The Mystery of Two HR's

Over the course of my career I have concluded that when the subject of HR comes up everyone has a different perspective or what that acronym means. Most people recognize that HR refers to Human Resources, but what is human resources? However, if I say I work in Engineering, Sales, or Accounting there is a generally common understanding of what I do. Other than maybe staffing, benefit adminstration, or payroll at times, most people don’t have a clue what HR does or is supposed to do and neither do the people who work in HR.

What, how can this be? How can I claim that those in HR do not know what they are supposed to do? In some cases they have been doing the job for many years and no one complained, people were happy with their work and they were recognized and appreciated. How can this be? By now you may think I am crazy, but just follow my thinking for a few more minutes and let’s see if we can solve the Mystery of Two HRs.

My contention is that work is divided into two categories. The first is administrative and the second is contributory. Administrative work is the activities that occur within an organization to accomplish a task. Unfortunately, completing a task may or may not contribute to the company’s needs. For example, if a manager labors to complete an assigned weekly report, that no one acts upon or even reads, then that task is not worthwhile. However, even if management does act on the information in the report, the fact that the report was compiled does not in itself contribute value. Only the action by management can possibly create value and there is no guarantee that the action that was initiated by the report will lead to results of value. Nevertheless, innumerable reports are generated in organizations on a daily basis, many of which are not read or acted upon. Now that we have made this point, what does this have to do with HR and how does it help to solve the mystery that we are working on?

Most of what HR does fails to create value. I contend that even the recruiting function does not offer direct value. Staffing is a task that if done well, will lead a hiring manager to choose a productive hire. However, hiring managers are rarely trained to identify promising candidates. As a result, there are numerous examples where the hiring manger employs a less than ideal candidate for a host of different reasons.

OK, now that I have your attention, I hope you will tune into the next series of blogs, where I expound upon this topic as we try to solve the Mystery of Two HRs.

From Michael Salisbury with the Human Resource Alliance (HRA) at www.hralliance.biz