Thursday, May 23, 2019

Today’s Human Resources Function (Bradley W Hall,PHD)


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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