You'd be forgiven for thinking that the only thing HR functions are now concentrating on are redundancies/restructuring.
After all its the theme for the CIPD conference and also for various news items and articles recently. There's also been several senior comments about the fact that HR now has a major role in 'facilitating this current scenario of change'.
But before we lurch into yet more 'unevidence-based' territory we should perhaps review the reality.
Though there are, and are going to be some major announcements in downsizing over the next 12-18 months - for the vast majority the numbers are still only a fraction of the employable workforce - WE NEED TO KEEP PERSPECTIVE...........
Having experienced a couple of recessions, I'm concerned that too little management focus is attended to those who remain (i.e. the vast majority in most cases).
For HR, the focus should still be on employee engagement, productivity and the optimisation of talent and of course the 'intelligence' on these.
People management become a harder challenge when economies/growth slows as promotional and other opportunites become less, the workplace becomes a little less dynamic and the propensity for 'political gaming is ramped up'.
i.e. Good management is at a premium and therefore people management evaluation is crucial.
When I read that HR functions' main focus is now all about resizing I shake my head in disbelief and resignation.
If all the HR function is doing is a bit of operational support to stuff that should frankly be done by managers (or by external specialists) then the last fifteen years have counted for nought.....
We already know that HR has been perpetually resizing so anymore in terms of the function should be pretty much 'business as usual'.
As budgets tighten and decisions about where to provide HR/HCM support/interventions across the organisation becomes more acute, one would expect the function to be suffiicently sophisticated with evaluation tools and measurement to provide the answers.
But I suspect not. I suspect that the next eighteen months will crystallise the growth of non-jobs in the HR function - those that are nice but ultimately do little apart from ticking boxes of compliance. Effective oirganisational management is what HR/HCM should be focused on...
Despite ours, and others efforts, strategic HR/HCM is still in its infancy. The fact that people still see shared services as a strategy is frankly 'rank amateur' when compared to a true professional approach.
Thus the next 18 months will determine whether the HR function has truly advanced or it has all been a mirage i.e. that it's still really a personnel function rather than any HCM function and that too many roles/interventions are/have been of the non-added value variety - yet another example of the emperors' new clothes - the HR community is gathering quite a wardobe full................
My hat goes off to all those HR professionals who are not phased by cheap headline-grabbing talk and are focusing on those areas I've mentioned whilst keeping any downsizing in perspective...they're more likely to weather the storm......
As the (Kipling) saying goes 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs'
Of course, it could be that you've also been sleepwalking for the past year!!!!!!!!
Bon voyage...
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