For those of you who aren’t aware, I was actually born in Wisconsin and spent many of my formative years in a suburb of Milwaukee. Last week I returned to my home state, a nostalgic visit that reminded me of what nice, honest, hard-working people occupy America’s Dairyland. And at the invitation of the good professor Matt Stollak, I was asked to provide the closing keynote at the Wisconsin State SHRM 2010 Leadership Conference on a topic that would be challenging for any speaker – The Future of HR.
Upon my arrival in Sturgeon Bay last Thursday, it was Betsy Mitchell who first greeted me, asked about my trip and immediately struck up a conversation. Betsy is the VP of Organizational and Staff Development for the Green Bay Packers and was a featured speaker. Despite “19 seasons with the Packers” (which is how they measure time…in seasons), Betsy is one of the most self-effacing and approachable leaders I’ve ever met. She doesn’t pull punches about her initial reservations in joining such a “testosterone laden” organization. A hilarious storyteller, Betsy has had some very interesting experiences, including one with former Coach Mike Holmgren that involved her stealing his cookie after he walked out of a lunch meeting in a huff. It’s a great story about power and sticking to your principals, something which Betsy clearly embodies while speaking to the values and culture of the legendary Packers. Suffice it to say that there were a number of enjoyable moments at this event and Betsy was a highlight.
Although a tough act to follow, I intended to carry Betsy’s lead forward by combining levity with provocative and challenging ideation. There were several other sessions that preceded my keynote but I was ready to roll when the time came. However, after ninety minutes on the microphone, I’m wasn’t sure if I accomplished any of my original goals. Much of the audience seemed genuinely shell-shocked by what I had to say and it was only afterwards that individual attendees provided me with a bit of context relative to the confusing (from my vantage point) reaction to the material. Let me try and explain.
The slides (which you can download here and are embedded below) may not do justice to the conversation we had and certainly miss many of the important developments and future considerations you may see for our industry. I attempted to focus explicitly on those big picture issues where HR can either proactively take a stance/position or pay the price by letting others shape our destiny. Take a look at the deck and you’ll get a sense of what I am talking about.
My expectation was to dialogue with this terrific leadership team and really dive deep into some of the more challenging concepts. Instead, some of the fundamental premises which shaped my underlying thesis were perceived to be unfounded. Outsourcing transactional HR? Some audience members either felt that their firms were too small for consideration or that outsourcing was a four-letter word. Third-party payroll providers? Less than ten percent have these relationships in play today. And the list of misses went on and on….
Naturally I started to second guess myself and wonder if I was way off base. Students aside (and there were many present), this audience had a fairly standard distribution across both size of organization and the experience level of attendees, so that wasn’t at play. And I don’t want to paint a picture of a group of out of touch, small town HR folks – remember these are the leaders of one of the more progressive state SHRM councils. Their desire to improve our profession was palpable in every other instance that I witnessed. However, in my case I think the problem is this…
It wasn’t safe to have this conversation in public.
I spoke with about a dozen attendees before heading back home and each of them (in their own way) thanked me for saying what they’ve been “wanting to say for years“. Add to that the several dozen emails I received with the same tenor and we start to reach a consensus. So I sit here today both pleased that my ideas resonated with so many and gravely concerned about our ability to address difficult issues together.
I firmly believe that it is only through open and honest dialogue that we’ll progress as an industry, but how do we overcome the gravitational pull toward the status quo? Isn’t it our leaders who need to demonstrate the courage to challenge the norm and question that which came before? And what of the students who were hoping to learn from their seasoned colleagues prior to beginning their adventure into our industry? I see this as both a tremendous success and a missed opportunity.
I want to thank the Wisconsin State SHRM leaders for their hospitality and interest. I enjoyed meeting so many of the attendees and appreciated the opportunity to push us out of our comfort zone. But now it’s your turn to weigh in – did The Future of HR deck resonate with you? And what of our need to discuss these challenges openly and honestly? Please share your thoughts below and, as always, let’s keep the conversation going.
15 Comments
Great deck. I’m not sure HR laments the seat at the table thing, more like everyone tells HR they should. But I agree with you about outsourcing administration: A modern organization creates shared services around administrative activities in order to focus on strategic talent management and workforce planning. It isn’t locked into a single approach when it comes to rewards packages and workforce development but creates talent pools that can be tracked, developed and rewarded according to an appropriate workforce strategy. The problem is, that’s a scary step to take if you aren’t sure the result won’t be HR downsizing. . .
You hit on a really important point (great comments BTW, thank you!) which is that the fear of downsizing disincents HR from pursuing these sorts of changes.
