Three Priority Problems for HR

I have done a lot of work with HR specialists – both senior internal directors and managers of HR, and external consultants. HR is always under pressure to justify itself because at root it appears to be a cost rather than a profit centre for a business. When we Map HR experts the typical profile indicates that they are mission-driven people who largely want to make a difference. Often, however, they get down-hearted because the way they end up making that difference is through redundancy programmes, as organisations seek to cut costs and de-layer staff. This is unfortunate; especially in the smaller kind of organisations where more than once I have noticed that after the redundancy rounds are complete, HR itself becomes redundant!

What, then, I think makes sense for all HR specialists to undertake is to be more strategic in how they approach their role, lest becoming totally operational becomes all they do – and in that doing is their expendability.

To be more strategic involves solving, or more accurately being seen to move towards solving, three obvious and interrelated problems besetting organisations. I call these the TAP.

As we move further and deeper into the Twenty-First Century it is apparent that retention of key personnel is a number one priority for competitive advantage. Organisations need to get smart about why anybody would want to stay with them aside from mere salary and bonuses. In short, we need to address ‘T’ – Turnover, staff turnover and how to reduce it. Reducing it saves serious money as well as creating other benefits, not least the protection of knowledge and skills, continuity with customers, and the efficiency that can derive from expertise honed with experience.

Thus, HR needs to develop a deeper understanding of why people go to work and why they stay. And they need to move away from scarcity models that simply predicate that people work only for money, or only because they need a job. People, given a chance, are much more complex than that.

Second, ‘A’ – Absenteeism: if you really don’t like your job or your employers then the next best thing is to be absent – sometimes in the UK this is called a ‘sickie’. It is apparent that most absence is really stress-related. How is it apparent? From any consideration of the differences in absentee rates. For example a few years back in the UK the average absence rate for public sector workers was 17 days off a year; but in the private sector the figure was 7 days a year! Given the size of these samples it is almost inconceivable that public sector workers are actually two and a half times more sickly than private sector staff. No, other factors are at work, including culture, expectations, management and leadership – or lack thereof – but things that can and should be adressed by a strategic HR function, and not only in the public sector, but private too. What we want are improvements whatever the benchmarks currently are.

Finally, ‘P’ – Productivity. If Turnover and Absenteeism rates go up, then sure as eggs are eggs productivity goes down. How far down? Depends on the size of the organisation, but up to sixteen times down! In other words some workers become some sixteen times less productive than their colleagues, but once the rot starts then productivity in real terms declines too.

These three priorities are clearly linked and equally the starting point is not trying futilely to get staff to be more productive in the cack-handed way in which setting more targets supposes. Why are they leaving? Why don’t they want to come to work? As we start thinking about these problems we realise that if we could solve them, then we might well be on our way to increasing productivity with those who haven’t yet left and are not off on long term sick.

What is the starting point, then? The buzz now for solving this problem is ‘engagement’, which undoubtedly is an important word, but it is not the solution. The reason why it is not is because it is another shifting fad – morale, job satisfaction, happiness, engagement and now well being! There it goes – a continuum in which every three or four years the product to solve the problem morphs into another entity.

Underpinning all these entities, however, is one constant – one that remains true: motivation. If we understood what motivated people, really understood that, then we might make some progress. And that is why motivation – as touchy-feely as it sounds – is really a strategic issue for all organisations and for HR especially.