Whither HR? Don't people matter anymore?

Citation

Rabey, G. (2001), "Whither HR? Don't people matter anymore?", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2001.26705cab.004

Whither HR? Don't people matter anymore?

Whither HR? Don't people matter anymore?

What has changed?

Many organisations have still not really recognised the speed and significance of the changes of the last decade which have affected the workplace and are continuing to do so.

These changes have been both physical and attitudinal and include:

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  The workplace is now global – not eight hours a day for five days, but 24 hours for seven days. For managers the workplace is no longer your desk – it's wherever you are.

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  The effects and the potential of new technology continue to accelerate and to change how people work.

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  No organisation can now give any assurance of long-term employment. More outsourcing is occurring.

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  Some 50 per cent of all employees will be contingent – on contract, part-time, temporary.

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  Flexibility, adaptability and ability to give rapid and accurate response are now paramount, and the traditional hierarchical structure of management which was designed for a stable state environment is showing an inability to cope. Project operational management has emerged as the alternative and one question now being asked is "If you're not a project manager what is your major contribution to added value?".

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  Work for pay, long assumed to be an inalienable right of the individual, is becoming a privilege for the qualified. The social outcomes of this continue to be ignored – government spending on social welfare significantly exceeds national spending on research and development.

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  For many employers the workplace is more a tradable commodity than a strategic asset.

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  The management of knowledge has become the major field of growth.

The lesson for employers and managers is quite clear: if your learning curve and your reaction don't match the change curve affecting your business, you're in deep trouble. If you can't adapt you won't survive.

Who achieves your targets?

With change on all fronts, strategic planners must continuously scan the horizons and the marketplace to detect and analyse trends and events and act to create both proactive and reactive responses. Time to reflect, consider, field-test the options and to fine-tune the best is seldom, if ever, available and risk management is increasingly conjectural.

The organisational restructuring of recent years has in many cases produced profound change in the concept of accountability, and a realisation of how a multi-layered organisation can protectively cushion and delay the decision-making process. When clear answers were demanded to the question "What does each position actually contribute to our productivity?", the de-layering outcomes were dramatic and painful for many.

Procedural uncertainties abound but come what may the needs of clients and customers must be anticipated and met. This is top priority. The continuance of the enterprise depends upon this.

The maintenance of customer service demands sustained competence and a visible commitment.

But it has been suggested elsewhere that customers are your second most important people. The first are the people who have the hands-on control of the work flow, who plan, lead and direct the activities of the frontline employees, who are the implementers of your plans, and who are your organisational role models – your frontline managers.

A typical listing of their responsibilities would include:

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  Achieving and maintaining output targets.

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  Meeting legal requirements (OSH and others).

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  Selecting and appointing employees.

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  On-job training, team building and coaching.

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  Co-ordination and liaison with other activities.

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  Maintenance of quality standards.

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  Communicating all matters on a face-to-face basis.

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  Maintaining customer focus.

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  Seeking continuous improvement in all facets of activity.

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  Preparation of work reports, records, schedules and rosters.

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  Leading the group in problem solving.

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  Basic maintenance (in association with maintenance staff).

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  High levels of attendance and timekeeping.

And to which should be added:

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  Knowledge of the business plan and its implementation.

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  Understanding of the organisation's culture and values – and this does not purport to be complete for all positions.

(On digesting this listing, one frontline manager was heard to say "And when I have accomplished all these things, dear God, move over!")

Yet how realistically are frontline managers valued and supported?

Is money the new motivator?

It used to be said of the Infantry that officers did the planning but sergeants won the wars. There is a real parallel in many workplaces.

On one occasion, a group of overseers/foremen was asked to list their main tasks. One response was "to train new graduate engineers who will then become our bosses". A similar response came from other groups.

In both cases there is now another dimension.

The competent sergeant and the competent frontline manager, particularly at the overseer level in industry, are often too valuable in their roles to be promoted – and over many years both positions have been conditioned to accept these as their appropriate ceilings. Two new factors in the workplace may change this:

1. 1.

   Many frontline managers today hold academic or technical qualifications or are studying towards them. Both they and their employees are better educated than their predecessors; they are encouraged to think, to constructively challenge the status quo, and to build and lead a team environment. The direct and control tradition is no longer relevant. But this may be an expression of the ideal. In a recent survey of a large group of frontline managers, including many with considerable experience, we heard: "We are not part of the management communication network. We are seldom consulted and our creative input is not sought"; "We could make a much greater contribution if we were challenged to do so"; "We seem to work in a limbo between employees and senior management but we are the ones who have to get results".

2. 2.

   Senior executives now expect and receive performance bonuses of significant dimensions and with no reference to deduction for indifferent effort. Payment is seldom withheld. Similarly, most box-office sports now pay salaries and generous performance bonuses. Human resources staff are trained to eschew pay as a motivator but to promote extra effort and high performance through the practice of proven techniques such as empowerment, team processes, sincerity of recognition and positive appraisal reports – all of which in their place have achieved genuine and substantial results. People feel good about themselves and tend to assume an ownership of objectives and tasks. But all too often further down the track they see or experience restructuring and downsizing for one reason or another and enthusiasm is replaced by cynicism. Loyalty has become a scarce quality.

"What gets rewarded gets done" is quoted often in training programmes and conferences. Perhaps we need to face up to a more realistic definition of reward. To consider not only "What are we really rewarding (e.g. squeaky wheels)?", but also "What should we be rewarding?".

A bonus should not be payable for the performance of tasks outlined in the job description when the appointment was accepted, but should be the recognition of a significant contribution over and above this. Recognition should be given too to support staff associated with such special achievement.

