Human Resources – A Category mistake

I want to add something to this post, which, in typical Seth Godin fashion, hits the nail squarely on the head.

I have worked with a lot of companies in the past and if there is one thing that’s common between all of those companies’ Human Resources departments, it has got to be the fact that, traditionally, the department has assumed the role of a pen-pushing, forms-collating, support unit.

Sure, I’ve worked with some HR departments that have people in them who do stellar jobs in sourcing talent, but never have I seen such a department that gives equal weight to taking care of talent.

An excerpt from Seth’s post:

What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)

I couldn’t agree with this more. If you’re a company looking for top talent to join your ranks, do you think that putting your hat in your hand, extending an attractive compensation package and pretty much just chucking the candidate into the routinary fray of things to rot forever would suffice?

Even sadder is how most Human Resources departments seem to try to mitigate their workload by dumping clerical tasks (i.e. Attendance monitoring, forms-filing, etc.) to the people they hire to become middle management superstars.

I guess what I’m driving at is that if you want to keep top talent, you have to treat them like Superstars–and I’ll tell you what superstars don’t do: They do not fill up leave applications in triplicate for their staff, nor do they argue with accounting on behalf of their staff members because of salary disputes. Superstars are too busy excelling at what you hired them to do for any of this.

And what the fuck’s up with the term “Human Resources” anyway? “Resource” is not something you ascribe to the word “Human.”

Following Seth’s lead: How about “Corporate Talent Management?”

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