Throughout history, virtually all breakthroughs required replacing
a current model with a fundamentally different paradigm. Scientific
examples include germ theory and the theory of relativity. Federal Express and Amazon.com are business examples of a paradigm shift, and W. Edwards Deming’s statistical process control is an example
of a professional shift. In each case, these new paradigms emerged
and completely challenged existing “truths.” The HR profession has yet to go through its paradigm change.
Think of today’s HR model as an engine with four elements:
(1) structure (i.e., who reports to whom, roles, and
accountabilities),
(2) systems (i.e., performance measures, business reviews),
(3)
shared values (i.e., beliefs, values, culture), and
(4) skills (i.e.,
talents, knowledge).
The elements all align with one another. The key
message in this chapter is that today’s HR model (i.e., the integration of the four elements) continues to produce precisely what it was
designed to produce when it was created in the 1960s. HR’s structure is the same, its measurement systems align beautifully to the structure, and
the skills and shared values not only align with each other but to the
structure and systems as well. When looking across the profession, rather than at any single company, the model fits together very well—the
engine works. (See Figure 3-1.)
When the HR model was originally designed more than thirty years ago, it was expected to produce outputs for a personnel function.
These included benefits policies, employee records, and payroll, as well
as maintaining
good labor relations to keep unions at bay. Take a look at Figure 3-2, which shows two prototypical HR organizations
separated by thirty years. The first organization is from the 1972 Handbook of Modern Personnel Administration, which was the
professional standard for many years. The second comes from a 2003 Corporate Leadership Council study of sixty-two HR organizations across twelve industries.
(Note: The percentages represent the percent
of the sixtytwo organizations with that department.)
Organizational titles have changed: Employment is now called staffing, personnel directors have become Chief Human Resources
Officers, and personnel administrators became HR generalists and then strategic business partners. Despite these great titles, the daily
activities and skills of HR business partners never have changed. HR
departments (e.g., training, compensation) are changing their names to HR Centers of Excellence (COEs). Again, though, aside from the
fancy title, little has changed.
Over the same thirty-year period, there have been dramatic changes in the results expected from the HR profession. There have been many articles written to help HR professionals deliver to
these new expectations, but most have focused on training or tightening
up today’s model through increased accountability and additional
performance measures.
In a July 2006 article in Business Week, Jack
Welch states: If there is anything we have learned over the past few years of
traveling and talking to business groups, it is that HR rarely functions
as it should. That’s an outrage; made only more frustrating by the fact that
leaders aren’t scrambling to fix it. . . . HR should be every company’s
killer app.
Welch goes on to suggest that the root of HR’s problem is from the lack of accountability and measures. Two months later in September 2006, the Harvard
Business Review published an article
called “How to Fix HR.” Its author, Gary Kaufman—much like Welch—chastised the profession for its pursuit of activities rather than results
and for a lack of accountability. Peter Senge refers to this as the “Push
Harder” paradigm. The underlying assumption is that the current model works just fine; the real problem is motivation, nothing that a
good stiff push cannot fix. Yet if today’s model for growing human
capital is not designed to produce business results, stronger
accountability— pushing harder—will not help.
Today’s HR model was never designed to add value to customers or shareholders; it was designed to provide administrative
services, to extricate managers from employee relations jams, and, at best, to
provide support and advice. Many HR functions perform these functions well.
However, today’s HR model has not, does not, and will not
produce business results through people until it is deliberately realigned for this purpose. You can hope that an ice cream machine begins toproduce popcorn. You can complain about it, measure it, and
angrily beat on it. But the machine will continue to produce precisely
what it was designed to produce. Retitling machine bolts to be “strategic
connectors” neither changes their function nor changes the output of the machine. HR can either shift to a new operational paradigm or
retreat back to its original mission. Pushing harder on the ice cream
machine will not
produce popcorn.
Source : Bradley W
Hall, PhD. The new human capital strategy : improving the value of your most
important investment—year after year.AMACOM. 2008
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