I agree that much of HR’s administrative work should be outsourced with one contingency: it has to cost less. 92% of companies with 5,000 or more employees insource payroll. Peter Drucker once said you should outsource everything that does not have a career path to senior management. On that premise, it means that many staff positions are meaningless – I think he is wrong here because the show “Undercover Boss” shows that there are diamonds the rough.
Mark,
I’m proud of you. We as self-imposed leaders need to stick our neck out there to help drive the change. We can’t always be heros but hopefully we got some wheels turning, made some people uncomfortable, and influenced a future decision or idea if only one.
I believe you are doing the right things. Having conversations like this won’t often lead to making lots of friends, but it’s what needs to happen to keep HR in play and turn it into a part of the business that has credibility and influence into more than just policy and procedure but short term and long term business decisions.
Jessica
@blogging4jobs
Thanks for your thoughts Jessica. You’re way too nice to me.
Good stuff Mark, wish I would have been there…think we will cross paths eventually though.
I think I am agreement with the vast majority of your message (and let me just add that I think you probably know far more about the future of HR than I do), but I do have one point of disagreement…and I think it is a very important one.
A couple of your points under Radically Transform (slide 13) are ‘emphasize a strong business education above all else’, and ‘embrace metrics as the driving force of business.’ I personally have come to see those things as being highly overrated and the idea that they are all important as actually standing in the way of real radical transformation of HR (and business).
I get that metrics and understanding business matter. But we are making them the false prophet of organizational success. Take the mack daday of them all, profit. I know that profit is important, I am not going to argue that. But profit actually tells me very little about an organization. Profit in 2010 does not tell me anything about my capacity to generate a profit in 2011, it does not tell me whether I made that profit ethically, efficiently or legally. The same is true of all metrics…they have value, but their needs to be context added to them about the stuff that cannot truly ever be measured (ethics, creativity, inclusion, love, passion, loyalty, etc).
To me, that is a big part of the future of HR…not adopting our work (with primarily intangible assets) to their language and framework (which is based on tangible assets), but helping them see the limitations of their language and understanding of the organization.
I don’t want us in the human capital craft to learn someone else’s game, I want us to change the game thats being played.
Just my two cents man, good stuff. You’re a smart cat, thanks for sharing.
-joe
Thanks for the very thoughtful reply Joe. A few comments:
- I don’t think I know any more about the future of HR than the next person. That’s why I think this discussion is so important.
- I tend to disagree with you on what you can learn from profit. If dissected properly, you can actually predict 2011 with some level of accuracy and assess sources of profit across the categories you’ve defined. However, I agree 1000% with your point about…
- Context. Content is absolutely useless without context and I do agree that we often look at the cold hard numbers without the benefit of contextual relevance.
- I think a happy medium between “their language” and ours is directionally correct. But without a clear understanding of where “they” are coming from we are move likely to miss than hit. Yes, I’m advocating for HR to hit…hard!
Great thoughts as usual sir.
Mark,
Your points were valid, and the only thing I’m left with is how hard it must be for many HR pros (and just flat humans) to hear that the way they’ve been doing things is no longer valid.
I’m doing a class at HR Florida. It’s called, “Hack Your Work.” I was going to go deep into all the interesting, risky, strategic, forward-thinking things you mention, in practical detail, for running HR in small companies. Then I did a survey of the participants, and I had to really rethink my agenda. My participants want to talk about getting enough time to finish their filing, and getting out of their front-desk backup responsibilities. These are people who, in the main, are responsible for HR, payroll, and some other job for companies of 100-250 employees.
I realized that I was definitely NOT meeting them where they are, but writing a class to impress myself and my most forward-thinking HR friends. My curriculum wouldn’t have taught, it would have, at best, challenged. More like make some of the participants turn off completely and just feel bad about themselves and their contribution, when in fact it’s not just their problem – the company leadership has helped create that admin/tactical HR role, most likely for lots of different historical, subconscious, and perfectly conscious reasons.
I am dialing it down, considerably. Everyone will get a lot of value, but everyone will be respected as well, for the job they do in their current situation. I think that only by showing respect for people and acknowledging that they’re a part of a larger ecosystem that keeps this “non-strategic HR” in place, can you affect true change.
Wow. Your comment really hit home, especially – “writing a class to impress myself and my most forward-looking HR friends.” Nail meet head as I think that’s exactly what I ended up doing Franny, and I probably did a disservice to my gracious hosts as a result. Your comment was humbling on so many levels. Thanks for that and I’ll see you soon in Orlando.
Outsourcing transactional HR, as well as various administrative tasks, is actually ideal for small businesses. This is because outsourcing these tasks allows them to concentrate on their main operations. It’s also good for one-time requirements or short-term projects.
The packers hall of fame is holding a private call next week to announce something, any idea?
Payroll outsourcing is very practical for medium-sized companies that want to streamline their operations. HR paperwork can be very burdensome for labor-intensive companies.
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