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Lucy Adam's book, HR Disrupted, starts with the "HR is Dead", and I couldn't agree more. Nothing works, and how do we know this? Pay attention to employees' feedback about HR, and you will know. The "Everyone hates HR" slogan is trending on social media, telling us a lot about the state of their role.
How would I describe HR? Anti-progress. Lacking imagination. In love with control and the status quo. Biased. Scared. Unqualified. Process-driven. Bandwagon traveller (they jump on every trend and ride that train with no destination in sight until the next train comes by).
But my greatest problem is that they do not listen to their staff or innovate. They are in the 1950s, so they must jump the 6.0 update cycle to be current.
Talking of current, they always address topics that have already been addressed, like women in the workforce. Lovelies, we have been in the workforce for seven decades. We are good. Move on to addressing these problems.
Integration of the young generation into the workforce. They have different needs that are incompatible with your 1950s-style policies. You know what? Even older generations have different needs because things have changed.
Incompetent recruiters trained to read CVs but not to identify natural talents and see the potential of leveraging them. AI is not helping you; it is rejecting talent.
Scrap your old-school interview questions and try these instead.
Engagement train - Just get off it because pizza, ice cream, tea, dancing competition, useless certificates and other nonsense will not help. Understanding each individual's motivation will do the job, so figure out how to do that within your organisation.
Childlike policies to be replaced with age-appropriate and flexible ones.
Scratch annual appraisal and talent reviews. They do not work. Instead, depending on the organisation, figure out how to manage your workforce's performance instead of measuring it once a year. On the same note, measuring something once a year that has not been managed throughout the year is a waste of time.
Scratch probation period. People are either in or out but don't put them in purgatory.
L&D must change together with your induction. The future of L&D is making competence mandatory, not training.
Have a strategy about building teams & organisations instead of just putting random people together.
Appreciation, Reward & Recognition must be reviewed as the current system is not something employees would expect or appreciate.
Redefine how you promote people because it often lowers the bar.
Get rid of your behavioural competency frameworks and develop people based on their ability.
Get off the culture bandwagon and get to work. Make a difference and allow people to say what the culture is like. The band-aid approach - covering up issues instead of addressing them won't work. Get to work.
Pay attention to your leaders because they cause all good and bad at any company. Their behaviour & level of competence will describe the company, so most of your attention must be on them.
Change your employees' experiences because they are not having a good time.
There is much more to tackle if we want to bring HR up to date, but these are good places to start.
If you want to know how, read our free blog and get to work.
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