HR in an Organization Part- 1: Human Resources and Six Stigma

Summary

In most of the organizations in India, we see a question mark associated with capability of Human Resource function. People question the ability of HR to bring in a sustainable and impactful change and more often, the function is relegated to processors than being a strategic partner or a change agent. Their job is confined to fulfilling the demands raised by the business . This is my take on what are the major taunts HR has to face, why they have created such lowly image and what can they do to change their perception.

Introduction

What is function of DNA in human body? Well, we all know that DNA gives us our characteristics and features but do they have any active role in a body-from a day to day perspective? Do they help in daily energy creation for the body or fight infection or carry nutrients and energy to all part of the body? Well, as much as I know about the medical science, perhaps answer to all these questions is a ‘No’. DNA gives structure and basic characteristics and ability to emerge victorious in different situations. But do they really do a job to propel things for daily needs?  Well not directly. Cells and blood need to do that job themselves as DNA has enabled them with basic strength. Does that mean we do not need DNA or DNA’s importance is less?

Human Resource is one of the most potentially powerful among the enabling functions in an organization. However, the potential largely remains untapped as not many organization and their HR leaders lay down a strong foundation for HR in the beginning. Once the organization grows and attain a certain way of working, then the drive of HR can only bring in incremental changes in one off areas unless there is a strong management drive in a top-down fashion. Yet, we cannot blame only management and managers for current state of HR function in the country. HR function also has some shortfalls and hence is unable to establish a credible image.

Below are some of the most common allegations on HR.

Six Stigma of HR

Stigma 1: HR is there to organize birthday and other celebrations or off-sites parties. That is their major KRA.

Stigma 2: HR makes us do unnecessary work like filling and evaluating performance documents, filling joining forms, go through performance discussion or career counseling etc. These activities waste our productive time.

Stigma 3: They make unnecessary and unfriendly policies which put more constraints than process.

Stigma 4: They don’t give us the due hike during appraisal and deduct money from our salary without any reason.

Stigma 5: They only need to process the resumes and they falter there too. Recruitment delays often delay our projects.

Stigma 6: They do not act as per business requirement. What do they do after all?

HR has managed to earn enough bad names for themselves. Most of the organizations treat HR as necessary but transactional function only. The reasons could be many. Either due to lack of support from business or lack of willingness from themselves, HR doesn’t get involved in bringing in change or creates a vision for itself. The inertia makes them evade action as they are afraid of consequences. The below points are perhaps most common reasons for failure of HR and will cover almost eighty percent of the source of the problems.

Why do we have such bad name for HR

•    Inertia: We often notice inertia in HR to try something new whose result or consequences are unknown. Hence, same old practices are continued as a part of checklist without considering the impact.
• .     Inability to convince: Buyout from management for HR drive in organization often leads to weaker HR. Sometimes the management is adamant on a call but mostly it is inability of HR to put a strong argument in their favor. The weak argument is mainly a combination of point 3 and 4 below.
• .     Lack of knowledge:  Inability to contribute effectively in business meetings degenerates the impression of HR. Lack of understanding of recruitment need, business plans and gap between scale of growth of business and HR processes are some major reasons why business start doubting the capability of the function.
•    No future plans: Most of the HR’s vision shall stem out of organization’s plans in terms of business. However, there are some plans which HR needs to make for itself and act proactively. For example, adopting new systems and have an agile HR team shall be conceived during early days. Growing team manually and then looking for a system often leads to lot of double work like data migration, restructuring of team etc. All these double efforts slow down the HR function and shows lack of planning and vision from HR- for their own function. Thus credibility to support other functions diminishes further.
•    Non value-add work: HR has created a reputation a non-favorable image by repeatedly doing non-value add work. Thus people consider them more as processing agents than change agents.  
•     Lack of clear communication:  HR often tends to create a bubble around and their communication is often nebulous.  There could be several reasons for the same. First reason can be that HR does not have any say in the organization and hence by communicating they do not want to commit. Secondly, their lack of knowledge about the subject is forcing them to get into a shell so their lacuna remains unexposed. Third and most interesting one is that HR feels empowered as they have access to performance and compensation system and are part of such discussion with most impactful people in organization. Hence, parting with any information means parting of their power and hence the communication with people is kept to minimum.

6/6 corrections: Six solutions for six problems and six stigmas

1.       Lay out a plan and share: HR needs to layout an action plan and share with relevant people. They need to prioritize and start attacking the low hanging fruits to ensure people start trusting their action. HR should also be able to classify value add and non-value adding work and invest their time accordingly. It is important to choose correct and relevant HR theories and implement selected but impactful few instead of going for all possible HR theories available.
2.    Talk the language most understood:  HR people should be able to talk about numbers and that is how they can gain confidence of people in business. Manpower cost at every level, possible ways of improvements, fulfillment of open position, and potential savings due to grooming of internal talent are some hard numbers which will help in building credibility and respect for the HR. 
3.    Be a catalyst: HR are catalysts and it is the people who need to undergo the change to bring in the desired product which is new culture. Hence they need to include the managers and people while putting down the process. Improving the manager capability can reduce the burden on HR for being the catalyst for change. By bringing in some effective measures and communication, HR can trigger a chain reaction of desirable change.
4.    Show agility: HR should have a swift action technique and also shall be able to change their game plan if required. Often, HR sticks to their plan without a Plan B in place and eventually realizes the need of the alternative plan when it is probably too late to react. Within HR, recruitment function often faces such situation if put against a stiff or critical hiring target.  
5.    Create an employer brand:  HR can help in being employer of choice by adopting and propelling right recruitment and people development practice in the organization. The interaction and kind of platform given to people can attract right talent into the system. Most often, the efforts in giving right opportunities and having quality discussion with people reap short term as well as long term positive results for the organization.
6. Leave crisis mode: HR often get into firefighting mode. Examples can be many. Attrition management, people unhappy with appraisal rating and dissatisfaction with team/manager are some of the most common reasons where HR starts acting when most of the damage is already done. Proactive approach towards hitting the major cause of attrition in the group, enabling and structuring the productive and effective communication between employee and manager/ skip level manager are some of the basic steps HR can initiate.

To end..

The problems, reasons and solutions can never be generalized hundred percent. But a good portion of problems remain common, irrespective of size and nature of organization. I have also tried not to solve problem of any organization but just list a few observations. HR will never have ‘one solution fits all’ but if a substantial portion is targeted through some common learning, nothing like it!