What HR isn't

Intro

The Times recently published an article with the catchy title of ‘How HR took over British business and got in the way of actual work’. If you’re a leader who thinks that there’s too much HR going on and getting in the way, there’s a good chance that what’s actually going on is that they’re stepping in to fill the gaps leaders are unwilling or unable to manage.

What's the issue?

1. All too often, leaders don’t understand the split of people-management responsibilities between themselves and HR. That includes being unaware of rules and policies, and/or ignoring their own leadership development needs. And then they call HR on the red telephone when it all goes pear-shaped.

2. Employing people is becoming more complicated. Rules on equality, health and safety, the dynamics of professional development, reducing loyalty and tenure, higher expectations of flexibility etc. – to name but a few.

3. Against that, productivity has never been more of a priority.

4. The world is changing more rapidly, upsetting plans, people, and programmes more quickly, more unexpectedly.

5. Taking all these things together points to only one thing: raising standards of leadership has never been more important than it is right now.

Consider this

1. HR’s role is to provide the framework for leaders to lead. That framework is guided by external legal and internal cultural requirements, from policies to values.

2. HR provides expert guidance on people policies, but they are set and ratified by the CEO and the exec team. So remember not to shoot the messenger. People policies are like insurance, which feels like an unnecessary cost and bureaucratic burden – right up until the point you need it. In marketing terms, it’s called an ‘unsought good’.

3. The leader’s job is to do everything associated with looking after their staff – from hiring to firing. It is not for HR to routinely step in to take the difficult conversations of performance management, redundancy, conflicts in the team etc.

4. In over 25 years of leading change, I’ve routinely found that the big 5 deficiencies in leadership are:

• Conflict aversion

• Poor delegation

• Poor communications skills

• Lack of accountability

• Poor decision-making

It comes down to this: Every organisation has a choice. Invest in your leaders so they can do all these fundamentals better, or use HR as the backstop to sort out the fallout. And I guarantee you that no HR team is resourced to do this, even if they routinely do this.

Try this

If you’re in HR, (re)establish clear lines about what HR does and doesn’t do. And then figure out a plan to transition to that model and stick to it. Assume leaders will continue to routinely cross that line if you let them.

If you’re a leader, reflect on what development you need to be the kind of leader you’d want to be led by.

Note: HR is about the only corporate function I haven’t worked in. But because I’ve been leading teams for longer than Gen Z has been around, I’ve worked with HR longer than I’ve run any other part or whole of a business. So all this is my take based on my experience - the CIPD manual might say something different.