We asked you what you would like to consign to the dustbin of HR. What makes training and HR management most difficult? What would you most like to change about the way HR is seen? Tanya French of Computacenter gives us her views here.
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I have more years than I care to mention in varying business area’s inc. Retail, Legal, IT and Manufacturing. HR has moved on at quite a pace becoming smarter in process, policies and focus but somewhere along the line HR has become impersonal. I remember when HR knew the names of many individuals and managers, passed the time of day and were a part of the department. Cheerful, positive people, almost confidants who could be trusted with an employee’s issues and sometimes knew more about the morale of a department than the manager. Managers have picked up the reins in the name of good people management and don’t get me wrong I truly advocate this and believe a manager should. However, isn’t there still space for employees to feel personally supported by their HR team and their manager, being a person not one of just a number? I have lost count of the number times staff are told to fill in a form when they want a sympathetic ear or to articulate an issue maybe later filling in a form but remember they may not be confident enough to complete a form eloquently. Perhaps they are told the SLA is X, or asked who their manager is etc (simple to look up whilst on the phone). Have we taken the H (human) out of HR and swapped the hard skills (facilitating meetings in disciplineries, employment law etc) for the soft skills of listening and understanding that they need to be approachable and are on the side of both managers and employees. Tanya French
Purchasing Manager – Commercial
2 Responses
More human HR?
Great post Tanya – and a good reminder. Thanks!
Jeremy
The need for HR people
I agree that HR has become impersonal but I don’t blame the HR people as being totally responsible. Much of the blame lies with the rest of the management team through abrogation of it’s people-management role in favour of HR. “Let HR deal with it” is a common statement.
HR does have its own share of blame though, in that many HR departments have lost their direction. In finding work for themselves to do, in the guise of improving the quality of personnel information to management, and often with the best of intentions, they create a significant administrative overhead within the organisation with the consequence that management has less time to deal with personnel issues on a day to day basis. A chicken and egg situation? Perhaps!
Furthermore,if the company does not have the resources to implement the HR recommendations, or the will to do so, this exacerbates the waste of resources but perhaps more importantly if employees’ expectations are not met it can lead to a dissatisfied workforce.
A difficult problem, but it all boils down to the need for a good system of management control and review, of everything.