Human resources - what do they actually do?

Creeping in behind the intellectual arguments on organisational change towards the end of the 20th century was an invidious force seeking respect and tenure but gaining only the latter.

I have worked and studied in a number of organisations over the last 20 years and this article reflects some of my findings on Human Resource Management. The anecdotes come from colleagues still working in the public service or at universities and who wish to remain anonymous.

This is no place to give a history of the rise of the Human Relations movement, except to say that back in the 1930's, American studies showed that factory workers were more productive when management took an interest in their workers welfare. The rise of HR was seen by some as an attempt to humanise the production lines of Ford and other mass production industries.

The rise of HR has gone through many phases since then but in the early 1980s personnel offices went far beyond the important task of ensuring staff were hired and paid in a legal and formalistic manner, to making sweeping recommendations for strategic organisational change. That's quite a leap in 25 years.

The whole rationale of HRM is based on one premise - “People are our greatest asset”. Here's a few more obvious, self evident value judgments: “oxygen sustains life”, “children are our future”. HRM is the dung heap where managerial mumbo-jumbo grows. They employ obscurantist language in a desperate attempt to establish their worth and in large part, the “value add” of HR is negligible - in fact, it is a cost.

Here's an example of HR in action. Before I left a large teaching establishment in Melbourne, management wanted to know that the 150 staff in our department were gainfully employed. So they devised a sliding scale points system whereby enrolling X number of full time students was worth 25 points, taking on leadership responsibility was worth 15 points and teaching and research were worth 10 points each. On your workplan, you needed to total of 100 points to keep your job.

Consulting with students, sitting on committees, answering telephones and emails, attending to staff disputes, ensuring sick staff got paid and general academic administration earned no points. The scale was set by management and the head of management happened to be a mathematician.

It was a model lifted straight from scientific management theory of Frederick Taylor in the 1930s. We lost one fifth of the teaching workforce in 24 months because in the main, professionals wanted to be treated with respect rather than as economic units.

The only time staff saw anyone from Human Resources was when staff were being sacked. They were like the angel of death. In fact, the last person one would contact if you had a serious personal or work-based issue was the HR unit as they were acting as intermediaries for management.

While this article damns HR management for essentially being organisational parasites and lackeys of “slash and burn” bosses, those who were taught action research in their MBA's tended to understand the “lived experience” and frustration of staff and were more likely to put forward a more balanced case to management. They were in the minority.

At university I spent most of November writing annual appraisal reports to be submitted to the head of school who then sent them on to the Faculty HR Manager, who in turn submitted them to the HR Management Group.

I had teaching staff who desperately needed to understand that teaching did not consist of playing 90 minutes of videos or PowerPoint displays, yet this was put in the “too hard basket” by HR and besides, it was too close to Christmas.

Hands up all of those who have spent most of November writing staff appraisals knowing that you might as well be writing fiction? Yet one of the key buzzwords of HR is “feedback”. “We're always seeking feedback from staff.” No they're not. They're filing the reports to satisfy the quality provisions and if a problem should arise they can say, “yes, we've got that problem on file and it's being actioned”.

Here's a true story from a Queensland university. In one infamous case, a woman who only had four years experience as a middle manager in the state treasury found herself in the position of Executive Officer and HR Manager of a faculty controlling an operating budget of $80 million, 500 staff and 7,000 students.

She was known as “Dr No” because she blocked funding for new staff and resources. She was way out of her depth and lasted three years. Her background was in organisational behaviour yet her desk was covered with financial spreadsheets. Who hired her? No one knew.

The relevant question is that if HR executives are sitting with management contributing to debates about strategy and staffing, then one would expect them to have some pretty vocal opinions. For example, in the mining industry it may make good sense to have workers on AWA's, yet for some businesses (let’s call them “knowledge organisations”), it may make equal sense to retain people with specialist knowledge or leadership skills.

Yet the whole edifice of Australian HR Management has been mouse-like when it comes to the big questions of future directions for corporate Australia. That's because (a) they aren't trained in complex finance (b) have little idea of how to create actual change (rather than talking about it) and (c) will do nothing that affects their position within the organisation.

Ridiculous and pernicious decisions about OHS, staffing levels and overtime, to name just a few, could have been quashed by HR executives saying “that won't fly because of X, Y or Z. How about we try A, B and C?” Is it any wonder that staff won't report bullying to HR officials and instead turn to the unions or the courts? (More often the latter.)

As reported by Nick O'Malley in The Sydney Morning Herald (June 2006) it's no surprise to Keri Spooner, a senior lecturer in human resource management at the University of Technology, Sydney that HR is a sop to the bosses.

"The reality is that human resources management was an invention of the '70s and it was a deliberate strategy to get rid of trade unions," she said.

She said people were joining unions so they could find their workplace rights and for unions to advocate for them, but corporations turned around and said “Oh, they're so ugly and old fashioned and you're a nice clean white-collar worker, we can be nice to each other, you don't have to mix with those grubs. Come in and HR will look after you.”

She said: "It is self-evident in the terminology that human resources managers are operating from a management perspective, their primary concern is the well-being of the organisation, and the humans that work for them are expendable, just like any other resource."

