HR Rocks!

HR Rocks.

So proclaims the button I picked up at the annual convention of the Society for Human Resource Management.  The button was being passed out by the O.C. Tanner Company and attached to a piece of cardboard that had the following printed on it:

People create

People invent

People discover

People dream

People build

People do

People grow business

HR grows people

I am in HR and therefore like to think I rock. Heaven knows it’s not because I have a lick of musical talent. I do play the radio—usually NPR. The conclusion of this statement got me thinking, is it true—HR grows people? Is it the best role for HR?

The human resource profession has been experiencing growing pains as it continues to evolve. It hasn’t always been a profession. It used to be a function—the personnel department. There is a great deal of discussion these days about HR getting a seat at the table—a spot in top management where business strategy is planned and put into place.

As the nature of the resources that drove the economy changed, so has HR. When it was plants—an agrarian economy, there wasn’t really “personnel.” People were farmers and farmhands. The work dictated what people did.

With the industrial age the drivers of the economy were raw materials—timber, ores, textiles, chemicals. People were organized around turning these resources into goods. There were factories and workers. In the offices, there were personnel. People weren’t thought of as a resource but as a cost to be managed.  People were organized around the work, factories and assembly lines being the best example. Labor itself become organized and therefore needed to be administrated.

Then came our current knowledge based economy where the greatest resource a business has are the minds of its employees. In this economy, creativity and thought are the raw materials used to create wealth. Value comes from people’s minds opposed to physical labor. Work is more about thinking. Thoughts must be cultivated. It could be said in some ways we have come full circle.

If HR is to be a relative profession in today’s economy, its best path of professional maturity is in learning how to cultivate and grow people’s minds. Herein lays the field’s greatest opportunity to contribute real value to businesses and the economy in general—not in being better at administration. Without trying to be religious, it is about ministering over administering.

As the greater value becomes the hearts and minds of people, opposed to administration of policies and legal compliance, HR does not necessarily have a secure position. Other professions could take on that role of human capital development—such as industrial psychology or organizational development. But are they necessarily a better fit?

HR’s past as an administrative function may be its strength as a newly developing strategic profession. HR understands what it takes to get things done that have to be done. As great as strategy is, someone needs to know how to execute it. The human resource profession started out as doers. It now has a chance to prove itself capable of not only doing but of strategic thinking in this new economy of knowledge based production.

Administering is always easier than ministering. HR professionals must themselves be the creative resource that businesses expect from their people. It’s an opportunity for HR to lead the development of cognitive capacity as applied to business production. Indeed, if HR can do it, they will in deed rock. If they can’t, all the things they do today will eventually be outsourced or performed by a clever algorithm.

How will HR grow people? It isn’t easy. People are tricky. They have a mind of their own. HR will need to understand both the science and art of motivating people, of connecting with people, of encouraging people, and of inspiring people to action. It must figure out to grow people so it can then harvest their creativity.

Being in HR is a good place to be if you like opportunity. It’s a good place to be if you want to have a direct influence on how today’s business’s most important resource—people—are going to be managed, developed, and grown. If ever there was an opportunity to jump up on the stage of performance and rock, HR has it. So rock on all you HR professionals! It’s show time.