New Business Ideas 4 U

Posts Tagged ‘Company Strategy’

HR Sacred Cow 2     All Staff at the Same Level Should be Paid the Same.

The first of my Toyota ‘whys?’ again.

The larger the organization – and as organizations grow, the HR department seems to grow accordingly – the more paranoid it becomes about equality. Professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty put it this way in The Differentiated Workforce.

Many HR leaders have spent their careers ensuring that all employees are treated equally instead of equitably (p121) [Emphasis is theirs, not mine]

They emphasize that a differentiated workforce stresses equity ahead of equality. [Their emphasis again]

Read the rest of this entry »

HR Sacred Cow 1     It’s HR’s job to Look after the People in the Company

Why is this sacred cow?

Let me share a true story. I was once taken to task by the assistant HR manager of a company to which I was consulting. I had proposed a change to the company structure, which included a change in the way the sales forces were paid. The lady bailed me up one day – almost literally ‘spitting tacks’. “You have no right to interfere with my staff” she spat. “Madam”, I replied, “you have no staff”. She became apoplectic, to the extent I deemed it expedient to withdraw – from the scene, not from the remark.

I am so glad that some few years later, the learned professorial authors of The Differentiated Workforce have justified my stand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the last three key points made by Baker, Huselid and Beatty on the relationship between line managers and HR in the development of the workforce.

Workforce accountability begins with creating performance expectations of both line managers and HR

• So both line managers and HR need to agree and spell out what are their respective accountability as regards workforce development and performance. By doing this the possibility of the whole process falling between the cracks – a concern I expressed in the last posting – is alleviated a little, but not entirely. The agreement must be:
  • Clear – it says exactly what each party will be accountable for
  • Written down – a verbal agreement is insufficient. Writing it down and signing off the agreement is a much stronger commitment
  • Measurable – how will each party be quite sure that the other has met the accountability?
  • Assessed – it needs to become a part of the performance appraisal of each party, and not just assessed on an annual basis only. Once a year is nothing like enough. This accountability is of sufficient importance to the functioning of the company it needs to be assessed at least monthly

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

“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: Read the rest of this entry »