Human Resources Asset or Curse Paul Richardson, January 2013

Of course, the answer is related to the skill, competence, knowledge and common sense of the people in the Human Resources organization. Sadly, the stories I hear from the victims of HR malpractice indicate that the curse answer is far more likely than the asset answer. This situation provides a large hindrance to organizational performance. As HR computer system applications have become prevalent, the problem has gotten worse. The systems have replaced a thoughtful approach to the management of the human resource. The systems that sort through resumes based on keywords from the job description. Any monkey can modify their resume to include the keywords from the job description. What a fools errand. There is no substitute, at least yet, for a real human with intellect and organizational perspective reading through the resumes. Yes, it might take more HR man hours but the alternative is abdicating the decisions to a computer program, often programmed by someone who has no understanding worth talking about of the organization or its key ingredients for success. Another stupid systems approach is in the area of salary administration. Any approach that does not allow the recognition and reward of individual performance will turn into a demotivator as proven in Hertzbergs research. People who are demotivated descend into Maslows Basement (Maslows hierarchy of needs) and their potential is never recognized harming their career and the organizations performance. A perfect example of the type of stupidity that occurs is one where members of a heterogeneous work team are treated with respect to salary on an average basis. That is, overpaid members of the group impact the average so that the high performing person with only a few years experience but rapidly growing performance is carrying the load but prevented from receiving a pay increase (demotivated) because the average pay of the group is above the average of the wage survey for the work type in the local market. Making HR

decisions based on averages insures the odds are very high that any employee will see the wrong pay versus their individual performance. The average approach hampers hiring the best for job openings too. When the organizations managers determine they wish to make a job offer to an experienced professional, in some organizations the HR department controls what can be offered based on survey average pay for the years of experience of the candidate. In a tough job market you may get by with this travesty of trying to hire an above average person with an average job offer, but in a tight job market the HR meddling causes you to have to move down your list of candidates to get one nearer the average performance. This prevents the organization from strengthening its human resource as a strategy for improving performance. To be consistent with this pay offer system the managers should choose to make an offer to the person closed to the middle of the group of applicants, not the best applicant. This shows how foolish this type of approach can be. There are enough stories of the malpractice to fill a long book but my intent is to get you to think about the situation as you experience it and begin to question the autopilot, unthinking approach that is so common in HR departments. The computer systems and their training bureaucratize the processes effectively lobotomizing the HR personnel to unthinking servants of the process. This is like the organization wearing a straightjacket, an HR straightjacket. No one wins.