Comments on: Shouldn’t HR make themselves redundant?

By: Worlds apart – learning, training and classrooms « Don't Compromise!

Worlds apart – learning, training and classrooms « Don't Compromise! — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:27:51 +0000

[...] We picked up on one of his ideas – essentially, why don’t HR make themselves redundant – in an earlier posting here, because we liked the emphasis on direct line management involvement in recruitment, mentoring, [...]

By: HR’s redundancy : HR india

HR’s redundancy : HR india — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:25:09 +0000

[...] Don’t Compromise blog takes my tweet thought and makes a thought provoking post on business linkages and HR. Go ahead and read the full post, but here are some excerpts: HR may be [...]

By: Hameeduddin A

Hameeduddin A — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:26:57 +0000

True, HR should work on making themselves scarce, not by washing hands off but by enabling and equipping the line to take up these activities.

Maybe “Number of HR services successfully outsourced to Line” can become a good metric to track.

By: shoemakes

shoemakes — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:06:39 +0000

You’re last point is a BIG one. Real accountability is scary. Especially when you’ve invested political capital in convincing business leaders that what you’re doing is making a difference, even if you don’t have the data to prove it.

By: don't compromise

don't compromise — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:26:27 +0000

Hi, and thanks for the comment. It reminds me of one of the education debates in the UK – the huge importance placed on school performance league tables means education is totally geared towards exam passes rather than what winds up in the pupil’s heads.

In other words, how something gets measured starts driving how it gets undretaken or achieved: if you measure the wrong outcomes, eventually it feeds back through the process/system and you start altering the inputs to fit the measurement. (“Let’s do what we know if probably not right but will get us top marks”?)

But is the current reward mechanism the only thing stoping that changing, or are we afraid that we’re still really in a blame culture and that if we start measuring the right outputs and outcomes and don’t measure up, we get fired rather than encouraged to make more – appropriate, necessary, supported (etc) – changes? (Sorry about the very long sentences – I think I need more coffee!)

By: shoemakes

shoemakes — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:12:29 +0000

Couldn’t agree more. One of the great manifestations of HR’s self-importance, in fact, is our use of metrics. Rather than provide measures that will help managers make better decisions about people (much like the management reports they receive from accounting), we insist on measuring ourselves. We measure how many people we train and how quickly we fill job requisitions. That may help us run our little fiefdom. But really, who cares!?