HR - Who owns it?

Like many HR professionals, my bruises heal just in time for me to engage in another head-to-head with those who are too busy with ‘getting the job done’ to discuss important, longer-term, strategic HR issues.  They are focused on addressing the urgent issues that impact directly on meeting short-term objectives.  In these difficult times, organisation’s operational managers are inclined to become even more focused on achieving this month’s production and sales targets.  

I tell people I’m 150 years old because when I first started on the HR trail it was called Welfare.  Since then I’ve time-travelled on a journey through Personnel Services, Personnel Management, Manpower, People Management, Human Resources, HRM and HRD, Strategic Human Resources and on into the realm of Organisation Development.  On that journey I have impacted in some HR/OD way with over 35 organisations spanning, for-profit and not-for-profit, public and private, small and large, National and multi-National, manufacturing and service, covering more than 23 sectors operating from 9 different Western National culture bases.  My most recent role extended that experience during the last five years to working with teams operating in 30 developing countries around the world.  In all that time I have never managed to answer the question of why HR is frequently seen as a second league player in the big game of organisational activity.  Yet, wherever I go, I hear the plaintive cry of managers proclaiming people as our ‘most important resource’ and repeatedly listen to their revelation that development of individual team members and their integration into coherent, mature, innovative teams is 'fundamental to our continued organisational success and future growth'.  This is, invariably, followed by the overt or, more frequently, implied finger of accusation that HR are not doing their job in making this happen – well, give me a crystal ball and a magic wand and I’ll see what I can do! 

However, along the road I have made some observations, gathered much information, and formed views which, when all brought together, may establish a set of starting blocks for addressing the problem without the use of the crystal and wand.

A Common Factor

From my experience, a common factor is that few organisations make a clear distinction between the HR Department, and the HR Function.  This leads us on to an underlying issue of organisational culture and into standards, values, norms and behavioural components.  It also exposes behaviours that are tolerated, or in some cases even rewarded, in the context of supporting and sustaining a culture that is less than ideal for modern HR interventions, even those specifically designed to meet the plaintive cries mentioned above.

“… a common factor is that few organisations make a clear distinction between the HR Department and the HR Function.”

  The problem is not mysterious and is very clearly delineated in the fact that operational departments are primarily task driven and HR, particularly in its strategic guise, is primarily people-process driven.  Task can be clearly and specifically aligned with added value and achievement of objectives; the link between process and added value is more tenuous – in fact, in many cases even involves expenditure on non-material resources that don’t immediately or independently translate into tangible added value.  Most organisations, by their nature, are finance driven and, when push comes to shove, measure individuals and teams by their relatively short-term contribution to adding value.  Where a line operative or manager has a choice between devoting time to a tangible, material, task focused, here and now, contribution or a difficult to measure, interactive, people and process focused, psychological contract, there and then, issue, there are no prizes for guessing to which they are more likely to devote attention and effort.  Time, of course, is a limited resource in any organisation and if an individual is perceived as spending some of theirs on longer-term ‘non-immediate value adding’ activity (like thinking about how they can better contribute to improving process in the longer term) at the direct expense of getting the immediate job done to agreed timescales, they are quickly found additional tasks to ‘take up the slack’.  A practical, logical, ‘of the moment’ decision.

Extending this to the matter of lack of clear distinction between the Department and the Function, there is also the question of the specific objectives of the HR Department (this question might equally, but separately, be applied to the HR Function).  Is the HR Department expected to make a strategic contribution (this is a pro-active role) or is it expected to provide a service contribution (this is a reactive role), or both?  And are either or both actually perceived as adding value?  A second leg to this expectation stool is the question of short and long-term interventions which, by implication, have a foundation in differentiating between service and strategic responsibilities.   A third leg is the true levels of authority and responsibility vested in the HR Department.  The bottom line is that, in many organisations where HR still suffers from that ‘unloved’ status, the HR Department doesn’t actually have management control of the HR Function.  However, when an HR issue is raised at an operational level, instead of being dealt with by application of the line manager’s HR Functional responsibility, the matter is often, at best, referred to the HR Department, at worst, ignored (or dealt with superficially) in the hope that it will go away and we can get back to focusing on ‘getting the job done’.

“Is the HR Department expected to make a strategic contribution (this is a pro-active role) or is it expected to provide a service contribution (this is a reactive role), or both?”

