Today I got contacted by the HR department of a Multi-national asking if I’d like to ‘… come and have a chat’ with them.
Being a pain-in-the-arse, I asked why would I want to do that given I have lots of friends who talk to me all the time.
After a massive pause, they said they wanted to find out if I’d be interested in joining their organisation – and if I was, the CEO would like to meet me.
So this got me thinking – what exactly do HR departments do?
In this example [which unsurprisingly, I said an emphatic ‘NO’ to] they were basically secretaries trying to organise a meeting between 2 people … but surely there is more to it than that?
Well yes there is, but it seems in the majority of cases, HR is more about ‘management protection’ than ’talent nurturing’.
There’s a great article about this in the Australian Newspaper, The Age [click here] … but I think the real issue is that HR Departments have little power … politically and financially … so they’re always going to be more about ‘maintaining the status quo’ than changing it.
Great companies are not about processes, they are about people … so having a department that represents employees hopes, dreams and aspirations makes commercial sense … but if all that department actually does is handle ’annual evaluation forms’ and ’holiday leave’ then what they are actually doing, is showing their employees that they don’t really value them at all.
Sure it is difficult if you have tens of thousands of people in your company … I’m not saying it isn’t … but until HR starts to attract people who not only want to make a difference, but have the power to do it [like an internal Union – but one that isn’t focused just on working conditions and salaries] – then they’re going to continue to be about as effective [and as trusted] as a local government planning department.