When HR is short for ‘horror’

You know my views on HR. But here’s an interesting article on HR. I quote:

There are plenty of movies and novels about salesmen, copywriters, editors, journalists, accountants, and even CEOs. But when was the last time you saw a movie or read a novel in which the hero/heroine was an HR executive? Never? Ever wonder why? I have my own theory: writers and filmmakers know that their main character should be one with whom the audience can empathise. And having an HR manager as the lead character sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Sure, not all HR execs/departments are bad. There are exceptions, but most are busy proving the rule. Last week, I got a call from a journalist friend who had just resigned from his job at a reputed publication. He was upset with his ex-employer’s HR.

During his last month at the company, he came down with gastroenteritis and took four days’ sick leave. But the HR deducted four days’ salary from his final paycheck though he had plenty of sick leave left. Apparently, his company’s HR policy did not allow an employee to take sick leave (or fall ill) during the notice period.
“What kind of idiocy is this?” he ranted. “Suppose during my notice period I have a heart attack and so can’t come to work for a few days, my company’s humane response would be to aggravate my misery by cutting my salary!”

So far so ok, nothing surprising at all. But check this out.

So what exactly is the role of HR? You don’t have to be an MBA to figure out that HR has four critical functions that, unlike salary processing or attendance marking, can neither be outsourced nor automated: 1) retaining talent; 2) identifying talent outside and persuading them to join the organisation; 3) coming up with sensible ways of measuring performance; and 4) putting systems in place to keep employee motivation high.

While friends in the media cite the odd organisation that may be above average with functions 1 and 2 above, most HR departments are clueless about 3 and 4. This is all the more puzzling, given that if you have an effective way of measuring and giving feedback to employees, then that becomes a training tool as well, and a motivator for employees who are performing well.

I should point out that by statistical definition, there wont be just the odd organisation above average, assuming a normal distribution, there will be a fairly large number of organisations above average otherwise if you have different distributions, then you will have some extraordinarily wonderful organisations which pull up the average compared to a very large great unwashed herd of bad HR organisations.

I know, I know, I am anal, I am quibbling over minor things, but heck..come on, that’s my job on the blog!

The main challenge in managing a department

You know what I do when I am asked to transform something? I look at the front line, line managers, and concentrate all my efforts on them. Why? because they are your leaders of your individual contributors. Pretty much all your company’s revenues, customer satisfaction, process improvements and employee satisfaction/motivation rests on these folks.

In the little experience I have had, organisations frequently fail at this level of management. Attention is paid to the global leads, attention is paid to the employees, attention is paid to strategy, attention is paid to so many places, but how many organisations actively pay attention to the frontline line managers? Not many. But if you find an organisation which does this, then you will see that they are good. Pick pretty much any successful organisation that you like and you will find that they spend extraordinary time on the line managers.

Some questions to ask.

• Do you promote your best individual contributor to being a line manager?
• How do you ward against the Peter Principle?
• Do you have a coaching programme by senior management to the fresh line managers?
• Do you have a brutal succeed or out policy for failed line managers?
• How do you compensate for the fact that your most successful individual contributor is now a line manager and cannot generate revenues/services?
• How are you making sure that the new line manager’s previous great skills as a revenue generator / service delivery manager is replicated across his new team?
• What leadership training are you giving to your line managers?
• Is there a clear dual track career path? managers and individual contributors.

When a typo says much about the police

I saw this on my Google reader. Check out the spelling of Director of Resoruces for the London Metropolitan Police. I think I am going to give this a skip

ha, as if I am ever going to get inside the bearpit of HR. The chances of that happening are classically described by PG Wodehouse as follows:

"Alf Todd," said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, "has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat's left ear with a red-hot needle."