I was sitting in an airport lounge the day after the news broke. Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein had been paying off his sexual harassment accusers for decades. The TV in the lounge was tuned to CNN, with three women’s rights lawyers and advocates discussing the horrifying relevations.
The moderator asked, “Couldn’t some of these women have gone to their HR department to file a formal complaint?” The response: “HR is not your friend.”
There it was. The core issue. “HR is there mainly to protect the company. Not you.” The inconvenient truth.
I’m sure you’re ready to post a rebuttal about how you or your company would have stepped in and done the right thing — protecting any and every individual against sexual, or any, abuse. Or how protecting individuals from harm also protects the company.
Before you do, let’s talk about that really inconvenient truth. The one HR doesn’t want to face.
While sexual harassment and abuses are heinous, it’s not that. It’s further upstream, hard-wired into why HR exists. Let’s talk about HR’s original sin.
From its ancient beginnings to being formalized as a practice in the early 20th century, HR’s role has always been about protecting the company and maximizing human capital for the company’s benefit. Sure, in the past few decades, we’ve grown enlightened. We’ve come so far in doing good for the company by putting people first. And yet… Not.
Where was BP’s people-first HR savior on the Deepwater Horizon, going toe-to-toe with every decision-maker, putting safety of the Horizon’s people above all else? Where was Uber’s people-first HR savior during all their CEO’s horribly abusive behaviors? Or if we go further back, what HR hero protected Disney or Apple employees from their founder’s very dark sides?
As enlightened as we’d like to think our most stellar companies are, any online search shows that we still have a long way to go for HR to truly be a people-first advocate. (Along those lines: While 78% of executives rate engagement as urgent and important, the overall score has been stuck in the basement for decades — only around one-third of the workforce are engaged. Also see: Glassdoor’s Ten Worst Companies to Work For, which includes top-tier brands, as well as A not-so-brief history of gender discrimination in Silicon Valley. Also see Fast Company’s 2005 cover story, Why We Hate HR.)
Is HR incompetent? Morally bankrupt? Led by bad people? Of course not. Absolutely not! HR is filled with amazing, caring, wonderful people who bust their asses to do right by all people, all the time. (I proudly talk about my HR background every chance I get.)
And yet, HR as a field and as a set of practices must face its original sin. No matter how we spin “people are our greatest asset” — HR’s job is to always view that mantra through the company’s lens.
Sure, there are amazing exceptions, where HR and the company truly do put people first… But as a field, as a whole, that’s not what HR does. What it does extremely well: “People are our greatest asset within the context of, and through the lens of, whatever’s best for the company.”
I Need Your Help
My team and I have been retained by one of the top Best Places to Work to research the Future of HR.
I’m seeking thought-leaders and companies who are disrupting and establishing new HR norms in putting people first. Not just great-heartwarming-but-safe stories. I’m seeking the people and companies who are rattling HR’s dusty cages and forcing HR into the future.
A future where the Gig Economy means that we’ll soon make a major shift: from a base of two-thirds employees to two-thirds contractors/freelancers. How does HR help create shared meaning, purpose, and values, as that shift occurs?
A future where people analytics will drive everything. What is HR’s new role in the cognitive era?
And a future where so much of the workforce is lacking, or needs deep development in, 2020-and-beyond skills. What is HR’s role in radically upskilling our 21st century workforce?
Please email me if you know people or companies I should talk to — those who are are reimagining, disrupting, and leading HR to completely new places. I’ll report the results here in a future column.
Together, let’s tell HR’s new and amazing 21st century stories. Where HR truly is your friend. Together, let’s finally address HR’s original sin of being overly company-focused and not enough people-first-focused.
About the author: Bill Jensen is an IBM Futurist, is the foremost thought-leader on workplace simplicity, and has written eight best-selling books. He has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. As Mr. Simplicity, his mission is to make it easier to do great work and to hack stupid work. His research includes interviews and surveys with over one million people around the globe. He is CEO of the change consulting firm, The Jensen Group. His latest book is Future Strong.
You can contact Bill through email (bill@simplerwork.com) or his website. Follow Bill on Twitter: @simpletonbill.
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