Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Social + HR + New Reality

Michael Brito posted his thoughts on the role of HR in Social Business in this article:

http://www.britopian.com/2012/07/08/hrs-critical-role-in-social-business-transformation/?goback=%2Egmr_1969704%2Egde_1969704_member_132180404

The comment from Elizabeth Lupfer came the closest to reflecting my perspective on the HR role in social, which is something I also noted in my e-book. I do think that we need to break out HR somewhat as the compliance based roles will be the last to be able to see the opportunities in social and adapting those roles to 'social' will require some careful thinking.

I find myself alternating between believing that it is simply time to use the HR title for compliance and compensation specialties and rebrand and rethink the rest of the HR realm. Rather than seeing "Humans" as resources or assets-perhaps we need to adapt a new approach to the Employee Relations and Organizational Development areas-one that more closely reflects the people focused community (employee experience to the customer experience link).

Rather than seeing "HR" as a 'strategic partner' a more practical role would be to have a team of strategic thinkers/implementers- directly linking the organizational goals to the team goals to the individual goals-with the big picture of the organizational strategy as the magnet for the output of that role.

The current silo of HR vs. the rest of the organization in many cases is a result of traditional management styles-HR handles the messy people stuff and the compensation stuff and the rest of the employees do the *real* work. A fully integrated resolution to that picture doesn't exist unless we radically shift from Industrial Era process to Knowledge Era realities. The Industrial Era process put HR directly in the middle of Management and Employees and at the end of the day-no one is particularly happy with the result. When I worked in the field the image of the "pig in the middle" game often popped into my mind.

How much longer will executives in business continue to complain that “HR doesn’t ‘get it’ rather than simply rethinking the role and making a wholesale change?

No comments:

Post a Comment