Improving HR | INSIDE HR IDENTITY

THE BIG IDEA

Once you've been around HR-world long enough, you get used to hearing (directly and indirectly) a statement that sounds something like this:

HR sucks... But my HR rep is great...

Picking that apart, we get to some interesting questions.

HR sucks...

OK, that sounds pretty absolute, doesn't it? It's a statement of fact. Not only that, but it is all-inclusive of the function - i.e. when HR sucks, all parts of HR suck.

But my HR rep is good...

Wait. There are individuals in HR that don't suck? But HR sucks, doesn't it? So who are these people? And, more importantly, if HR is widely recognized as sucking, just what are they up to?

The logical inference would seem to be that these people are not doing what is expected of HR, but instead something different; either they're NOT doing HR stuff, or they're doing HR stuff at a completely different level.

To some extent, I'm playing a thought experiment here, but it's indicative of something I've touched on in former articles, and regularly discuss with clients: the nature of HR identity.

By identity, I'm using the following definition (from the Cambridge Dictionary:

The fact of being, or feeling that you are, a particular type of person, organization, etc.; the qualities that make a person, organization, etc. different from others

More specifically, the thought experiment begins to dig into the double identity that HR professionals face: both FUNCTIONAL and INDIVIDUAL (I covered this recently in this article).

Today, I want to look at identity as perceived from outside the function, and particularly with an eye to those individuals who are being highly rated while the function is being castigated.

As our thought experiment has shown, these people are either not doing HR stuff or they're at another level.

(for now, I'm going to sidestep the discussion of how somebody could be at such a level of performance without HR leadership using them to teach/coach/lead improvement of the whole - why that doesn't happen truly deserves another article, chapter or even a whole book to itself)

Let's ask: what are these HR professionals doing that is NOT HR?

And to do that, we're going to take a look at a phenomenon known as BULLSHIT JOBS as defined by the wonderful anthropologist, thinker and writer, David Graeber (1961-2020).

First a definition:

"A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the condition of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend this is not the case."

Now, this isn't about to become a hit-piece on HR - that's a different discussion for another day

(and one of which I'm not particularly fond)

What's more important is that, as Graeber discusses at length, the wide proliferation of bullshit jobs can often be derived from the service of other bullshit jobs OR a modern version of fealty to a supreme authority figure.

Building on this definition, Graeber goes on to describe a handful of bullshit job archetypes:

1. FLUNKIES - exist only or primarily to make someone else look or feel important
2. GOONS - exist to exert the will of someone else, often aggressively
3. DUCT TAPERS - exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization
4. BOX TICKERS - exist only or primarily to allow an organization to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing
5. TASKMASTERS - exist purely to assign work to others that could have already been directly assigned

And this is where we have to ask the question again - just what are those highly-rated individual members of HR who are not doing HR stuff actually doing?

Let's take the easiest one first: DUCT TAPERS. In this situation, the HR rep is making up for (perceived or actually) broken HR processes - either working a shadow process, or handling fall-out to minimize damage. This can contribute to the attitude I covered in the earlier linked article.

When it comes to GOONS, then I think of the HR rep co-opted by a leader to do the nasty things related to people management - e.g. delivering disciplinary warnings, laying people off, firing people where there is no cause, etc. In some cases, the HR rep can appear to be playing more of a Chief-of-Staff role.

As painful as it is to admit, there are many members of HR acting as BOX TICKERS when it comes to DEI (and beyond) - supporting leaders to do just enough to deliver the numbers without delving into deeper systemic issues of implicit and explicit bias. HR may talk a good game on DEI, but practice is often very far from perfect.

Do I really need to talk about the FLUNKIES whose only intent seems to be to build, and maintain, the pedestal their executive client stands upon

(and, yes, this can go all the way up to the CHRO!)

In this population, TASKMASTERS sit somewhere adjacent to GOONS and DUCT TAPERS - the primary symptoms being that they insert themselves in standard processes unnecessarily then try to take the process over, or they play the blame-carrier role after the fact.

(Side-note: there is a second, more pernicious TASKMASTER in HR that demands compliance with/adherence to unnecessary/bureaucractic processes - but that's part of the HR sucks... clause!)

TRY THIS

It's so easy to play around with these definitions and call out examples.

We could talk about the HR Business Partner slowing salary negotiations to a crawl for the sake of shifting a sign-on bonus by less than 1%, ultimately leading to the 1st choice candidate going to a competitor...

Or we could talk about the HR leader refusing to discuss engagement survey reports with their client leadership team because they couldn't explain one of the questions...

Or we could talk about months of gathering and cleaning data for the HR leader who eventually just lets it sit in their virtual filing cabinet because the clear trend wouldn't make a her client happy...

But that's really a pointless exercise, isn't it?

(I would actually argue that rolling our eyes at other members of HR is one of the ways we keep ourselves in a state of learned helplessness/victimhood)

Instead, let's take a proactive stance and looks at some ways to get started unpicking the knot:

• DUCT TAPERS? Simplify and automate your processes.
• GOONS? Reassess the accountability for people management activities and make sure executives who MAKE the decision OWN the decision.
• BOX TICKERS? Reduce and focus the number of boxes to be ticked, then standardize the data, data gathering and reporting to show true progress.
• FLUNKIES? Manage HR performance using outcome driven results, not personal political capital.
• TASKMASTERS? Define accountability for process steps, then hold people accountable for a) when they're meant to do it but don't; and b) when they insert themselves unnecessarily

This quick list will get the ball rolling - at minimum it can make a great conversation starter - as always it's your choice how committed you are to follow through!

USE THIS

I consider David Graeber's book, BULLSHIT JOBS, to be required reading for any HR change agent looking to a) understand the undercurrents affecting organizations (and, yes, HR itself); and b) make meaningful change to the value which HR is able to bring to the business.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think." ~George Orwell