What's the WIIFM?
You might wonder why I write about HR Strategy. Why do I write posts, newsletters, articles, etc.? Why am I building online education to teach HR Strategy? Why is it important to me? What am I getting out of it, i.e., what’s in it for me (WIIFM)?
Well, you see, I have had a thorn in my side since I first began working within Human Resources 30+ years ago. I didn’t choose to work in HR, I chose an opportunity to elevate my career that happened to be in HR. However, after taking that job in HR, I discovered when someone asked me what my profession was and I mentioned I work in HR - I would get the rolling of the eyes, the snarky comment, and/or the smirk. I know others have experienced the same because I still see these attitudes on job boards and among work discussions. Those comments about “Don’t trust HR! They work for the company!” To which I always wonder – just who do YOU work for?
This distrust from employees and disrespect from the C-suite has been a constant irritant to me for years. I could never understand it. And when I encounter something I don’t understand, I often pay close attention to it and try to decipher clues and figure it out. So, throughout my career in Human Resources, I have constantly been searching for the reasons for these attitudes and the underlying drivers. IMO, HR is hard and challenging and unpredictable. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t retain my passion and interest.
Part of our challenge is being caught between two negotiating parties – the employer and the employee. From the employer’s perspective, we are there to manage costs and enforce policies. From the employee’s perspective, we are there to ensure equity and fairness in pay. Many of us are very empathetic people and want to support and coach employees – but then we also must be the enforcers of policy and the messengers of management. On the flip side, we tell the C-suite that we are an important driver of performance, critical to the health of the organization and its success. But our reporting uses fuzzy math, poor analysis, and poor execution. Consequently, I think we create a perception of inauthenticity on both sides.
This is not new. But I believe there is more to it.
I believe the definition of Human Resources, and the expectations, needs to be fundamentally upgraded because HR sits right in the middle of a combination of crosscurrents. These crosscurrents are composed of two very different skill sets – psychological and financial. Yet (IMO) our job descriptions haven’t evolved to recognize the conflicting skills and the difficult task of being proficient in both. The main thread for HR for decades has been psychological (and compliance, but compliance is maintenance.) For example, how many HR professionals enter the field to “work with people.” Our job descriptions focus too much on tasks rather than results. I believe this equates to a lack of accountability on our part, and prevents our discipline from evolving into a strategic partner with the organization and the workforce.
It wasn’t until I began working on projects involving HR technology that I began to gain insight into this problem. When I jumped from being an internal HR practitioner to being a small business owner and HR consultant, I gained a new perspective and started to learn from my Finance and IT colleagues. I began to learn skills and methodologies that I had never encountered in college or any professional education. They were completely new to me.
As I became proficient in using stronger analytical methodologies and analysis, I learned how to see HR from a 50,000-foot view. With each client’s project, I saw repeating patterns – a focus on tasks, poor use of technology, manual business processes, wasted dollars and labor, poor reporting, poor alignment. poor communication of value with the C-Suite, and toxic environments in the leader of leadership development. True, these issues exist in other departments; but other departments don’t teach leadership.
I was shocked at how much insight these methodologies revealed. And I was hooked on learning more. As I worked with these tools, I began to understand the language and process of analysis. Terms like project or program management, cost/benefit analysis, requirements gathering, assessment, SWOT analysis, risk analysis, business case – these terms began to make sense to me, and I began to see how they could be applied to Human Resources. I began to understand how to use each one within the context of any given project to produce quantitative and qualitative business intelligence. But I had never seen these tools applied to Human Resources in ANY educational setting to help me and my HR colleagues. These were the skills of consultants. What’s more – in my experience, these skills were typically used in the context of technology and/or financial planning, not as a method to assess, diagnose and improve effectiveness and efficiency. And BECAUSE these projects were run by Finance and/or IT, these skills were never taught, translated, or encouraged for Human Resources.
I concluded that it was the absence of these quantifiable, structured methodologies that stops HR from having a strategic “seat at the table.” It’s not because we aren’t smart enough or sophisticated enough or skilled enough. It’s because we haven’t been trained in HOW to do the work of strategic thinking, research and planning. Some of them – such as HR project management – are more commonplace in Human Resources today. But other skills such as assessments, technology requirements gathering, cost/benefit analysis, program management, business analysis - these skills are still woefully underutilized when it comes to HR Management and badly needed.
Many HR executives I have spoken with on the subject agree with me.
A “people” focus isn’t scalable. You can’t coach hundreds or thousands of employees; you can only focus on one at a time. To be strategic, you need to shift into organizational thinking at scale. You need to step out of the trees and see the forest and the landscape around it – the hills, valleys, lakes and streams, the houses and towns. You need a 50,000-foot view to design and execute a strategic plan. Think about it. HR manages workforce programs that represent – on average - 25-30% of an organization’s fixed costs. Yet, we as a profession have not increased our skills or proficiency in managing that 25-30%.
In April 2023, the World Economic Forum released its “Future of Jobs 2023” Report (https://tinyurl.com/y5xstbbj ). The report has three primary findings:
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·???????? analytical thinking, creative thinking and artificial intelligence (AI) and big data will be top in-demand skills by 2027.???
·???????? Leadership and social influence and curiosity and lifelong learning are among other skills expected to see growing demand.
·???????? Six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of workers are seen to have access to adequate training opportunities.
The convergence of analytical thinking and Human Resources Management is coming for our profession. And it’s long overdue.
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