One HR commentator, Wendy Attwater in her on-line article “The changing face of Human Resources”, (August 2004) said that HR staff at all levels are now much more involved in the “business” of the organisation and so human resources is seen as a key activity or a “strategic partner” in many organisations and that HR was now concentrating on “value-adding activities”.

Rubbish. They're unqualified timid field mouses.

If you log on to your organisation’s HR website, you'll get screen after screen of information on organisational policy and procedures. These are so comprehensive, they're almost like Hansard. You wouldn't touch them with a 40 foot barge pole or else risk sinking into a miasma of passive verbs, redundancies and even then, possibly emerging no wiser.

What lies behind the mindset that writes this babble? Survival. HR people write crap because they think that's what their boss wants to read. In reality, their boss has neither the time, or possibly the inclination, to read mounds of turgid prose. And if he or she does actually care then they're going to want to read something like:

The School of Pants Wearing has a major problem with resource management.

Solution: Meet with the head of school this Friday. Background briefing note is attached.

A few years ago one of my junior teaching staff had a problem with her pay. I called HR, spoke to Ms Y and was told to send her an email giving details of the problem, which I promptly did. A week passed and still nothing had happened. Tutorial staff walk a fine line between penury and poverty so I walked over to the Human Resource Management Group offices - about 100 metres away.

I asked for Ms Y and was told to take a seat among all the shiny brochures on sexual discrimination, access for disabled students and mature age entry. I could see Ms Y through the glass windows of the office. Her name was written on her desk (why I thought?). She was 15 metres away.

I was told by her supervisor that Ms Y could not come out and see me in person as the matter was “under review”. I asked if the nature of the review also contained a confidentiality clause as effectively we could sort this out in 10 minutes and the young woman had rent to pay, and so on.

Unfortunately, no. There were procedures that had to be followed. I was also told that it was “unusual” for a senior staff member to approach the Human Resources Management Group in person as it had a comprehensive website that dealt with most contingencies.

So I walked back to my office, picked up the phone and called Ms Y. She apologised and said that there were procedures that had to be followed. We both agreed that Kafka was alive and well in bureaucracy.

I then rang the Dean's assistant and said that a Herald Sun reporter was in the building asking questions about how we treat our casual staff and it might not be a bad idea, PR-wise, in the case of our young tutor, if she was paid ASAP.

The money was in her bank account the next day.

Should I have resorted to deception to get the young woman paid? If I had not resorted to deception, what were the chances of her getting paid soon? Are deception and the use of fear valid management tactics? They certainly were in Enron and HIH.

A report in an on-line HR journal in March this year said that HR professionals can expect wage increases of 5 per cent this year, as “companies increasingly recognise the importance of HR in attracting and retaining talent”.

“Companies recognise the importance of HR when it comes to attracting and retaining talent and, in stark contrast to the downsizing that occurred in the sector a few years ago, they are re-investing in their human resources functions,” according to Graham Hollebon, national director of Michael Page Human Resources.

A recent Hays Human Resources salary survey said specialists were getting one of the biggest salary increases across all industries, at 13.2 per cent. Leading the salary increases were in-house recruitment consultants and managers, with average increases of 26 per cent and 20.2 per cent respectively.

What a fantastic irony that unemployed people would stand a better chance of joining a HR organisation to help other people find jobs than pursuing a career in, say, accounting.

Maybe I have been too harsh on the HR industry. They do establish important procedural administrative steps and their legal training in workplace law is important. That's if you can get a job using a HR recruitment agency.

Let’s turn our attention briefly to the 500,000 unemployed Australians and all those who are seeking to change careers using a HR recruitment agency. The application filtering process via large on-line recruiters involves considerable time and research to write cover letters and ensure the application satisfies the key and desirable job criterion.

Expectations are raised as one hits the “send” button as your confidential application flies through cyberspace to be scanned by an entry level HR officer who has been told to look for key words in the application such as commercial, communication, flexible, project management, team player (a must), and so on.

I'll tell you a secret. Unless you have investigated how these big on-line HR recruiters work, you'd be better off cold calling employers and making appointments. If you're over 50, make no comment on your age. Ageism is alive and well in HR.

You could be a fantastic “fit” for the position but because you haven't adapted to the administrative protocols of the HR selection process, you're out. There goes individualism, initiative, style and panache too.

To use one of Orwell's famous terms in 1984, this is “double ungood”. Not only will the majority of applicants not hear back from the employment agency, those who are employed are the homogenised and pasturised “yes men and women” of Australian because they “fit”. Fit what? The suit of conformity.

"HR doesn't tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses," says Garold Markle, a former HR executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore.

"Some enter HR with noble motives. Most human resources managers aren't particularly interested or equipped for doing business. And in a business, that's a problem. HR managers invest more time in activities than outcomes."

HR people pursue standardisation and uniformity in the face of a workforce that is heterogeneous and complex. The urge of one-size-fits-all is partly about compliance but mostly because it's just easier.

The simple fact is the majority of the burgeoning HR industry in Australia is extraneous to the common good and welfare of both organisations and individuals. We need to seriously question whether, at a time of an increasing casualisation of the workforce, these people are acting in the best interests of corporate Australia.