Can HR Lead Business?

Little hr and Big HR

There exists---what I would call---little HR (hr) and big HR. You’ve got the policy, procedural and  personnel departments.  They exist because of the need to:

1. adapt protocols;
2. avoid liabilities;
3. comply with government reporting;
4. pay taxes;
5. process payrolls; and to
6. make sure you’re doing stuff right.

That is hr. That’s it. There is nothing else.

Now, it is management’s responsibility to develop the human resources, or (the big) HR. It is not currently the human resources charge---or hr---to do that. It’s leadership’s responsibility to develop HR.

Ask the Right Questions

How do we elevate the personnel department? That’s the wrong question.

The question is: How do we elevate the leadership to recognize its primary function?  How does upper management invest in HR so that those people grow in their proficiencies, grow in their areas of expertise and do those things that create impact for the company?  The human resources department exists to make tools available to management and to help them impact their employees.

We know there is a struggle---as many people in hr are not skilled at developing the HR in a company. They’re skilled at doing the work of the personnel department. So, if you’re a business leader and you tell me that your hr people ought to be c-level employees, I’m going to disagree, because they do not think like c-level employees. In fact, they don’t even understand how a business really works.  They know their job in hr, and how that works. They don’t understand how a business works. But, business doesn’t understand how hr works either.

So, if you tell me that you want to elevate your hr person to c-level, we’ve disconnected; because, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. On the other hand, if that hr person helps me, as a business leader, to understand my obligation and opportunity to develop my own human resources, or HR, there is value.

About this question of whether the human resources department can help lead business or not: You will make that happen when hr is actually trained to develop HR, instead of hr serving solely as business processing agents.