According to a post on Google News today, in a new book entitled A Decade of L.E.A.D. (the Leadership, Employment and Direction survey), which charted workplace attitudes in Australia in the past decade, revealed that while the ranks of HR managers had swollen, the number of staff who believed their needs were being met by them had fallen.Researchers, analysing data from four big workplace surveys dating to 2003, found the proportion of employees who believed the HR department was addressing their concerns had fallen from 60 per cent to less than 50 per cent. In the most recent results, about 40 per cent of employees said HR had a poor or very poor awareness of what their issues actually were. ''HR departments are plagued by contradiction - they are trying to meet employee needs and expectations on one hand, and the needs and expectations of managers and shareholders,'' Sydney University workplace expert Professor John Shields said. A Decade of L.E.A.D. suggested human resources departments were leaning more towards their paymasters than general employees, and a much larger proportion of managers professed to be happy with their activities.Grant Sexton, the managing director of the Leadership Management Australasia, which commissioned the surveys and compiled the book, said HR departments did not give employees the right training. ''So often internal training is determined by a very narrow conception of what the organisation needs rather than what the individual needs,'' he said. ''There's not enough focus on soft skills - communication, goal-setting, time management.'' He said decisions about training and other HR functions were often taken out of the hands of HR managers themselves. ''How many HR departments do you know that have a seat on the board of their company?'' Mr Sexton said. ''Too often leaders see HR departments as a way to deal with staff issues but then don't give them any power to actually change anything. ''They end up being the meat in the sandwich.'' The chairman of the Human Resources Institute of Australia, Peter Wilson, said human resources departments were not meant to be trade unions. ''HR is about reconciling the interests of staff and management and in our view they do that very successfully,'' Mr Wilson said.
DBAI Strategic Take: The culture of human resources in today's workplace is all dependent on how you look at the human capital within your organization. If, as Russ Moen from Express Personnel states, that your human capital assets are nothing more than a line in your expense log, then the human resource function will not look at the employees for what they truly are. If we were still in the industrial age, which many of us have forgotten we exited from awhile back, then I would agree that your employees were a line item on the balance sheet. But we have moved on. Depending on who you talk to we are now in the knowledge or creative age where your service or your product is based on what it is in the minds of your human capital. If they leave your knowledge base goes with them. I have heard of situations whre the knowledge drain was enough to pull an organization under. So what doe we need to change? Here are some suggestions we would like to offer:
1. Take a page from the plate of the new generation and where feasible make decisions based on the collaborative efforts of all employees through the involvement of cross functional teams.
2. Human Resources should not only earn but demand a seat at the decision table. HR is not just baout keeping the organization out of legal trouble, but is directly responsible for providing guidance how to best utilize the human capital asssets of the organization.
3. Human Resources must remove themselves from the silo mentality of many organizations and ensure that their efforts are utilized across the entire organization.
4. Management must come to the realization that they are not there solely to act as the lord high master. The day of the overbearing manager wnet by the wayside the day the first millennial showed their face in the workplace.
5. Management must in short order remove from their space the belief that the employees are there primarily to see what they can get away with. Consider flexible work environments which may benefit the employee in the short run, but may benefit the organization in the long run.
As one of the final parts of my e-mail signature is the statement that the world is a better place because of those who refuse to believe they cannot fly. Our employees can be the key to the success of an organization as long as we treat them as they would like to be treated.
