I’ve written about similar themes before — used to work with this dude Jonathan Goodman, generally nice guy actually, who once told me in a bar that my “beat” in my life was “shitting on HR” (it’s not, but can feel that way) — and I’ll just say again, louder for the people in the back: In general, HR leaders are not active in the full holistic ecosystem of the business. They are not necessarily talking to front-line managers, learning about silos’ needs and concerns, and engaging with front-line employees. Instead, they are usually making pointless decks, doing engagement score surveys, firing people, and rolling over and playing dead for the executives. They are the ultimate pearl-clutching, compliance, “We only exist because legal’s hourly fees are too high” department. Almost no one has healthy respect for them, including some people internal to the department.
And yet, every day, digital bytes and actual trees fall down so we can write articles like this one, from some guy at Citrix, about “what your future employees want.” A noble topic, without question, especially right now! But you constantly get paragraphs like this:
86% of employees said they would prefer to work for a company that prioritizes outcomes over output. What does this mean? New employees want to work for a company that cares less about the qualified work output they are able to produce, and more about the impact they can deliver to the business in a holistic sense.
But there is a gap here, with just 69% of HR directors saying that their company currently operates in this way, and only half of HR directors saying that their organization would be more productive as a whole if employees felt that their employer/senior management team trusted them to get the job done without monitoring their progress.
There is so much wrong with those two paragraphs, I barely know where to begin. Let me try, though:
- “Outcomes over outputs:” This seems like some woke Gen Z bullshit to a current executive. You want to be judged on a “holistic sense,” Sean? OK, well “holistic” doesn’t get me another bedroom in Malibu. I want to see measurable output. If “outcomes” in the eyes of those surveyed means “I contributed a corporate blog post on the importance of allying with intersectionality,” that’s important, but it doesn’t keep the lights on.
- “69% of HR directors…” What do HR directors know about how their company operates? They live in spreadsheets, worthless decks, urgent projects, terminations, and poorly-structured hiring processes. Why would I care what a HR director thinks about outcomes and outputs? For about 7-10 years, they’ve achieved neither.
- “Only half of HR directors…” Again, don’t care. But if you read that sentence, basically HR directors are trying to tacitly pull back on autonomy — which is important to people — because they know executives don’t like the autonomy, especially after a year of not always knowing where Peon Paula was.
While the guy who write this article is an EVP at Citrix, you can tell he’s not truly a big swinging dick because near the end, he writes this sentence: “… Organizations will need to prioritize reskilling and upskilling to attract and retain the talent they need to make their businesses grow…” First off, re-training programs don’t work that well, and we’ve known that for years. Second off, executives break out in hives when you mention those, because they represent a big cost, and the fear is always “Well, I will train them and then they will take those skills to a competitor.” You seem some headlines about re-training here and there, but usually it’s Amazon or Google, and they have billions of dollars of cash on hand. Not everyone can afford to play in that sandbox.
My biggest point would be that HR directors, and even HR VPs, don’t know the business well enough to constantly be surveyed for these types of articles. Their feedback is essentially close to meaningless. Talk to silo heads and front-line managers with lots of directs, and front-line employees on a track with that company. They know the score, they know how things are, and they know what people are chasing. HR Harry does not.
I will comment here instead of LinkedIn to be more incognito. Several years ago, I filled out a “business” forum for work with lines produced by the grand gobbledygook generator (great tool!). Mgmt could not discern if I my comments were factious or completely genuine. I did it because I was sick and tired of wasting time at work on BS initiatives that only one director cared about — a director that had no business being a director or manager at any level (think female version of Trump if there ever was one or well shit, we have too many unfortunately).
Of course, I got in “trouble” for that. In the early days, if you did not have a leadership title, everyone assumed you knew jack shit about leadership and warranted a shit ton of development. I am all for continuous self improvement/development. I am just not for the blatant disrespect b/c too many over-inflated egos are sharing the same work space. But I digress…
The HR example I have that takes the cake though surrounds a third-party survey they start handed out to employees about a decade ago and comes back around every 18 months or as needed. The survey’s main objective is to measure employment engagement. Well, up until probably the last two surveys given, the questions did not allow for any open answers. 100% sliding scale answers only.
The kicker with these surveys was the fact (as explained explicitly to us so no assumptions here) that if you answered a question a certain way — say not favorable to the organization, you were classified as “disengaged.”
I am no HR expert or would ever pretend to be. All I know about motivation, leadership, etc. I have learned through reading and my own research (quite a bit I might add). I knew many moons before even these surveys the difference between “engaged” vs. “disengaged,” which would seem to be mandatory for any and all HR employees to know and fully understand. Apparently that is not the case though.
So…, the surveys were deemed anonymous so we would actually volunteer and take them. After one such survey a few years ago, our group was informed that we have two “disengaged” employees. Me being me and always taking the opportunity to speak up (so I can always sleep at night) spoke up quite a bit when this went down. I found it quite perplexing how I had to explain to leaders the difference between “engaged” v. “disengaged” as well as “bad attitude” v. “speaking honest truth to power.” Had it never crossed their minds that a truly disengaged employee would not care to fill out a voluntary survey about….engagement (or anything else really)? And if they did happen to fill out said survey, they would not just “christmas tree” their answers in the bubbles? Again, apparently not. 20th-century management styles plague us to this day. Ugh.
Bottom line: I have had to fight through a lot of resistance from mgmt (leaders are supposed to clear obstacles for us, correct?) through the years just to get the respect that just maybe I know what the hell I am talking about even though I am in no way 100% right all the time. Mgmt was more concerned about what frankly conservatives are concerned about — keep in line, sit down, shut up, and always be fully respective of everyone above you 100% of the time and wave the company flag every chance you get — corporate nationalism.
Well, I fought and cracked the code finally. Now, I think its finally dawning on them that the cotemporary BS business hype over the past couple decades preaching to move to new roles no more than every 18 months to 2 years does not in fact work well in organizations on a grand scale. This leads to very limited number of SMEs. A bunch of people with great “images” but no deep understanding of how any of the complex business processes actually work or how they even evolved to be so convoluted. And to note, that changes over time I have moved the system architecture design has mainly shifted away from IT departments to a select few SMEs who actually know the business processes inside and out and enough about systems to build them themselves.
And I did all of what I have accomplished, which is in no way classified as “small,” because I actually give a damn. I care and I am passionate about what I care about. The survey suggested to fire me. No sane, rational person within my organization would side with the survey’s suggestion about me. But to be fair, another survey is circulating but now with an option to comment on every single question and an open text box at the end for open feedback. Improvement. I just wish they were more ahead of the progressive curve overall.
Human Resources -in truth- is an enforcement and compliance department. One does not ask them the future of work, any more than the US President would ask the Justice Department what future Middle Eastern politics will look like.