Yep, you’ve guessed it. HR people in their hundreds are still debating what the profession should be called, now and 20 years down the line.
‘Mr HR’ himself, leading business guru Dave Ulrich, brought the topic up at a PwC conference in Rome last Friday.
Speaking to an audience of more than 400 HR practitioners, Ulrich admitted that even he does not like the language currently associated with HR and described at least five things the 'HR function' could actually mean:
1. People in HR
2. HR practices; staffing, recruitment, training, appraisals, development
3. The HR department
4. People in the company
5. Profession in HR.
So with all this confusion about what HR actually means, how on earth can HR be expected to make a good impression with their customers, especially with their CEO?
Well, they can’t. A PwC survey this week said just 43% of chief executives trusted their HR department to adequately compete for talent.
Ulrich said: “I wish we had better language to describe HR. Is there a better word for the department? We used to have personnel, and the buzz word now is human capital – but that misses the culture of an organisation.”
In the end Ulrich plumped for British Airway’s (BA) terminology – the fairly new HR director there, Tony McCarthy, has re-named his department People and Organisational Effectiveness.
“It’s a bit of a mouthful but at least it explains what HR do,” Ulrich said.
Well, as BA can’t get Terminal 5 right I suggest they use some ‘people’ to create ‘organisational effectiveness’ where it matters most.
Comments (2)
The main problem with ‘Human Resources’ when it first came in was that people (sorry, human capital units) tried to pretend it covered different functions than ‘Personnel’ had. However, ‘Personnel’ is now quite a dated word in everyday (ie, non-business) language, so we might as well stick with HR. Fancy titles just confuse the workforce and make staff dread those occasions when they have to explain what it is they do. Renaming functions is often just rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. Or in this case the queues in the new terminal.
Posted by Frank Hobson | March 31, 2008 2:08 PM
Posted on March 31, 2008 14:08
Hi Frank,
Thanks for your comment. You raise a good point about fancy titles confusing the workforce, and even the profession, about what HR is there to do.
Take for instance some recent stories on Dave Ulrich's famous business partnering model.
Some HR directors cite this much-heralded example of HR as simply "not doing what it says on the tin" (see http://www.personneltoday.com/44333.article) - because management cannot agree on what it is business partnering is supposed to do.
Posted by Louisa Peacock | March 31, 2008 2:41 PM
Posted on March 31, 2008 14:41