7 Reasons Why Best Practices Are Not Best For You.
Let’s face it. HR is denigrated, disregarded, paid less, and outsourced in direct proportion to our perceived value relative to other business functions. The perceived value of HR is partly dependent on how HR makes arguments to support business decisions.
I have worked in or with over 8 HR organizations and I speak to people in HR organizations almost every day. It is my experience that most HR decisions are made in one of two ways: 1.) HR will give the CEO or Sr. leadership team exactly what they ask for or 2.) HR will advocate new HR programs on the basis of an argument of “Best Practices”.
The problem is that both of these are fundamentally bad decision-making philosophy that, if not wholly, at least partly result in HR being viewed exactly the way HR is : soft, questionable, expendable, etc.
Method 1 : Give Them What They Ask For
Method 1 presents some obvious difficulties for HR professionals. On one hand, if you don’t give the management team what they ask for, or if you are too argumentative, this ultimately could get you fired. On the other hand, If you have worked in HR for any considerable period of time I am sure you are convinced HR should “have a seat at the business table”. I agree. You should be at the business table, of course, but this does not imply you are there as an order taker.
I also am not suggesting that others ideas of what HR should do are automatically no good or that they should be dismissed. I believe there is always some grain of truth, or a valuable insight, in what people want or believe they need from HR. I am suggesting how we think about what we should be doing is important and one area that HR really needs to work on.
I’ll use an external example to make the point I am trying to make clear. What would be the point of having a doctor if all the doctor does is write up prescriptions for whatever the patient ask for? It is common sense that this way of medicine will eventually get everyone into trouble - the patient and the doctor. If someone spent their career in technology or finance or marketing or any other specialized discipline you would not expect you could be able to tell them how to do their work brilliantly. Similarly, if we have spent our career in Human Resources you should not expect that someone without that experience could tell you how to do your work brilliantly either.
Method 2 : Best Practices
We often put a halo around other companies that have had some public success or recognition. We try to imitate the things that they do with the assumption that some of the success will rub off on us to. These guys are great - just dust us with some of that too! While “Best Practices” in in some sense could be better than “because this is the way we have always done it here”, there are many problems with Best Practices.
The Problem With Best Practices : Seven Reasons Best Practices Are Not Best For You.
1.) While XYZ company may be successful, you don’t know that the company's success is related to a particular Best Practice. (You also don’t have any way to know that this Best Practice ever really even worked for XYZ.)
Just because XYZ company is doing well as a business and simultaneously has a particular HR practice doesn’t actually mean success as a business is related in any way to the HR practice. Maybe XYZ company is in the right place at the right time to exploit a market opportunity and so they sell XYZ widgets like crazy. Maybe companies not doing as well as XYZ company also have the same HR practice – what do you do with this information?
What if XYZ company is doing 10 different things and you can’t do all 10 - which of the 10 should you do?
Suppose in a few years things start to go bad for XYZ company - should all those HR practices be abandoned?
The reality is that stars come and stars go. Performance ebbs and flows over time. We seldom revisit our previous decisions when the stars fall from grace. We just shift our attention to the new stars. Seems absent minded and lackadaisical to me.
2.) Even if an HR practice does work for XYZ - you don’t know if it only worked because of certain conditions that may not be in play at your company.
The reasons something worked in one situation may not apply to another situation.
3.) Even if you know an HR practice did work for someone else and you have the same conditions - you don’t know if it will continue to work.
You cannot automatically assume that what worked in the past will work in the future. Some things we observe to be true today may not be true tomorrow. Circumstances change, companies change, competitor’s change, people change.
4.) Best Practice philosophy is a treadmill to nowhere.
I have worked for a number of wonderful organizations. HR people work hard and in the organizations I have worked HR people have always been known for being some of the hard working people in those companies. It is my theory that in seeking a “seat at the business table” and in seeking to be valued by their business peers that HR people tend to go further than people in other roles. We advocate work-life balance, but we don't have any. In HR there is an insecurity that must be filled - unlike other roles we are in some way expendable - a sense that we don’t belong here. In response to the constant threat to our worth we are always willing to do more, without argument.
People are messy, so HR is messy - employment is also one of the most heavily legislated domains on this planet - the result that there is always a mess to clean up. Across a business there are always people coming and going, always people related problems to be dealt with, and programs that affect large numbers of people to be administered. On top of all of that mess, I have never worked in an organization where there was not an expectation that each year we implement something new. New performance management systems, new compensation programs, new benefits plans, new training, new staffing process, new HR system, etc. As many HR roles as you have, that is probably how many new projects you have, each year. The problem is that someone has to project manage these, someone has to communicate these, and someone has to administer these.
The reality is that work gets added but work seldom, if ever, gets taken away. If you are not adding extensive headcount in HR, what is going to eventually happen? You have these poor people running on a treadmill that only speeds up and never shuts off. Either quality of support will eventually decline or the people you have supporting will decline. I believe this is why some of the people I have worked with in HR are some of the most jaded people you will ever meet.
The problem is there is always some shiny new program or practice we can copy from some other organization. Some call it “Keeping up with Joneses”, which sounds a little endearing, but unfortunately the Jones are getting a little annoying. There are a too many Joneses!
If we derive our value from our busy-ness, not from our business - this will eventually become a problem.
5.) If an HR practice can readily be copied from one organization to another then there is probably no long-term differentiating value in this practice.
6.) Since copying HR practices from one place to another does not really require any expertise – heavy use of Best Practices establishes that you too are probably exchangeable.
7.) If you don’t have the means to explicitly measure success or failure of the changes you propose then you probably can’t be trusted.
Copying creates a vicious cycle whereby you do not have a credible basis for current decisions nor any accountability for previous. This method of decision-making lacks creativity, lacks integrity, it is easy to manipulate, and it does not reliably produce either short or long-term results.
It tastes great, but it will eventually kill you. Consider carefully if you really want to go down this road.
Alternative
There is an alternative to making decisions by “Give Them What They Ask For” and by “Best Practices.” That alternative is People Analytics.
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9 年Well said Mike. To me the best, practice and experiment to see if the practice makes a difference.