Everybody Hates HR...

...But they need us. Even if they don't think they do.

This report is a bit old now, but it's the PROFIT magazine's survey of Canadas 50 hottest companies, as measured mainly by revenue growth rate. The CEOs of these companies were asked what the most important factors were in sustaining their growth and their list's top two answers were 1) Retaining good staff and 2) Recruiting good staff. Top two on the list and they are major HR functions, but pick a company, almost any company, and canvass the staff, and I would bet you the opinions of HR (outside of the human resources department staff, obviously,) often be negative. Part of this, I think, stems from a seperation from the HR function and a lack of understanding of what it is HR actually does (besides hiring that idiot in accounting you couldn't stand, and firing people, that is- everybody knows HR does that) and part of it is because, at least in my own admittedly limited and anecdotal experience, a lot of companies aren't big on strategic HR, and their HR function is not especially well performed.

I think we HR pros have an uphill battle to fight. There are some extremely important strategic functions that HR performs, and properly-performed HR brings a lot to the table. I do believe that most companies are starting to realize the costs related to recruitment and retention, but where HR really needs to do the work is in showing that HR pros can do a better job with recruitment and retention. I know, I know, "metrics" might be one of the more overused buzz words in the HR world, but ultimately, metrics matter. They are the only way we really have to track and show the contribution that we are making to the bottom line of our organizations. If you want HR to matter to your CEO, you'd better be able to show him how you make a difference.

Here's one of the ways HR makes a difference.

Say you work for a fairly large organization that does not know how much turnover costs per employee, and maybe it doesn't even know exactly what its turnover rate is. All those retention-related costs get lumped in under general operating costs. Say this organization also generally pays its employees under the market rate, and hasn't performed a compensation survey in years- and it is finding itself with a major recruitment and retention problem. (Before you start complaining about this scenario being unrealistic- it isn't. I worked there, and I dealt with this exact situation.) Retention levels kept getting worse, even if nobody knew exactly how bad, more and more positions kept going unfilled for longer, and we didn't even know how much it was costing us. We just had a general sense of, "well, this is bad." Does this strike you as a good way to run your business?

That example might be a bit extreme, and I've had other HR folks tell me that I'm obsessed with data, but you know what? It's important. It matters. Having been in an organization with virtually no data, I have an unbelievable appreciation for what the numbers can tell you. It's pretty darn hard to be strategic going totally off of guesswork. And I'd be the first to tell you that HR is about a whole lot more than just recruitment- but recruitment and retention are the most important functions HR provides, because they are the functions that have the greatest impact on organizational performance. They are the functions that matter most to the CEO, ergo, they are the most important to HR, or should be. Otherwise it's no wonder HR gets looked at as out of touch.

So, I say, bring on the metrics, bring on the data, bring on the strategy. If HR wants a seat at the big boy table, we'd better be up to it.