Find new ideas and classic advice on business topics, for. Harvard Business Review - The Latest. They are coauthors of three previous HBR articles, including. Why invest in new hr practices?
How should HR be defined? Why do managers use different techniques?
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Harold B. Hbr Resources LLC is an Arizona Domestic L. In the Dallas airport the other day I saw many tall, well-dresse and impressive-looking men wearing large, immaculate Stetson cowboy hats. As I walked by one such hat-wearer, I noticed two middle-age sunburned men in faded blue jeans standing nearby. They eyed the same fellow, looked him up and down, and then one said quietly to the other, Big hat, no cattle. See full list on hbr.
First, academics, with minds opened by the Hawthorne experiments, led the movement to effectively manage people. Now, eager consultants and zealous staff experts nurture it.
Fortune writes of personnel directors as the new corporate heroes. Library shelves overflow with people management books, and a hundred new ones appear every year. Two hundred documented attempts are going on to improve the quality of work life (QWL), and three nationally known institutions have charters to improve productivity and QWL. Some will argue that weve been doing many of the right things and that it is societal factors such as the declining work ethic, the new bree and the new sociology that are eroding managements efforts.
Regardless, in most companies the of enlightened people management are simply more comfort, more relaxation, more freedom from pressure, more security, more benefits, and higher pay, not more productivity and loyalty. Two things appear to be missing from the systems. One is a comprehensive unifying concept. Another is a general manager who can effectively mix and match these necessary ingredients.
Unfortunately, such a person is a rare breed. Few managers need much convincing about the importance of people. But they also report, We dont know how to motivate them. Personnel departments dont give us the leadership we need.
Were just hanging in there trying to cope. People are getting harder to manage. Critical problems in the corporate management of personnel, such as the place of human resources management (HRM) in corporate decision making, the role of personnel staff, and a lack of sufficient human resources management know-how at top management levels, remain largely unresolved.
Capturing the loyalty of hundreds or thousands of individuals in one business enterprise so that they direct their energies toward the goals of the company is enormously difficult. The goals of the corporation are long-range and general in natureprofit and growth.
Drawing a connection between these sets of goals is not easy. Effective relationships between individuals and companies rest on employees trust that the goals are connected. But developing trust often requires overcoming years of bad experience and many employees belief that companies exploit people. Of every 1employees, or will have been disappointed or burned by some job-related experience, which may have been beyond the companys control. Their subsequent alienation can subvert the efforts of managers and personnel officers to build morale.
Seen this way, the fight for a motivated work force is an uphill battle. Its rosy idealism to think that every employee is going to turn on and perform with 1 devotion to a company and its objectives. Short-term economic interests are in clear conflict. Employees see their share of the pie as being cut smaller to serve up larger profits to owners.
Further, political factors such as Naders Raiders and the anti-big-business wing of the Democratic party exploit employees distrust of business, the corporation, and managers, whom employees often see as being out for themselves and siding with their corporate bosses against the employee. For example, in most companies managers employ four different disciplines to improve employee performance and relationshuman relations, labor relations, personnel administration, and industrial engineering. Since human relations itself includes at least three major schools, six fairly distinct sets of ideas and concepts can be at work in the same organization at the same time. Theories of group behavior deal with social interaction and interpersonal relationships through such tools as theories X and Y and sensitivity training.
The schools precept is that because group behavior is critical to collaboration and success, groups must bestow authority and control upward. Organizational development goes further and focuses on the need for people to reason together about their common difficulties. Its central belief is that employees can often manage themselves better than managers can.
Its main concern is the individuals feelings and drives an how they affect the workplace. Labor laws, public policy, the economics of wages and costs, demographics and manpower management, collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievances are under the purview of labor relations. It sees politics at the plant, corporation, union, state, and national levels together with labor laws as keys to any situation. Its stance is usually adversarial and toughsticking to contract terms, denying exceptions, avoiding precedents, and building a powerful position for bargaining. This discipline holds that if companies perform those tasks well, they will acquire a set of employees with appropriate motives, habits, and behavior.
Personnel holds that if managers are consistent and apply policies that induce desired behavior, a good climate will result. The problem is a little like having a car that has good wheels, a shiny body, an efficient engine, excellent brakes, and a terrific hydraulic system but that wont go or that no one in the family wants to drive. When a company grows, the connection between the corporate well-being and the needs of separate divisions and locations can break.
In principle, headquarters may be willing to let the divisions deal with their local labor forces on their own, but in letting the divisions take different courses, the corporation may endanger its bargaining position with the union. And even if the company is not unionize the personnel office might fear that one divisions low-cost demands could bring in a union, be shortsighte or give the company a bad reputation as a place to work. Given these potential conflicts, experimenting with new approaches becomes riskier in large organizations than in small.
Decisions become more sensitive, have longer shadows, an understandably, executives may become more cautious and may procrastinate or pass the buck when they can. Human resources management faces a further fundamental problem that few companies have resolved. Acquiring and developing the right talents for the business as it changes strategy, technology, and products requires more shrew wise, long-range planning than any other corporate endeavor. But how long does it take to change the attitudes of l,0employees with an average age, lets assume, of and with years of seniority?
Clearly, management cannot dismiss the work force and start over again. But it often takes years to effect much genuine change, and one bad decision or unfortunate sequence of events can undo those years of slow progress. In contrast to the nature of the HRM task, which is a function that requires long-term thinking, consistency, and staying power, short-range pressures such as budgets and annual plans force short-term reactions.
Successful managers seldom stay put long enough to see their HRM investments pay off. Also, executive compensation systems seldom reward a manager for five years investment in HRM policies and activities. The first is that personnel work has seldom been attractive to fast-moving, younger general managers, who see the field as out of the mainstream of the business. Also, they see personnel as a staff function that is strictly advisory, that lacks authority and power, and that deals with small-scale, troublesome problems. A personnel job is seldom an attractive position for a manager who wants to run something independently.
Because of personnels conflict-ridden, pressure contradictory nature, the decisions personnel managers make are touchy and cumbersome. Because they involve many other managers, they are not only time-consuming but also often frustrating. For these reasons, few outstanding managers move into personnel, and those in it often have problems getting out. The detail, the time required to gain expertise, the low status in the organization, and the lack of clear-cut authority can swallow up and overwhelm all but the very best in the field.
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor of Business at the Ross School, University of. HBR delivers advisory, managed services and software solutions that increase productivity and profitability, while mitigating risk for law firms, law departments and corporations. In an increasingly complex and competitive market, it is essential that leaders focus on strategic, client-focused services to achieve a competitive edge.
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