Reflections on the state of HR

What ails HR? As I was talking to a few people and thinking through this question, the following came across as some of the key problems facing HR.

Tyranny of the process: Almost two decades ago, the HR team in Hindustan Lever consisted of three people - a management development manager, a training manager and a recruitment manager. This team did everything to do with management development - through a set of very simple processes but with lots of rigour and senior management ownership and they helped develop awesome leaders. Now, HR comes up with numerous initiatives and activities spurred by two prime drivers. First, we in HR have to show some activity in the short term to address an issue, and we launch a hyped-up 'intervention'. Second, we tend to address many symptoms and not really 'attack' the root-cause.

HR training emphasises process champions: Increasingly, what is being discussed in business schools and in the numerous HR seminars etc, are an increasingly 'process' views of HR. While this may suit an 'engineering' mind-set of a majority of our leaders, this seems to be missing the point. The only way HR adds value is bringing insights on people and organisations to enhance decision-making and uphold the culture of organisations.

The looming shadows on our credibility: I think organisations and managers still want to be open and truthful about things but the perception of employees is that we are less truthful. Career aspirations of employees are often not dealt with objectivity. This is partly due to the uncertainty in organisations where leaders are hesitant to commit on a future course of action, further exacerbated by poor career counselling.

What are we in HR aiming for: While other functions are quite clear - sales focuses on revenue, marketing on market share, and so on, we in HR seem to be all over the place. The reality is that HR deliverables have become complex. What do we really enable and what are we truly accountable for?

Silos and specialisation: Over the last decade, the HR function in most organisations has been through transformative changes - and the model of having centres of expertise, business partners, and a transactional shared services is now the norm. However, I sense that a priority of most organisations is to continuously tweak this model and drive for productivity and cost efficiencies, with a big thrust on technology. There is the risk that this takes the mindshare away from the more strategic issues. Second, the challenge this model presents is the balance between specialisation and silos - how do we bring the power of specialisation yet ensuring it doesn't end up creating silos in the HR organisation.

The author is Krish Shankar, head, HR, Indian sub-continent, Philips. Re-printed with permission. Link: http://kshankarblogs.blogspot.in/ 2014/07/reflections-on-state-of-hr-in-our.html