HR, as a profession, is on its way out. Those who claim to be “good old school HR professionals,” should start looking for a new career or drastically change their thinking. In contrast, Human Capital professionals who “get it” are on the rise. Companies are no longer willing to pay for simple paper pushers or resume screeners in HR – they want results.
I started my career in the entertainment industry. “HR” in that industry consists of A&R (artists and repertoire) professionals. Because their success depended solely on the revenue the artists they discovered or poached from another label produced, all of them were in tune with both the needs of their companies and the market. Retention of talent was also part of the equation. One notable example that the general public would recognize is Clive Davis, who discovered Alicia Keys and Whitney Houston, among other talented individuals. Mr. Davis is directly responsible for the millions of dollars these artists are still producing for their labels. Do you think he would still be in the business, if he did the job like so many people in HR?
I have met and worked with many leaders who no longer want HR in their companies. They want Human Capital, people who keep turnover rates down, sell the organization to every candidate, and help to shape the corporate culture and improve profitability. They want “Clive Davis types”, not someone who likes to have lots of certification abbreviations after their name. FMLA, EEOC, and the other alphabet soup components of compliance can be done by anyone who can read. I worked with several administrative assistants who handled it just fine with only minor guidance and supervision. Avoiding legal liabilities associated with employees is a corporate culture issue – if you need HR to “protect” your organization, it’s time to institute some drastic changes. Employees, who are treated like adults, with fairness and respect, don’t sue companies.
It is time to shake HR off their pedestal, institute accountability, and help the talented ones adapt and become Human Capital professionals. Here are the top 3 changes needed to bring accountability:
- Every person in charge of finding talent for the organization (including recruiters, HC associates, and hiring managers) must be judged on the revenue attributed to each employee they brought in. Every job has a quantifiable impact on the bottom line, therefore accountability will lead to better ROI.
- These same people also need to be held accountable for turnover rates. Recruiting new talent is expensive. It is much cheaper to keep good employees.
- Human Capital professionals should not be isolated from the rest of the company. They should be in the trenches and front lines, and listening to the customers, so they know what real issues face the organization.
Many blogs and forums are abuzz about the poor experiences people have with HR departments. Next to attorneys and debt collectors, HR has developed one of the worst reputations out there. The current economy is not helping, because a plethora of candidates have made recruiters and HR personnel feel like they are gods, rockstars, or geniuses. This has gotten to their heads and many are getting lazy, looking for shortcuts, and missing great candidates. Time for a reality check!
Hi, my name is Apolinaras Sinkevicius, but most call me Apollo. I am the guy who takes care of the day-to-day business and technology of rapidly growing companies. 12 years in managing the "nuts and bolts" of companies and being a steward of corporate cultures makes me a seasoned operations professional and right hand person to founders and CEOs.
I like the sentiment but disagree with the specifics. Both the forms of accountability you mention are, imho, not very workable.
If you hold people accountable for keeping turnover low, you’re providing incentives to retain both the good apples and the bad ones. Even worse, the good people will get recruited away and the bad people will stick around…FOREVER! It’s a recipe for organizational mediocrity.
Anyway, bottom line is that turnover can be a very good thing, despite the fact that it’s only know for being expensive.
Also, you can’t hold people accountable for others’ performance if they have no ability to influence people’s behavior after they’re hired. Hold people’s managers accountable for their performance. Hold HR/HC professionals accountable for giving managers the tools they need to effectively coach and manage their people. By way of example, you don’t hold finance accountable for poor investment decisions made by business leaders.
Just my thoughts. And absolutely agree that HR needs to be closer to the business and to the customer. Also, I am of the mind that most HC challenges are really operational challenges. Have HC report to ops (particularly with an enlightened ops leader), give them access to ops tools, thinking, frameworks, and you could see some very cool, very interesting dynamics develop.
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Now I may not be knowledgable in what works for large corporations and companies that are not knowledge-worker based. All of my experience came from startups that relied on knowledge workers and most succeeded, because they took care of their talent.
So couple of points to answer your post:
1. Accountability for turnover is part of a bigger picture. We don’t have a problem figuring out how to reward our sales teams for return business, there shouldn’t be a problem making HR/HCs accountable for turnover. It is a variable in the formula. People know when you are gaming the system.
2. Good recruiter won’t bring in those “bad” employees in the first place. It is part of the talent those “truffle nose” recruiters I consider CRUCIAL part of any team have. Don’t hire them in the first place, so you won’t have to fire them later.
3. Turnover is bad, it costs money, it costs time, it costs other resources. In my experience, well run organizations usually have almost no turnover. Why? It is extremely hard to get into those organizations and once people are in, they are treated and rewarded so well, you can’t hire them away.
4. HR/HC needs to focus less on “control” and more on serving the organization. I don’t think it is the job of HC to develop employees or even provide tools for managers. I do believe it is their job to listen to what the organization needs, find the best talent, and make sure people they find are the kind who look for opportunities to grow. Ops team works on org development with executive team and provides resources for further development of talent. Professional development is the job of an employee and no one else, we (as a company) should just provide the tools.
HR deserves little independent credit when turnover is low and little independent blame when turnover is high. Low turnover is a business decicion that executive leadership makes. More specifically, people work for their managers and very rarely for their employers. If the President/CEO/Grand Pubah holds middle management accountable for their retention numbers, only then can HR help. In fact, that’s the first question I ask when an organizational leader asks me how I’m going to help them with turnover…. “How are your managers recognized for high retention/held accountable for high turnover?”
We are also dealing with a very rapidly-changing and challenging legal climate. People do funny things when they feel their security is in jeapardy. You can have an open door policy, a people policy, a confidential complaint procedure, and an anonymous tip line and still find yourself on the wrong end of a harassment suit because one person takes something said by another person out of context. You can lay someone off for perfectly valid reasons and still have to defend yourself in an age discrimination suit. These are not “old school” HR answers. These are practical matters that I wish were not true, but they ARE. If you think you can avoid them by having a “human capital culture,” I applaud you. Good luck and congrats! (just make sure you have a good employment lawyer’s business card in your rolodex)
Scott,
Let me first address the legal liability issues. Having worked in a law firm before, I can tell you that there is almost NOTHING you can do to protect yourself from a lawsuit. Lawsuits are part of cost of doing business. You can play every trick in the book of HR, if someone is pissed off enough and motivated enough; they will find a lawyer to sue you.
So how do we solve that? You can’t completely solve the issues, but you can create great working environment people want to come back to every day. I am also a big fan of self-policing. If you hire smart people, make them accountable and don’t drown them in red tape and bureaucracy.
Re. turnover. One of the biggest pet-peeves I have is responsibility dodging. Though the article focuses on Human Capital, it does not mean that others are not responsible for keeping and growing good people. Great teams are everyone’s responsibility! If anyone uses excuses to dodge accountability, they simply don’t belong in rapid-growth environments. They can go work for government or one of those dying large companies.