HR disruptor & Chief HR Officer at Al Faisal Holding.
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We have been hearing plenty lately about how human resources departments have failed to tackle organizational and people issues and have come under fire for being detached from reality. It seems to be a topic of too-hot-to-handle and trying to tackle this is like squeezing blood from a stone. Many experts have identified the need for a radical shake-up if HR continues to do what it is doing today.
The HR profession and many of the people working in this domain are somehow still consistent in the approach to hire, develop and retain people that has been used for the last three decades. We are still advancing the same thinking that existed in the 1980s and '90s. In addition, we are also applying a one-size-fits-all approach (paywall) to managing people by ridiculously replicating any model that proves to be successful in any other organization.
What makes it worse is the risk of extinction of many jobs in the future by machines and AI. An Oxford study has estimated that as many as 47% of jobs will disappear and we are not prepared for it yet. It entails us thinking about how we can empower people and focus on the human side of these resources, those who run these technologies, rather than the technology itself. Yet, it seems that we are still obsessed with the scientific management of people. Moreover, the Great Resignation trend that we are witnessing at the moment is another example of the need to change our thinking and practices behind HR.
So, is the HR profession (not the concept itself) dying away, or is this far from the case? And for those who want to pay tribute to this profession and take up the challenge of my claim that HR is dying, what eulogy are they going to write? Have we really achieved that much on the well-being of organizations and individuals for the last 30 years? (To be fair, we have achieved humble steps, but not enough to address the challenges of our time.) And, should we start thinking seriously about redefining the mission of HR before it is too late?
Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel in his bestselling book Zero to One writes, “A great company is a conspiracy to change the world,” but to do that, in my experience, you need great HR specialists. I would therefore argue that great HR is a conspiracy to change their organizations. In theory, we are the good HR conspirators who design and plan for the benefit of our people and our organizations alike. Hence, I propose a few simple but solid rules that could pave the way for crafting innovative HR solutions capable of addressing our companies’ needs and challenges.
• The first and only rule is there is no single rule in HR: I came to the conclusion that there is no right or wrong answers in HR, because people management is a combination of science and, most importantly, art. After all, my belief is that we shouldn’t take things at face value — as Elon Musk has reportedly said, “Physics is true, everything else is debatable. And even physics is questionable.” So, we should keep questioning our management approaches every now and then to ensure that our services are fit for purpose, and we should remember that what is good in one business might not be right for another.
• Empathy and relationships: Let’s be perfectly frank here: People hate HR, mainly for being unable to empathize and not taking the perspective of the employer and employees equally. Finding the balance between them is a mission-critical factor. It is a delicate balance of two distinct entities. An integral part of our HR role, as I see it (although I rarely see it happen), is that we place building strong relationships in the workplace at the heart of our work. As business management leader and professor Dave Ulrich notes, the future of HR is about relationships rather than roles. These two components can set the tone to close this gap by building trust, empathetic systems, empathetic cultures and, ultimately, interpersonal influence in the workplace.
• Math and analytics: The ambitious billionaire character Bobby Axelrod in the TV show Billions says, “There’s a small group who can do the math. There’s an even smaller group who can explain it. But those few who can do both, they become billionaires.” With this in mind, the biggest setback in HR is that we don’t do math, and we still lack the skills and resources to explain the trends, patterns and behaviors behind the numbers. In turn, this makes it challenging to design effective people strategies. We need to invest more into these skill sets if we want our decisions and designs to be more robust.
• Alignment and harmony: Achieving this is very challenging, but the effort pays off in the end because it can sustain organizations over the long run. Humans are wired for harmony and when dissonance takes place, it will cause conflict, discomfort and instability. The same can apply to organizations. Lack of alignment between organizational resources, values, people, structures, processes, efforts and strategy will result in tension from the misalignment of these key organizational elements. Great HR makes sure that this never happens and connects the dots for everyone in the organization.
The time to think HR has passed. It is now the time to rethink HR. We need to revolutionize our approach to how we hire, how we motivate and engage, how we train and develop and how we design and deliver services. But to do that, we must embrace change more often and challenge convention in the workplace. We need to deviate from the norm and try new ways of doing things and go against what is usually practiced. These systems and structures must be constantly redesigned to fit for the future, even in a time when our business models are not being disrupted, because the world is changing rapidly — and we must keep up.
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