 Management of the HR Function

Picking up the issue of the HR Department not having management control of the HR Function, the obvious next question is, ‘If they don’t, who does?’  From observation and experience, my suggestion is that authority for the Function is vested, by implication rather than conscious application, in line managers for day-to-day issues, and the Board/Senior Management Team for strategic decisions.  Both scenarios often being played out without an HR professional in evidence or, in a consultant rather than management role or, sometimes, as a single management voice in the wilderness of current task focused, urgent, operational activity and financial constraint.  So, here we start to gain a perspective on the question of why HR is relegated to the second league – the HR Department are delegated the responsibility to ‘engineer’ and manage the psychological contract between people (our most important and valuable resource) and the organisation.  To do this they are given limited management authority, limited powers of strategic intervention, lack of support at HR Functional level, are required to operate a people-process in a task driven environment and, within this framework, to design, deliver, monitor and evaluate effective HR interventions.

Now, most HR professionals are not whiners, and levels of resilience are high.  So, they keep trying to achieve – hence, the bruises.  The crystal balls and magic wands are worked overtime, the profile is kept high and a ‘never say die/can do’ attitude employed.  There is much talk and discussion around the necessary strategic interventions to bring about the expected personal and team development necessary to ensure future organisation success and growth.  Plans are laid and strategies developed for the HR Function.  Processes are designed and values, standards and norms proposed.  Then it all falls apart because the action moves beyond the management control of the HR Department.  At this stage, senior management, line managers and individual employees are not just required to buy-in to the concepts, they are now required to take action and do things.  They are required to carry out their HR Functional responsibilities, which are seldom clearly defined.  In the face of compromising the achievement of their short-term operational task and objectives and the lack of clarity surrounding their HR Functional responsibility, it’s small wonder that they find it much easier to turn the whole issue back on the HR Department – after all they started it, all these fancy ideas were theirs in the first place, if they can’t follow through then they shouldn’t have suggested it, it wasn’t my idea – I don’t have time to do their job as well as mine, I’ve got an operational department to run!

In true HR professional style, we won’t leave it there, although it’s very tempting.  If this is the root of the problem, then what can we do about resolving it?  The answer is in the question – in the word ‘we’.  But it’s easy to say ‘we’ and not so easy to do ‘we’.

The Engine of change

Although an important factor, the solution is not only in a mind-set shift of the senior management team, who are often enjoined with the HR Department as co-authors of the lack of effective people management.  No, the real solution is in the development of a critical mass who will be the ‘engine’ of change.  The HR Department and senior management team can plot the route and navigate and steer the ship, but the driving force must come from within the body of the organisation.

Unfortunately, this critical mass attitude is not something that can be dictated.  We can’t bring about change by issuing a statement that, 'as from Monday next we will all think differently; that we will now operate a new culture with different values and norms' – life isn’t like that.  If we want to bring about a change where line managers and employees take responsibility for the HR Function, and become accountable for making it work in the operational environment, then it has to be their own idea – well, maybe, with a kick-start and a little subsequent prodding from the HR Department, and loads of support and example from their senior functional managers.  Without wishing to dig up a hackneyed old term, we could call it ‘Teamwork’.

“People don’t vote against their own ideas.”

 Now, this might all sound a bit like ‘the truth, the light, and the way’, but the fact of the matter is, for the organisation to adopt a positive attitude to the HR Function (not the HR Department – this comes later), there has to be benefit. However sophisticated we become the WIIFM factor (what’s in it for me?) will always apply where people are involved.  Therefore, the people who make up the organisation have to have a sense of ownership of the plan; if they invent it they will make it work – people don’t vote against their own ideas.

‘Making it work’, in the sense we have just outlined, involves a certain specific organisation culture that embodies trust, common purpose and inter-dependence – the foundations of effective teamwork.  It requires participation and involvement plus a policy of empowerment and a feeling in team members that this is real and not just a superficial espousal.  And here we come to the crunch – all this requires elimination of any vestige of a blame culture.  Employees (and this includes managers) must feel they have permission to take responsibility and fail, without having their backsides kicked from here to eternity.  The basic premise is quite simple – if a person takes responsibility,  screws up and then suffers blame; the next time the opportunity arises to take responsibility they are, of course, more reluctant than previous to expose themselves.  Do this a few times to a few people and ‘the taking of responsibility’ becomes strictly for the birds.

So, where does this leave us?  I suppose, with a foundation that clarity of distinction between the HR Department and the HR Function, and ownership of the HR Function by all, are matters rooted in the culture of the organisation.   I leave you, for the moment, to ponder the implications of this conclusion.

Chris Warren

Author and Freelance Writer (and HR/OD Specialist)

chris.warren@eblana-writers.com