Arguably, for the past 10 years, Human Resources has been the weakest of all business functions. It was not always this way. Back in the late 50's and through the 60's, the function evolved from "Industrial Relations" to "Personnel," reflecting an ever-so subtle shift in focus from Labor Relations to a more general overall activity. Up until that time, Labor Relations had been the functional straw that stirred the drink, for it was an activity that impacted the bottom line in a measurable manner. This pretty much continued through the mid-70's, but as union membership declined and high technology came into its explosive fore, the need for those experienced in the hard knock activities of collective bargaining was not as critical. When President Reagan called the Air Controller's bluff during his first year in office, this signaled an end to meaningful union growth in the private sector. Corporate negotiators went on the offensive and did a number on unions from which they have never recovered. Of course, in so doing, the negotiators subconsciously did a number on themselves, for they worked their way right out of being needed.
Indeed, companies like Texas Instruments, Xerox and IBM saw a need for those who could focus on a positive or more "pro-employee" direction. Some called them "union busters" but this was more union propaganda than it was fact. Then, as the Organizational Development activity found its way at companies like Digital Equipment, Lincoln Electric, and TRW, the function began an evolution toward a far more generic effort. Generalists replaced specialists. Labor Relations no longer was the big kid on the block. Sub-activities like Quality of Work Life (QWL) and Higher Performance work teams began to take shape (one could make a case that this later actually evolved from Industrial Engineering and the time and motion studies of the late 40's and the 50's). A required corporate focus on quality influenced these activities as well.
As this functional evolution continued, OD people abounded. They facilitated, mediated, worked issues of change management, helped to design more efficient organizations, and made a strong functional name for themselves. Meanwhile, training, except for executive development, was somehow absorbed into something called development, and the stage was now set for a functional name change. Personnel, which used to be called Industrial Relations and sometimes Employment, would now be called Human Resources. It still is. No one is quite certain, but this seemed to have occurred in the mid-80's, and by 1990, "Personnel" had become history.
Employers in the 90's faced new and far more difficult challenges. Continual change became the norm. Local became International. Employers and their HR people now had to grapple with an explosion of employment in High Technology and later in that same decade, an equally dynamic (and devastating) reduction of employment and plant closings. Issues of race, multicultural work forces, life-work balance, a sea-change in the concept of corporate loyalty, and issues associated with change challenged HR as it never had been challenged before. Great companies with great promise disappeared. Digital, Prime, Wang, Data General, Polaroid and many others were either acquired or went belly up. Old standbys like IBM, Xerox, and Kodak tottered but survived. The HP'S and the Texas Instruments hung tough. While HR seems to have avoided becoming jaded, it certainly experienced some hard times. Given this combat-like experience, one would have expected the function to jump to the next level of growth .............................but herein lies the rub.
Instead of growing and contributing meaningful inputs at the table with its so-called business partners, HR remains a function stereotyping those who would dare criticize it. Instead of doing something about the obscene situation that exists with regard to executive compensation, it focuses on celebrating diversity. Maybe it's time they slowed down the "celebration" and began accepting it as an inevitable, natural and welcomed result of ever-increasing demographic and generational shifts in our population and an ever-increasing understanding of its value added. Maybe it's time they put the consultants (who have created their own lucrative industry in this arena) out of business. Maybe it's time they demonstrated a modicum of courage in doing something about the obscenely excessive severance packages granted to those who fail rather than wringing their functional hands and exclaiming how awful things are. Indeed, during the period of corporate accounting scandals from 2001 -2003, HR was virtually invisible. Instead of spending their time finger pointing and otherwise acting as the corporate PC police, maybe they should spend their time serving as protectors of company values. And instead of developing revitalization programs after a workforce has been hit by a devastating layoff, maybe their time would be better spent on developing workforce planning models that would minimize the possibility of such layoffs. Maybe they should be focusing on issues associated with Global multi-culturalism rather than spending time on the many different kinds of "awareness" seminars.
Just once I would like to see this function emerge from the "quai-soft" activities in which it has now become morassed and do something that truly and measurably impacts the bottom line. Just once I would like to attend a seminar in which the subject deals with discussing how HR can cut through the artifice, crack the nut, and get to the nub of what appears to be wrong with a once proud function and to cull out the reasons for this in a candid manner. It's time to get off Saturn's Ice Moons and get back to Earth.
“From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, twenty years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor. I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned my candor would soon get in the way of my career. … and I’m telling you that it was candor that helped make it work.” – Jack Welch, Winning,
Ted Sares, PhD, is a private investor who lives and writes in the White Mountain area of Northern New Hampshire with his wife Holly and Min Pin Jackdog. He writes a weekly column for a local newspaper and many of his other pieces are widely published.
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