Ask what HR can do for you!

Don’t get me wrong – I am bought into Ulrich and his idea on Strategic HR. Who is not these days? – It is for the last 20 years the dominant HR organizational model. And it was a big success – but it also brought some headache to HR and its customers (Senior Management, Line Managers and Employees). This headache has multiple reasons, but one I would like to spend some time on now.
Ulrich and his idea of HR is grounded in the SHRM research – maybe not explicitly, but at least implicitly. And this research direction mainly claims that HR strategy and business strategy have to be in line to be successful (in short). Nothing wrong with that – however, it got translated into reality in a way that is at least questionable: HR has to be strategic, all of HR admin work goes to Shared Services including the direct customer (employee) contact, the operational HR on-site support for managers is removed. The result was in many cases a cheaper HR than before – but also a more effective? I doubt that! In fact, one who has been forgotten in this whole space of strategic HR was the customer – and with him, effectiveness: Senior Leadership got a strategic HR Business Partner – have they asked for it? …and lost operational support – have they approved this? Line Managers have lost most of on-site HR support and were moved into utilization of self-services – did they want this? And last but not least, all employees have lost f2f, individual contact to an HR representative, replaced by self-services and an 0800 number – are they happy with that?
For many cases I have seen myself or discussed with my consulting colleagues, the above asked questions can be answered with “no”. Very often, the customer of HR was left out in planning an HR transformation and in designing the future support and interaction between customers and HR. If these transformations were good, they at least had proper Change Management to support Senior Leadership, Line Managers and Employees on their journey. But I have only very rarely seen a proper upfront customer engagement and inclusion of customers.
HR is a support function, HR is a service function – and what we learn in services theory (for example from sales & marketing) is that you are most successful if you put your customer at the heart and center of your services strategy. Not new news – but why is HR not doing it then? Because it is very difficult in action. Integrating customers in upfront discussion of the why and how of an HR transformation is difficult as not many want to be involved, see the need or even understand what is going on. And the remaining ones that see an opportunity in being involved, often have views and wishes that are contrary to what HR wants to achieve with a transformation, making it difficult to respect these wishes. I am not arguing that however, believe that it is a necessity to deeper involve customers in the transformation of HR. How to?
Well, if you ask your customers how they would like their HR support to be or what they want to change, you probably won’t get very far with the answers. In fact, most will tell you that f2f support is the only way of interaction, that they do not need any strategic support, but HR to manage their people, etc. – who of you has not listened to such a story? What needs to be done is a full involvement of key individuals from all customer groups (however you slice and dice it inside your organization). These individuals need to understand the picture that HR wants to paint in terms of roles & responsibilities, technology support, and very important, understanding the concept of a modern leader (Line Manager), as well as what HR believes where they can add more value than today. Once you have achieved a proper understanding of that you can start the governance and structure based need discussions with your customers – and they should follow your ultimate thought of reasoning, but still have in mind what they need each day, week, month, year from HR to successfully enable their business and career. And this information is key in order to tailor your HR function towards what is needed and not towards what other companies did or some consultants tell you. No one except the business and employee representatives (and by that I do not mean the works council) know what they really need and HR needs to support this in the best possible fashion. Of course, this is a difficult and sometimes painful process to follow – but in my view it is the only way to be successful.
To support this customer focus and enable HR functions to respect it very early in their process, NEW HR is built on customer centricity first. Read my white paper on NEW HR to find out how.