Jason Ennor, managing director of MYHR, who has 13 years’ experience in strategic and operational HR roles in retail, hospitality, manufacturing and corporate support shares his thoughts and experiences on HR.
How would you sum up HR professionals in three words?
Interesting, Diverse, Infallible (well maybe not that last one)
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Life is full of people giving you advice, whether you ask for it or not. Especially when you start a new business or have kids or build a house… Mostly people mean well and the best advice is the advice that’s best for that situation (go figure).
From an HR point-of-view:
- I had a manager in 2000 tell me to stay interested in technology as there was a serious lack of tech savvy HR people. Considering where I’m at now that was pretty good advice.
- Another manager I respect held the mantra “people before process” which has also been fundamental to the way I operate.
What are some of the biggest challenges HR deals with?
Credibility
I think sometimes HR teams and HR leadership lose touch with the basics in the pursuit of flashier goals. When the basics fall over we lose credibility.
I really believe if we get the foundation well established, do the basics right and demonstrate HR operational excellence then the cool stuff (the transformational stuff) will follow and will be even better.
How do you see the role of HR changing in the future?
I recently saw a great speaker (a high-school teacher) talk about modernisation vs. transformation in the context of the classroom.
The same applies to HR. There is a whole lot of modernisation taking place as new tech allows us to move things online. But too often the cumbersome, old-school bureaucratic processes still exist, just couched in technology; modernised but not transformed.
We need to transform and make use of the functional tools and social tools that technology offer to improve the way we operate and reduce bureaucratic process without putting the business at risk. Technology can transform business process and in doing so free up time to achieve real organisational transformation.
What’s your favoured style of coffee?
Long black.
If you could invite three people to dinner, dead or alive, and excluding family and friends, who would they be and why?
As all the important historic figures have been taken and the religious ones might cause offence, I’ll keep it selfishly superficial: John Bonham, Dave Grohl and Jimi Hendrix
No dinner, just some vodka, drums and guitars.
Complete this sentence: If I wasn’t in HR, I would be…
Playing drums
