Defending the HR Profession

Q) Are you aware of the prolonged criticism of CIPD and the HR profession?

Yes, but I'm not really conscious that it has become any worse in recent years compared to, say, twenty years ago. Whilst voices mindlessly repeating "HR is not your friend!" are commonplace, I have seen an at-least-equal number of people speaking up who have a more nuanced understanding despite not being HR professionals themselves.

Q) Have you responded to the criticism? Is it a worthwhile discussion to have?

Occasionally. Usually to educate people on the role of HR. This is when we see people saying things like "HR says management has to fire me" or "HR has decided that I'm redundant" and I have stepped in to explain that HR advises managers but doesn't make decisions and, if their managers are blaming HR for decisions the business it taking, then the managers are trying to avoid blame for the decisions they themselves have reached.

Q) Is it easy to criticise the HR profession because it has an image problem?

No more, in my experience, than finance, IT, legal, marketing or any other support function in business.

Q) Does it make you worry about your jobs?

No.

Q) Anything else you would like to say?

The cited examples are all illustrative not of a problem with HR but of a problem with management. British business (and we're not alone, but are paradigmatic) has spent three decades under-investing in management training and development whilst fetishising "leadership", creating a whole generation of business "leaders" who don't actually understand how to manage businesses, they just know how to lead. But businesses only need leading when they're in a crisis (the rest of the time, they just need to be managed), so business leaders keep latching onto or even creating crises that good management would have simply avoided in order to give themselves something meaningful to do with their time.

This is, of course, reductive. But it is symptomatic that the heads of businesses that are forced to make unpalatable decisions but who lack the management understanding to clearly rationalise their decision-making will blame the technical functions providing them the advice they use to reach those decisions.

"HR says we have to fire you."

"Finance says we can't afford it."

"IT says it's not technically possible."

Thus, they throw up their collective hands and say "It's not *my* fault! It's them! It's their horrible woke agenda that says I have to do what they say!" When, actually, what we said was "If you dismiss that person simply because they've come out as trans, and if they were to claim unfair dismissal, they would certainly win because that's blatant discrimination; not only would that cost us a lot of money to settle, but it would be dreadful for our public perception and potentially lead to a lot of online criticism that could damage our bottom line".

God forbid managers will actually performance manage their staff rather than just let them fail over and over before finally asking me, three years later, if they're allowed to fire them yet.

Can I give you all of the applause for this post Robey! Absolutely spot on.

Can I give you all of the applause for this post Robey! Absolutely spot on.