enough to understand what’s work appropriate with a policy “forcing” them to dress that way, maybe you need to revisit your recruiting practices (not saying you specifically, but in the general sense).
Same thing goes for employees who act like children. Some ER issues are to be expected, no doubt. But on the whole, if you have employees who are continually unable to interact like grown-ups, I don’t care how good their numbers are, they need to go. And again, I would revisit how you’re sourcing and selecting people if this is a common thing.
When I say outsource everything else, I guess I’m thinking more along the lines of benefits administration (not plan development, but processing, etc.), new hire paperwork and records retention.
Another great solution I’ve seen kicked around is to split HR into two functions: Strategic and operational. Operational handles all the boring crap like benefits and records, while strategic would do all the stuff I mention in the article. Of course, I feel like if your money is going to people outside the company, you more tightly would evaluate how you’re allocating it. And it’s too easy when paying people internally to go, “you know, this is HR’s job,” and then we become paper-pushers again because there’s too much of that stuff to do the value-added strategy development.
Thoughts?
@Dan – Great addition! I’m with on you the Leadership Development area. I guess in my head I’d lump that into Training, but if you want to call it out as a separate function, that works too.
Great comments so far – thanks everyone!