At all levels, when asked to meet new challenges, employees, either vocally or silently, seek an answer to the "What's in it for me?" question. The answer they receive provides their incentive to commitment. And money may not be the first choice.

Remuneration policies must move away from the practice of setting salary and wage scales which equate with the stepped levels of the organisation chart and which have a tight relativity with comparable enterprises. This dulls initiative and reinforces complacency. One likely option is to set base levels, sufficient to attract staff, geared to the knowledge, skill and accountability required in the position, then to offer incentives for superior performance and achievement – and to stay firmly within the criteria thus established.

Reward must be felt to be fair for the outcomes generated.

We are all customers. Motivation is a reciprocal process. We will give you something you want if you give us something we want. The extent of the effort will be dependent on the input, and this will be based on the mutual recognition of its value and importance. Employees make their payment in effort and commitment. Employers have a range of options.

Behavioural science tells us that if you change the way people are rewarded, they will modify their behaviour accordingly. Perhaps it is time to test and validate this.

From hierarchy to partnerships

Management, based on hierarchic structure and the principles stemming from this, faces the challenge of relevancy. Hierarchy preserves the image of a deliberative direct and control strategy with its actions predicated upon the proven outcomes of theories espoused during the last millennium.

In the current environment management cannot predict which, if any, of its strategies will survive the ever-changing pressures, threats and the initiatives of tomorrow – there are too many variables outside its organisational ambit. Some change can be evolutionary but it is more likely to have its origins in quite unexpected incidents or in the interactions between hitherto unconsidered factors. And there may be no continuity of events.

Under these conditions, a "war room" mentality becomes necessary, operational priorities are identified and secondary issues are sidelined. The need for rapid accurate response and optimum utilisation of resources demands maximum continuous information and a purging of the infrastructure. A strategic core, the dynamo, with communication as its life force, will operate through effective teams led by competent and proactive managers.

Some changes will not happen overnight, but they will happen, and in the transition period project management is currently seen as the most effective way of meeting many situations – it establishes clear accountabilities, clarifies roles, ensures the co-ordination of activities and resources, and sharpens timetabling. This is organisationally good, but for employees employment may then terminate with the project.

So, what might the emerging pattern look like? One scenario is outlined in Figure 1. This envisages a control core body responsible for policy formulation, strategic planning, financing, corporate tendering when required and operational overview.

Where appropriate, operational activities are then set up as project groups each with nominated targets and with a designated manager, a budget and access to resources.

Specialists are selected and attached for the duration of the project, either by secondment or on contract, with responsibility for detailed planning and implementation. Each brings in, again either by secondment or on contract, the necessary number of skilled employees.

Figure 1 The continuing evolution of the management process

In many organisations, frontline managers are already filling the role of project managers, their nominal boss operating more as technical adviser and co-ordinator with other activities – a de facto partnership split by hierarchical status which should be regularised with full recognition of the operational responsibility and the removal of the implicit promotional ceiling.

In another development where projects expand into ongoing activities, they might then be set up as small business units, still reporting to a corporate centre but standing or falling on their own business skill and acumen.

As illustrated in Figure 2, projects should develop and maintain a partnering process for their effectiveness which will depend upon their ongoing ability to share information and jointly to seek improvement.

With flexible organisations partnering has high potential. For instance, a group of organisations usually in the same field of activity, or representative specialists, can come together to share knowledge and ideas, and perhaps to devise strategy to meet a particular market threat or opportunity and where common interest overrides the usual competitiveness.

Figure 2 Partnerships

Are you increasing your human capital?

Where people are employed there is still one overarching factor. Managers will direct performance, establish working conditions, negotiate reward procedures and structure working relationships from which employees will produce work which will meet strategic and tactical targets. That is their power base from which the result is compliance. But compliance of itself will not achieve either best practice or market leadership.

The need for rapid response to new situations and the ability to gain by change require initiative, acceptance of challenge, extra effort and singleness of purpose – demonstrated by commitment. But commitment is wholly voluntary action and is the outcome of good and empowering leadership.

Human capital is the sum of competence, compliance and commitment – and unlike all other assets, human capital can appreciate. And, for the moment anyway, technology is still dependent on the human input.

The ability to use human capital to optimum advantage is perhaps today one of management's major challenges – and it cannot be delegated.

In summary

What is emerging?

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  People do matter – they certainly do – but in the present global environment they can be seen by many to be secondary to the drive for bottom-line profitability and return on investment. Growing unemployment statistics internationally provide the evidence. The magnitude of the resultant social problems has yet to be appreciated and there are few indicators of possible solutions. Employment opportunities for the unskilled everywhere are diminishing rapidly and this will seriously threaten economic stability. (A personal interpolation here: Some while ago a Japanese businessman asked me about unemployment in New Zealand. I said at that time it was around 7 per cent. He then asked "Does that mean that nearly all the work that needs doing in your country has been done?". How would you reply?)

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  Workplace changes in every dimension, fragmentation of traditional structures and employment patterns, and the passing of more responsibility for the development of their people to their line managers will require HR and training specialists to do much rethinking to identify the current components of their accountabilities and to affirm the substance of their contribution to the productivity of their organisations.

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  The shape and functions of organisations will be determined and modified by the nature of their activities.

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  The potential for success will be largely knowledge-based and be dependent upon the effectiveness of competent innovative teams and strategic partnerships.

And, for now:

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  Have you really assessed, coached and utilised the capability of your own frontline managers?

Gordon RabeyManaging Director of Paige Associates, Brooklyn West, New Zealand