Important But Undervalued

Human Resources does incredibly important work for organizations.  That should be obvious, but they are also oft maligned by the employees. They can be seen as the roadblocks to being hired, the harbinger of doom when layoffs appear, and the holders of ‘that stack of paper’.  You know the one, it’s where you acknowledge every possible risk employees pose to the business and then sign away your right to later denial by saying you understood it.  Theirs can be a tedious, thankless job.

And yet those of us looking to the future of the social workplace know that HR should not just be a part of that future, but a critical driver of it.  There is no single group within an organization that has the potential for a stronger role to play, or a more difficult transformation to execute, than HR.  None.

Why is that?  

The majority of HR departments have evolved into this odd amalgam of functions that often resembles the execution arm of Legal and Finance more than it does anything to truly do with ‘human’ resources.  The main focus is one of mitigating risks (legal pressures) and optimizing cost efficiencies (finance pressures) combined with the vast responsibilities associated with healthcare and benefit issues.  It becomes a litany of checkboxes to mark off every day.  But the *actual* strategic stuff? Even that is typically executing someone else’s strategy. Even when people talk about HR and its importance in Social Business they do so with an eye towards execution, not ideation.  Don’t believe me? At the time of this writing, a quick preview of ten top HR articles looked something like this:

• Sample job descriptions
• PPACA guidance on full time employees and waiting periods.
• Workplace dress codes and their legal issues
• Mitigating the legal risks of using emotional intelligence and other kinds of employee assessments
• Devise a plan on responding to U.S. Department of Labor audits
• Create early retirement packages that will appeal to the right number of people. Not too many, not too few
• Negotiating deals with extended stay hotels
• Overhauling your health benefits around the coming of private and public health exchanges
• Adding incentives to ‘quit smoking programs’ to save on health insurance
• How to approve/deny FMLA leave

Who Has The Time?

This list isn’t that surprising really, many of these are complex topics that we are all trying to navigate. Someone is in HR pulling their hair out while they try to keep up with this never ending flood of changes.  OSHA, social media compliance, astronomical health care increases and executives screaming to reduce those costs, coping with employees who have some question or issue that you’re expected to somehow mediate.  If you were sitting  in that seat you’d be trying to read and keep up with all the changes too, who has time for company culture and experiential environments, hell they’re just trying to keep up reacting.

However, the workplace of tomorrow is one of designed experiences.  Not ‘designed’ in the sense of “Let’s show the employees we care by holding a company picnic one day a year” but in the sense of the environment, the people, and the culture that is experienced when dealing with our organizations every single day.  Here at SideraWorks we call that Holistic Enterprise Experience Design™.

Whether that is the initial touchpoint with a prospective customer, or whether it’s a prospective employee or shareholder we must stop trying to craft the image and instead craft the organization.  Stop desperately coming up with strengths or activities that you can ‘portray’ or spin to the outside world and instead actually work on developing long term strengths that you can ‘expose’.  That isn’t something that can be done department by department in isolation, it needs a central pivot point to drive. Where in that list of articles above is the focus on the well being of the workplace?

Not its health coverage program, not its list of benefits, but its actual day to day well being.

Who Is Responsible?

Who is responsible for ensuring a cultural ideal is being met and that it’s in line with the executive vision for the organization?  Not a team building exercise, not casual Fridays, but the real-world day to day of the employees experiential environment?  The stuff that isn’t seen as an ‘event’, the stuff that isn’t seen at all really, rather it’s absorbed…or felt.  That may seem like some new age fluffy statement, but I assure you it’s empirically studied science.

It certainly seems like a role that should exist in some part of HR, but why are they not at the table when discussing long term vision and culture in the executive suite?  Or why are they not pushing for those discussions to be happening if they aren’t taking place.

We constantly hear words like ‘transparency’ and ‘authenticity’ used as the communication models of socially progressive companies.  Yet most companies, and certainly all attorneys, cringe when they think of what would happen if they were truly transparent and authentic. They should.

The challenge is not being transparent as an organization, it’s being an organization that can afford to be transparent.

Those initial touch points with prospective employees and new hires set the tone and expectation for your organization. It displays what you value, and whether they are part of what is being valued.  It’s then *someone’s* responsibility to ensure that the initial promise that was made to these employees actually represents the organization they are about to be integrated into.

That’s big stuff, it’s long term stuff, it requires a high level holistic view of the organization yet needs enough feet on the ground to guide and execute.  That sounds like HR to me.

So What To Do?

First, get an understanding of what those responsibilities actually mean.  Become educated on social business and its attributes.  Understand your role in that and come to agreement on what it does, and doesn’t cover.  Oh yeah, that whole ‘come to agreement’ thing is because you need a central hub where the necessary constituents around the organization will meet.  They also have a say-so in this.  A ‘Center Of Gravity‘ is what we call it.

Once you have the education done, learn how to do frequent monitoring of cultural traits at both the organizational level and departmental level and the ways in which you can strengthen certain traits while weakening others.  We teach organizations our system for doing so every day.  It’s entirely doable.

Through these efforts, learn which employees (smart as they may be) are never going to be a part of or support the underlying culture you’re trying to make thrive.  Learn to balance the value of an activity against the risks of that activity instead of simply focusing on risk mitigation and fulfilling the recommendation by Legal.  Learn how to put the right people in the room and get answers to those risk/reward questions and then share that responsibility.

The full list is much longer.  It’s a big function.  It’s a big responsibility.  It’s a big change.  But HR should be a big part of it if it intends to not get relegated to the sidelines.  And that my friends would be a big shame because they can, and should, be a main driver of social business.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

Image Courtesy: Hamed Masoumi