HR department: Know thy limitations

2. What objectives do we want to achieve? The answer to this defines priorities and expected results.

3. How should we manage the organisation in order to achieve the decided objectives? Answering this question will provide the basis for the organisation’s strategic and tactical plans.

HR only fits as part of the answer to the third question. HR has no part in answering the first or second questions, which is where the organisational making/breaking decisions come into play. The only reason for the existence of an HR department (or any other department for that matter) is to support the achievement of the organisation’s objectives.

This simple fact comes from the department of the bleeding obvious. The HR department is not there to provide employment for graduates from the soft sciences, anymore than the IT department is there to provide employment for an army of geeks.

It is important to understand that senior management (CEO/GM and above) are obliged to consider the resources part of human resources as far more important than the human bit. We get paid to use the core competencies of the organisation and the minimum amount of resources (including human) to produce the best result, despite what those framed documents that hang in the reception area of most organisations say. These are variously titled mission statements, vision statements or corporate goals, and the drafting of them is often so muddled that they prove clarity of thought has no place on the list.

These literary jewels frequently express the view: “Our employees are our greatest asset,” but they leave out “…because we haven’t yet figured out how to ditch most of them and still get the job done.” Cynical, you might say. I consider it to be a simple statement of fact. Just look at Telstra and Qantas, to name just two organisations that plan to sack thousands of employees to improve the bottom line. Now, I have absolutely no problem with retrenchments and relocating plants to Vietnam or Fiji for profit reasons; I’ve done it myself and never lost a minute’s sleep. It’s the hypocrisy that never ceases to amaze me. The senior manager who is doing his/her job properly must view everything that isn’t directly focused on satisfying the customer’s needs as support/non-core and potentially something that may be outsourced.

From the senior management perspective, HR is there to help/advise us in optimising resource use and to support the efforts of the operational managers and their staff – who go out every day to do battle in the marketplace, or what passes as a marketplace in government land.

All of you HR people shouldn’t feel too badly about this or regard your profession as somehow less worthy – IT is in the same position. The job you do has to be done well, if we operational managers are not to be distracted by doing the HR stuff that we don’t like and we’re not very good at.

I have seen several articles written in this magazine where HR professionals bemoan the fact that their fellow practitioners rarely seem to make it to GM level or above. From my perspective the answer is simple. HR people by training come from the soft disciplines – psychology and the social sciences. By inclination, they have always seemed to me to be uncomfortable in dealing with the hard numbers that make or break sales or finance and the toe-to-toe confrontations with suppliers/unions/recalcitrant staff that characterise production. Operational failure is obvious and retribution is swift but how many HR managers get shown the door for poor performance?

The sales, finance and production people love this stuff; it’s why we get up in the morning. The daily fix of biffo and the risk of being shown the door or getting a big bonus (it’s up to you) can be very stimulating. Not so with HR people, who prefer to chair conflict resolution workshops or develop guidelines on gender balanced recruiting and ethnically relevant staff development.

I suggest that if HR people really want a seat at the decision-making table, the first thing they should do is get out of the HR department and get a real job. By this I mean a line management job, where real decisions are made every day and where the bruises happen.

Another curious idea is that it’s up to the HR department to spot winners. What tripe! Asking HR to spot winners among staff is like asking the government to pick winning companies – it doesn’t work. It is a core responsibility of the operational manager to hire and develop the next generation of managers. This responsibility cannot be pawned off on HR, although HR can help.

Operational managers need a mix of technical skills and people skills to make sure the organisation’s strategic and tactical plans actually happen. HR’s job is to provide well-researched, reliable advice and to remove from the operational manager the burden of HR administration. This supporting role is vital and it must be done professionally, but it is not a strategic role – it is a support role. No one expects Elton John to wheel his own piano on stage.

To the HR aspirants who like and are good at what they do and who don’t need the grief that comes with an operational role, I recall the immortal words of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry: “Well Captain, it’s a good man who knows his limitations.”