Human Resources: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Failure

During the informative years of my career, I’d been used to a certain type of HR (Human Resources) department in an organisation. These were the people that looked after all employees and ensured that all of their organisational human-needs were met. I loved these people and still have very fond memories.

What changed?

As time progressed, I started to have the distinct feeling that the HR department was morphing into something quite different. They were primarily doing the bidding of the C-Levels and, I always assumed, that this was because of the changing business landscape. As business became much more difficult <to some> and the revenues started to decline <to some>, it seemed to become necessary to ensure that the organisation was regulatory robust, to the detriment of the ethical and human aspects. This could be easily identified as labour-relations types were moved into HR and, sadly, in some instances were given the golden-keys to HR.

HR has, over the past few years, been morphing again through multiple phases and focuses but let’s just list the three main types <from various sources>:

• Human Resources (HR): the personnel of a business or organisation, regarded as a significant asset in terms of skills and abilities
• Talent Management (TM): describing an organisation's commitment to hire, manage, develop and retain talented employees. It comprises all of the work processes and systems that are related to retaining and developing a superior workforce
• Human Capital Management (HCM) being the set of practices for recruiting, managing, developing and optimising the human resources of an organisation <and with a very cool name>.

It’s always important to understand that the success of any organisation is their ability to adapt to foreseen and unforeseen marketplace changes. How organisations have structured to enable themselves to adapt to long-term implications will play a crucial role in the future success of all businesses <should I mention Business Continuity, Digital Transformation and Covid-19 here? Nope, let’s just move on>.

This is where a progressive HR <I’ll keep using this endearing term> department will play a major role. Ultimately, these HR departments will have been infused into the very fabric of everyday business and the rapidly changing organisational ecosystems, instead of merely being a stand-alone administrative unit.

These HR departments will support business imperatives and ensure the supply of skilled resources to build the required virtual teams.

Why do I say, virtual teams?

Well, the future successful organisations will remove the rigidity of the old-fashioned organisational structures, retire the cliché ways of performance management and forever bury the irrelevant CV/Resumé style of positioning/selecting potential candidates/recruits. Success will be linked to a process that identifies the abilities of the potential candidates – and not the false promises contained in the traditional CV/Resumé – and allow real teamwork to evolve across the organisation <not the Yawnfest get-away pseudo-teambuilding of beating drums or fire-walking>.

As an embarrassing aside: I haven’t had a CV since the mid-1980s and I was recently asked for one by a company that, thankfully in retrospect, I wasn't contracted, as I merely dusted off the old CV and sent that… laughingly it even contained a professional body that I was a lifetime member of, that had ceased to exist over a decade earlier, and I’d listed qualifications from institutions that had been renamed. Strange that I could have delivered the project’s requirements <plus given extra deliverables as freebies> with my eyes closed <that’s only an expression> but that’s another story for another day.

Some HR departments <with fancier titles> have already embarked on this journey whilst others are still meandering, as withering lost souls, across an ever-changing landscape.

However, to those that have not started on this journey, they will need to understand change management from a specific perspective <This is where I mention the Burke-Litwin Model to try and impress some readers>. Any randomness along this critical journey will never get them to achieve the required milestones.

HR needs to get back to basics and revisit their raison d'être, as follows:

• Provide structures & skills to support Business Goals, Objectives, Strategies & Tactics <GOST>
• Build for agility – flexible virtual teams
• Embrace relevant tools and analytics <sigh here… whilst thinking about the irrelevant legacy tools and metrics>
• Remain focused on employees’ needs and wants <humanity>
• Prepare for an ever-changing marketplace and workforce <embrace business continuity>
• Implement performance management based on business successes
• Embed metrics based on clarity and NOT vanity
• Align to recognised Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) standards.

At an organisational level, those that wish to remain relevant should:

• Distinguish between marketing hype and reality <focus on relevance>
• Continually evaluate their Business Ecosystem/s for relevancy and effectiveness (legacy is the invisible disease of any company>
• Understand the differences between business evolution and business innovation <ensuring that leadership fully understand>
• Define their actual business needs – with a metric associated to each point <craft relevant and meaningful dashboards; use clarity metrics and NOT vanity metrics>
• Identity and deliver against their customer needs – again with metrics to measure success <Infuse Industry Knowledge into client-facing employees – and listen to their feedback>
• Invite external parties to be part of innovation-related initiatives <have the humility to listen to others; even build Innovation Outposts>
• …and the biggie: Ensure that those defining the Business Strategy have the skills and understanding to do so. <HR must be fully aligned to a relevant Business Strategy>

In summary, in an unforgiving marketplace:

• HR departments must evolve to support business imperatives and ensure the supply of skilled resources to build the required virtual teams
• HR departments that dismiss transformation will become irrelevant and will, most likely, become obsolete
• There needs to be a focus on ‘Learning and Development’. This will pay dividends in moving a business forward, as it will allow fully functional employees to be rapidly deployed across the business ecosystem to remain relevant in an ever-changing marketplace.