What HR Can’t Do

Can you think of all the names for HR?  Bureaucrats, cops, partner, the man, coach, detective, pencil pushers, facilitators, executioners, people champions, expletive of choice.  Yep, it seems like we are lots of things, and handle a lot.  HR can help lift a company up, or merely keep it compliant with all those pesky laws.  HR can expedite strategic vision and can be the architects of great cultures.  However, there is one thing HR can’t do.

HR can’t fix stupid.

Recently, I was in a round table with some HR pros discussing the virtues of our profession.  Important note:  When I say round table – it was a round table at a bar while we were grumbling about our jobs.  One friend was talking about a particular individual who wasn’t understanding the concept of culture in an organization.  This isn’t uncommon since “culture” can be thrown around as an undefined buzzword that sounds good when you’re trying to impress someone.  However, the person who wasn’t getting it was appointed as the co-chair of a new culture committee.  The committee was developed to look at what a culture shift in the company could look like, and what it would mean for the employees.

The HR person was having meetings with the co-chair.  Let’s call her, Batty.  The first obstacle for Batty was understanding why culture was important.  Ms. HR sage was explaining that culture is what defines an organization.  It’s shared values and actions that brings people together for a common goal.  Culture is what differentiates one organization from another, and is why people would want to come work for you.  That’s fairly simple.  Values and actions.  The things we believe and do.  People are diverse and think about things differently, but they can come together when they understand what is being stated and what is being done.  A culture is formed and sustaining when the words and actions are in harmony.  Batty struggled.

Batty thought that culture was just happy talk that didn’t mean anything.  A job is a job.  Senior management tells you what to do, and you do it.  That brings up a couple points.  Sure, culture can be something that is meaningless, but only if it is just talk.  Culture as a talking point is not culture.  Also, the ‘we say, you do” type of work is rapidly becoming a relic of another era.  Smartphones and tablets are nudging out laptops, which have nudged out desktop computers.  TV’s have become connected to the web.  Change is good, and people like the idea of more information, more inclusion, more connectedness in their jobs.  We spend a hell of a lot of time working, and it would be nice if we felt valued and part of something.  This, by the way is a core requirement of millennials, who will quickly become the majority of the workforce.

The fact that companies identified as having great cultures outperform their competitors and the market by 40-50% is still somehow lost on people like Batty.  Better to not do the hard work of creating and preserving an exceptional workplace, and write it off as a loopy concept.  Batty would rather have a detached CEO that dictates to, instead of involves their employees.

When someone is unable or unwilling to understand the things that HR does, like company culture, then what?  HR can fix a lot of things, but not everything.