H.R.’s Wake up call!

I Recently saw some more articles on this subject. Yawn!!!!

For those who read my blogs one of the highest responses (over 1000 hits) was when I wrote.

“HR folks just don’t get it and it’s getting old!” http://wp.me/pTp83-7b

I also commented recently perhaps harshly that if after 80 years of the profession moving from a welfare and benefits function to a strategic positioning partner we still ponder the need for  “HR to have a wake up call” we have simply lost our way.

It’s not just the issues of having, good people who are simply misdirected or misguided in the profession, it’s also the problem of the profession that is encouraging folk to join without a vision of HR themselves.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps. Am I being realistic? You bet.

More importantly am I asking the courageous question? YES.

There are too many folks who want to give answers. That’s the easy part. What are the questions that drive the answers? Too often we talk about re-engineering this or that business process.

Do more with less people, higher quality etc. etc. Old as the hills. Did it make a lasting sustainable stakeholder difference?

We need folks in HR who ask the questions that no one else asks or wants to ask. How do we INCLUSIVELY DRIVE our intentions to the SOUL of the organization and bring life to that SOUL.

It’s tough and we need tough. There is no place in HR for those who say they are all about “the people” when they continue to lay them off or “downsize etc. etc.

Do what I did, I joined an organization and said “we must agree we will never lay anyone off! And that happened!

How? Well let’s say there was no questions or discussions about there being a “ seat at the board table”, or “having a wake up call”, or all that other stuff! It was hard and it was stressful but we did it!

What will your boss miss about you when you leave?

Is  it the policies and procedures that you developed, is it  the performance management process or succession-planning program…

or is that you were willing to push the tough courageous question and you were prepared to have honest and authentic conversations that made a REAL difference in the lives of those around you?  And you never relented.

To have the  conversations that has high risk to your own position for the purpose of what your real role in HR is to your organization is  what you must do and as much as anything else it challenges whether you do indeed have courage, passion and intent. Look in the mirror and see who you really are.

HRMexplorer August 2012

 

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