Is HR overpopulated with People Orientated People?
HR is a very interesting area to operate in due to it’s ongoing evolution from transactional-back-office activity, dealing with the likes of payroll, annual leave, etc to become a strategic stakeholder advisory service walking the fine-line between individual employee need and business need. HR can and should play a key role in building and maintaining an organisation fit for purpose, fit for purpose defined as: Ongoing ability to meet market need and customer demand.
The modern world of work is far more algorithmic in nature than it’s ever been, relying on strategic partnerships and trustworthy relationships, all things HR can do and support. However, if this is the case, then why does HR continually struggle to be taken seriously and get a seat at the table?
Let’s explore this now.
Psychometrics
Every psychometric system, with the exception of The Big Five a.k.a. O.C.E.A.N, is considered controversial in scientific circles, as they don’t stand up to scrutiny due to their deficiencies inherent with self-reported assessments. With that in mind I still consider these systems to have value as the goal is not to pigeonhole individuals with precision, but to stimulate a conversation around how people have differing skillsets to offer and how best to leverage these skillsets in a team context to achieve any given outcome. Through discussion and mutual understanding they become greater than the sum of their parts.
There are many tools available, however for the purpose of this article we will focus on Myers-Briggs purely because it happens to be the one I find easiest to use when offering a visual explanation. Myers-Briggs was developed in the early 1920’s and paralleled the work of famous Psychologist Carl Jung, though in a far less formal way as the creators had no background or formal education in Psychology.
The matrix below displays all 16 Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) all arranged relative to human characteristics and peer types. On the completion of the questionnaire you receive the results of your preferences, which correlate with one of the 16 types, each with it’s own spectrum of traits. For novelty I have added the distribution of each MBTI across the UK population.
I’m not going into detail on specific traits in this article as the purpose of this example is to provide a simple demonstration of the impact different personalities can have on each other and the role psychometrics can play in terms of successful outcomes. In the spirit of brevity we will make do with a vastly over simplified summary of groupings:
NF’s: Value orientated, tend to make emotional decisions based on future possibilities in pursuit of enlightenment.
SF’s: Relationship orientated, tend to make emotional decisions based on present reality in pursuit of social harmony.
ST’s: Process orientated, tend to make logical decisions based on present reality in pursuit of order.
NT’s: Outcome orientated, tend to make logical decisions based on future possibilities in pursuit of change.
You can see within the spectrum of each group there are four very different ends in mind combined with four very different paths to attaining them.
So what does this model have to do with HR?
A few years ago I supported a new in role HRD in a large enterprise. During their first 90 days they had become increasingly frustrated as to why HR were struggling to gain traction with heads of service during an organisational transformation. There was a mis-match between the information the HRD’s teams were feeding back and the behaviour demonstrating a lack of progress. I had captured a considerable number of psychometric profiles as part of other work, so I decided to carry out an experiment…
If you are interested in learning more about how to influence stakeholders, then do read: Leadership: Influence Stakeholders.
Human Resources
We have already discovered the main drivers behind each group, so what comes next will highlight a pattern as to why significant friction can present between HR and its stakeholders. Below is a snapshot that correlates actual HRBP’s with the actual Heads of Service they supported. There were far more Human Resource Business Partners than highlighted here, all in the NF or SF quadrants. However, I was unable to capture and correlate the remaining corresponding heads of service and wanted to stick with what could be reliably demonstrated. That said I think it’s fair to speculate the trend would continue based on temperaments typically associated with such roles and organisational hierarchy.
Based on what we have already learned we can see the contrast between Human Resource Business Partners and Heads of Service was considerable in terms of approach and objectives, a complete mismatch. A population of predominantly relationship orientated Business Partners attempting to have nice chats with outcome orientated Heads of Service only interested in what will be improved and/or accelerated as a result of their Business Partners input. In the absence of a demonstration of competence the Heads of Service deemed the Business Partners irrelevant and actively ignored them.
It’s not a surprise that outcome orientated people tend occupy senior roles and it’s not a surprise that relationship orientated people would sign up, for what might appear to be, a relationship oriented role. However, the Business Partners had failed to step into the shoes of their stakeholders and understand their world. They also failed to recognise they are a guest at the table, which is earned and not a right as some thought.
Rightly or wrongly the Heads of Service didn’t consider it their responsibility to teach the Business Partners how to think strategically and influence, skills they should already possess that are fundamental to their role. Any professional development is the responsibility of the Business Partner and their line manager.
We can debate the merits of who could have done what to improve the situation, but thats for another day. What I will say is this had been a long standing issue, several years in fact. With that in mind, once all my findings were out in the open it was an easy fix.
Lets provide further context around this paradoxical phenomenon to better understand what is happening on the ground with a few additional specific examples from a long list. Each of these examples are from different organisations, SME to large enterprise.
Example 2: New in role HRD tells HRBP’s to stop hiding behind their computers, get out and go build relationships with their stakeholders to find out how HR can support with delivery of stakeholder objectives.
Outcome: HRBP’s return with insight on stakeholders marriage, preferred holiday destinations and how well their children are doing at school. No information collected on stakeholder objectives or suggestions around how HR might support. Credibility lost.
