A year of reconnection
Get closer to your business in 2016, says Steve Rockey
Last week, I spotted an article on Forbes about the disconnect between HR and the rest of business. Business consultant Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith (who does have a background in HR, I was pleased to see) explained how HR must embrace the future if we are to remain relevant tomorrow.
It made for interesting reading. The general gist was that ‘HR’ has got lost in its own world, rather than the world of business.
Vorhauser-Smith said: ‘Although many Chief Human Resource Officers are concentrating their efforts on optimizing employee engagement and building corporate culture, many more are still struggling with how to link HR to real business needs.’
For me, this begs the question – what are they doing, then? It sounds like people are making up process and policy to justify an existence that frankly isn’t needed now, let alone in ten years’ time.
Forget history
Imagine a widget making business where the marketing function was off making widgets look great, the finance function was counting the numbers of widgets made, but I as the leader of the People function knew nothing about widgets but had a cracking holiday policy.
As People professionals, we must get beyond the things our historical counterparts focused on and master new skills, such as strategic vision, getting under the skin of our business and becoming expert consultants/advocates/leaders.
The beauty of small business means that this disconnect – between HR and business – is very rare. And if it does happen, it’s easy to take a step back and put everyone back on the correct course.
That doesn’t mean, though, that larger businesses can’t adopt a similar approach, making sure those in the People function are prioritising building and understanding the business.
I recall a time in my career where I was in a larger organisation. In order to ensure alignment to the business, I outsourced elements of my role to expert suppliers. Doing so led to greater efficiency, cost savings and (crucially) allowed me to do much more business-focused work.
Who wants to be stuck with all the boring crap anyway? Get someone else to do it. Instead, make sure you’re building great widgets.
Outsourcing and technology are helping businesses remain nimble. The ‘traditional’ HR function is already a thing of the past because technology means all of the secret information ‘HR’ used to hold is usually but a mere Google search away.
Go forth and widgetify
So, fellow People professionals, make 2016 the year that you let managers go forth and manage their people. They know them better than you anyway.
Go out in the business and discover everything you could possibly know about widgets. Meet up with Jeff (Head of Widgets) and find out what would really help him to make bigger and better widgets.
Does he have the right people to make Widget 2.0? If not, tell him how you can help create them over a specific period of time.
Because if Jeff is successful then the business is successful. And then, you’ve made the People function the most valuable department in the company – and there’s not a form to complete in sight.
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