What is “Transformational Human Resources?” If anyone has the answer to this question, they should immediately email me and let me know, because I very much would like to know. As Human Resources practitioners, we strive for the answer to this question because we are looking desperately to fix something. We are pulling at anything we can grasp to transform something we consider broken. Is HR broken? Or have we just made it more complicated than we need to?
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When I think about transforming HR, I think of a million different things. However, mostly I think about employee engagement. We all know the stats, we know that most people are not engaged at work. So, as HR folks we strive to create processes and programs that will provide us with what we hope will be the silver bullet to engaging our workforce, and thus transforming HR. We do this because we were taught in “HR SCHOOL” that an engaged workforce means more work from our employees, and more work equals more money for the business.
Listen up HR folks– have we ever thought that a very individualized and customized approach to people is how we should be engaging our workforce and thus transforming HR? Why is it that HR or managers get to decide what programs/processes will work for engaging their workforce- taking their cue likely from an employee engagement survey that is pencil whipped and not validated?
As HR practitioners, I would challenge us to think beyond processes, and take the first step in transforming HR by listening to our employees, one by one, and together decide what is important to them. What is it that makes them happy, sad, mad, excited? What lights the fire in their belly? Once you know the answers, act on them in a non-prescriptive way, the best we can and within the confines of the businesses we serve. It’s so simple, yet we make it so complicated! Why? As always, thank you for reading this blog post, and thank you for listening to Survive HR!