One of the possibly contentious issues raised in this thought-provoking book relates to the role of line managers in HR matters. In fact the authors devote a whole chapter to the issue, Chapter 4 Establish Leadership Accountability for Workforce Success.

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“The first step is to recognize that the workforce is not just HR’s problem, and that line managers and HR leaders must have joint accountability for developing talent throughout the organization”, they suggest (p87).

In the chapter they make five key points, which I will share with you, commenting briefly on each.

Line managers and leaders influence the mindset of the workforce and its capabilities more than the HR function leaders and managers do:

  • No real problem here. As soon as a company reaches the size where it has a head office and branches, or around 150 bodies, then HR tends to sit in the head office and rarely get to the branches, if at all. How can they make decisions relating to workforce, therefore, except based on ‘policy’ or written input from someone else (which may or may not be unbiased and accurate)
  • Line managers, being with their staff almost all day every day, will clearly influence the staff mindset, and this will have a greater influence on production – of whatever sort – than will dicta from a faceless HR person in head office

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Both line managers and HR should be held accountable for the development of a successful workforce

  • I have a bit of a problem here. In principle, I agree with the learned professors, but I don’t think this system is workable. Where you have two people accountable for any one thing, there is a tendency for each party to assume that the other party is actually doing something. Thus the matter in hand tends to fall between two stools.
  • I would rather go for full accountability being placed on the line managers with the HR manager being accountable for providing the necessary support to the line. Thus, if a line manager identifies a development need for a staff member, and for some reason doesn’t feel capable of meeting it, HR should provide the necessary
  • Mind you, HR has every right to suggest that the developmental need of the staff member may well be able to be met by the line manager if the line manager were to be developed a bit.
  • It is easy for HR to say, it is the line managers’ job to counsel problem staff, for example, and I would have no problem with that viewpoint, but it is HR’s job therefore to ensure that the line manager is capable to counsel. The most common reason given by line managers for not counseling is that they are ‘too busy”. That is of course a cop out. I believe the basic reason that line managers do not counsel – or coach, for that matter – is that they don’t know how to. If HR cannot provide this developmental activity for the line managers it is failing in a key accountability.

We shall consider the ache authors’ other three points in the next posting.

Stay tuned

Bob