Why has HR become passive within the organization? There’s an on-going movement that is somewhat disheartening, and that is that HR feels it’s role is to be reactive and prepared. To always play defense is not a healthy way to approach daily work.
Granted, HR does have to react because of the intangibles that people have each day, but if you’re just waiting for the red alarm phone to ring furiously off your desk, so you can jump into action, you’re doing things backwards. Also, I can’t imagine how stressful you feel HR is by approaching the field this way. When I talk to my peers, too many of them put themselves in this camp. They also feel that this is what is “expected” of them from Senior Management. Yikes !!
Time for something new . . .
Do you have ideas? If so, do you share them, implement them, or shy away from them? Do you feel you do/don’t have permission to act on your ideas?
Have you fallen into the pit of doing things the same way every day and for every situation? If that is the case, let me share that I think that you have missed the value of how vastly different people and each situation you face truly is. Most of us stopped either having, or sharing, ideas because we listened to others who beat us down when we want to try something new.
The other pitfall to ideas is that we think that systems “fix” people. If we have the best system, it won’t matter who the people are. (I’ve heard this quoted verbatim at a company !!) People are the difference at work and great people make great systems shine !!
Back to ideas . . .
I’d like to challenge you to follow my personal model. I intentionally try to come up with 3 to 5 ideas a day to try something new at work. Some are massive ideas, and some are small, trite things that take little to no effort. The second step is that I try EVERY idea out. EVERY ONE !! That isn’t an exaggeration.
The response I can hear those of you reading this is – “But how do you have the time to have 3 to 5 ideas a day and then try them out? My day is so full, I couldn’t possibly do that !!” The fact is, my day is overflowing and I love that !! With 3 to 5 ideas every day, it’s also new, challenging, fresh and positive. Is that true with your full day ??
So, try it. You have to remember that you don’t need permission to think and create. You’re EXPECTED to think and create !! Need to go now. New idea brewing . . .
Roomie,
Great thoughts and glad you are sharing them. It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day hum-drum and stepping outside the box and doing some “creative” thinking and sharing that with others who are willing join you in going “off course” a bit is invigorating.
Bye-the-bye, great session this morning… it had our table a bit perplexed at first, but then we had some very insightful discussion…..
Fred
Have no fear, I think HR is still viewed as a valuable contributor to most organizations. My suggestion, take off you HR hat and put on your business hat-learn your business from all perspectives.
You can have a tremedous impact on your organization if you start thinking along the same lines as your peers. What can you do to cut costs, increase revenue and help your company acheive it’s strategic objectives. I make a point of knowing the goals and objectives of each of our businesses functional areas and I ask the functional head how HR can help.
For example: let’s say your company is planning to launch a new product next year. You should find out all you can about it and start headhunting for people with that expertise or create a plan to develop your internal resources. Connect the dots…you find the talent and it results in revenue.
I am constantly asking clients and HR professionals the following question, how do you make a difference to the bottom line? Without sounding simple minded, whenever and whoever goes to work in the private sector the ultimate goal is to drive revenue and profit to the bottom line of the company. How does HR do that? HR can do that using what I term a “soft or employee centric approach”, i.e. the traditional employee engagement ideas-anniversary awards, Christmas party, employee of the month, or the one that I love wishing people happy birthday when it is their kids’ birthday. These approaches, however dated are still important and make a difference. In addition to these tried and true approaches the opportunity exists for a more focused and fact based approach to adding to the bottom line. One value added service that HR can offer (because they really own the data to come up with the actionable intelligence) is to influence where the location of the next office or factory is based on combination of census data and the characteristics of the top performers doing the job that will be done at the new location. I have seen this make a real difference in time to productivity for the new location as well as affecting a lower turnover rate. One of the main reasons why there was a lower turnover rate and a faster time to productivity (compared to other location openings prior to HR intelligence being used in this way) was because the company in question put the location very conveniently on the bus route near a college that offered a program that was training ground for the workers that this organization would need in the future. HR was able to build a business case using the intelligence that they had gathered to not only justify the choice for the new location but to use predictive analytics to allow the organization to plan around what “likely would happen” based on those analytics that HR provided. I would submit that this is a great example of the things that HR needs to make ordinary rather than being worthy of a comment on a blog posting or in LinkedIn. These are the things that we as HR professionals need to be thinking about. Can you think of any other fact based examples of how HR can help the business?