Personal Confession
This week I was talking to a CEO of an organisation in Healthcare (for some reason I get drawn into the public and healthcare sector). I told him that I was accomplice to some horrible HR practices.
His eyebrows went up. And no I was not applying for a job nor was I committing professional suicide.
But let’s face it. There is a lot of rubbish in HR. Or better, there’s a lot of rubbish in organisations when we are talking about people practices. Because HR is not the sole culprit when it comes to people practices.
Let’s first get rid of the name Human Resources. It was a mistake to adopt that name in the first place. By doing that the HR Profession, or should I say the people profession, allowed itself to be “instrumentalised”. By adopting it, we lost the authority to be the experts in people matters within organisations. The People Profession was so eager to have a seat at the strategic table that they risked credibility. It’s not about Human Resources, it’s about people who execute strategies. We need to focus again on the essence.
Let’s focus on the essence.
The essence of the PFKAHR
The essence of the Profession formerly known as HR (PFKAHR) is to make sure that people are willing and able to sustainably create meaningful value for a customer. By the way, that is the same essence as leadership. You could add that the PFKAHR is there to help organisations to make sure that people are willing and able to sustainably create that value. Every word in that sentence is important:
(1) Willing: it’s about motivation, engagement, energy.
(2) Able: it’s about competence, skill, capability.
(3) Meaningful: it’s about experiencing purpose.
(4) Sustainable: it’s about doing things that are future-oriented, that do not generate current of future disadvantage for any of the stakeholders.
(5) Value: creating value for someone else is the purpose of any organisation.
Everything we should do in the PFKAHR should be oriented towards all that. And so we can simplify people practices within organisations, make them customer-focussed and meaningful.
The Way Forward
The PFKAHR is changing. Some say that digital and data will save the profession. I don’t believe that. Sure, digital and data will help to make the profession more lean, more customer-oriented and more evidence-based. But if the profession does not define its purpose, its ethics and its contribution, nothing will save it.
So let’s build first that consensus about purpose, let’s then define the roles the profession should take on and finally develop the skills that are needed for that. And only after all that, we can work on tools, technology, data and processes.
And if we do all that, the PFKAHR will prove its value. Again, every strategy is about people and their behaviour. When a strategy fails, it’s not because of the tech or the data, it’s about how people behave. And here’s the biggest opportunity for the PFKAHR.
Every Strategy is about People. And here is the biggest opportunity for the PFKAHR.
Make no mistake. What the PFKAHR needs to deliver is of strategic importance. And the people – both leaders and HR Professionals – who work to support the people side of strategy are very skilled and often even courageous. And we can do a better job by focussing on the essence of this profession.
