Human Resources - A Category mistake
Posted on February 21, 2008
Filed Under Marketing, Nickel and Diming
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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Mike "Fucking" Villar
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"The personal blog of Marketing Strategist, Rising Internet Star, Man Blog editor, child pornographer, alcoholic, and cokehead-- Douchebag Jones--Err, Mike Villar!
It is important to keep the human resources happy and content. That is why people want to work for companies like Google because they keep their talents happy.
If by keeping “Human Resources happy” you meant “Employees happy” then I agree with you.
Mikey… Pardon… I’m retarded today.
I meant Human Resources = employees, not the department.
With respect, the talent idea is about as new as last Christmas’s turkey. It’s as totally mainstream now in the HR world as branding is in marketing. Just Google ‘Chief Talent Officer’, in case you don’t believe me. Same issues, too: easier said than done, what does ‘branding’ (’talent’) really mean, rhetoric vs. reality, intention vs. delivery, etc etc. And, by the way, it takes talented HR people to properly do the ‘talent’ stuff Seth talks about. Funnily enough, we don’t want to spend our time filling out forms either.
It all boils down to what your company’s HR’s practice and culture is. Most multinationals now focus on “branding” themselves to be the “employer of choice” or “top of mind employer” for both fresh grads and valuable talent, as what Barbara had pointed out. It should not, however, stop there. There’s this practice called “strategic talent retention.” In this aspect, HR should be proactive in assessing competitive and equitable compensation and benefits for its onboard talents in parallel to making sure that these same people get the proper and needed training on the skills they would need for their career development and advancement. To be effective, data here should come from both the markets the company may lose the talent to and the industry it belongs to. AND, more importantly, it should not end with just the study. They should assess, propose, and, if the powers that be would warrant and pray to your God that they do, implement.
Strategic HR is geared towards managing the people “within” even after they are sourced. If yours fail on this, there is something wrong with your HR. Give them feedback. They should, after all, be receptive at the very least.
For what it’s worth, I know of multinational companies whose HR had already been doing this, dubbed “best practice,” for years.
Also, no company has zero filing and all the other clerical and admin work tied up to even the management team’s tasks. The company’s culture should be flexible enough to acknowledge this nuisance in order to try to make them manageable, thereby letting employees do what they are paid to do. Same as where I am but, hey, no company is perfect.
Rant away
Lololol. I bet I can come up with a post like this too, but longer
Why Mikey? Isn’t your HR doing excellent work?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!
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