Example 3: Learning & Development team asked by a line manager to provide training for their team. Line manager wants to give their team something fun and interesting to do.
Outcome: L&D team immediately comply. No enquiry to ascertain a business case for training, what business problems it will solve, where the benefits will be realised or how success will be measured. No justification for spend or evidence of ROI, credibility lost.
Example 4: HRBP comes to me seeking understanding as to why they have been excluded from head of service team meetings. Discussion reveals HRBP was unable to demonstrate how their input would support delivery of their stakeholders objectives.
Outcome: HRBP explains to me that “No has ever told me this is part of my job”. After some coaching HRBP is able to demonstrate value-add and is eventually invited to take a seat at the table. Credibility gained.
Example 5: HRBP approaches Head of Service with documentation demonstrating the aspects of HR Strategy they intend to implement in Head of Service’s area. Documentation is immediately discarded without reading it.
Outcome: HRBP failed to take the time to meet with head of service to understand their need in terms of objectives to be delivered. Head of service automatically assumed HR offer will be misaligned, therefore a hinderance. HRBP actively ignored.
Example 6: HRBP asked to intervene by head of service on individual pay-dispute to achieve resolution by leveraging company policy and agreed contracts.
Outcome: HRBP spends their time repeatedly attempting to make opposing parties friends again and achieve social harmony, rather than support decision making on what is contractually correct to resolve core issue. Credibility lost and actively ignored.
Example 7: HRBP population, headcount of 10, attend investigative workshop to better understand their barriers to working with their stakeholders, all of whom are Heads of Service. 84% of HRBP’s had no understanding as to why their stakeholders seemed upset with them as they have only ever tried to be supportive and friendly. Discussion leads HRBP’s to realise and admit they do not possess the skills to align HR strategy with stakeholder need to generate buy-in. Root cause identified.
Outcome: Further discussion reveals the same 84% of HRBP’s fundamentally don’t understand what business partnering is and therefore do not understand how to fulfil their role. Coaching to rapidly develop strategic thinking and influencing skills advised.
Example 7 is of particular note as it raises the question: How does such a group of people get hired as HRBP’s when almost everyone in the group is demonstrably significantly under-skilled to fulfil the role? And no-one in HR noticed this is a problem. The HRBP’s are not at fault in this case, as they clearly navigated the accepted recruitment process to success. This scenario indicates those at senior level in HR, responsible for the organisational design and build of the HRBP community, systematically unwittingly omitted the precise temperament and skillset required to execute the role in any meaningful way from their selection process. We can deduce that senior leadership lacked a fundamental understanding of the problem they had hired people to solve, which resulted in almost an entire population landing in a context they were wholly unskilled to deal with.
Of course HR are not responsible for the origins of all these examples, though the examples all share common themes: Absence of strategic thinking, influencing skills and the trait of disagreeableness, all of which are required to achieve resolution in each instance.
I should highlight that I’m using the term disagreeable in a psychometric context taken from Goldbergs 5-Factor-Model: OCEAN. Agreeableness manifests as: Being keen to please, less likely to push back or say no, attempts to keep everyone happy, avoids perceived conflict and challenge. Disagreeableness is the antithesis of this with the two terms forming a continuum.
I have experienced and supported resolution of similar issues in other departments, though they tend to be isolated to one or two people. Whats fascinating, to me, is the scale at which this phenomenon appears to occur in HR.
Should you be interested in learning more about how to deal with difficult people or difficult conversations then do read: Leadership: Deal With Difficult People.
Performance
Below is a representation of an ideal development scenario using a simplified version of Prof. Mihály Csikszentmihályi Flow model, which he originally discovered in 1975 after identifying the components of high performance. I have updated this to demonstrate the relationship between Strategy, Operations and High Performance, which can be applied to any individual, team or organisation. By looking at the relationship between Challenge, defined as: Degree of difficulty to be overcome, and Support, defined as: Available resources. Four states emerge:
These four states correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
Anxiety: Missed deadlines, avoidance of interaction, likely negatively impacting employee sickness absence.
Apathy: Absence of enthusiasm or presence of indifference, likely negatively impacting employee retention.
Comfort: Lack of activity and accountability, likely negatively impacting employee productivity.
Flow: Pro-active, self-directed, emphasis on personal responsibility, likely positively impacting all above.
I think it’s fair to say in our first example the Business Partners were very much in the Anxiety box, in some cases very possibly Apathy due to the long standing nature of their situation. With some simple tweaks it was possible to move them slowly in to Flow by drawing a line in the sand with their stakeholders, redefining the role of a Business Partner and learning to have a different kind of conversation.
All the examples together, and many more I could cite, indicate a social phenomenon is occurring in HR, though it does require further investigation. HR seems to attract predominantly people orientated people to a seemingly people orientated function. And while I think it’s great those that have chosen this path are attempting to find meaning in their professional life that matches their values, there is an unspoken irony in that HR appears to be over populated with agreeable relationship oriented people that, with the best of intentions, inadvertently undermine their own efforts and credibility.
While there is nothing wrong with being agreeable and relationship orientated it does become a problem when a population is so off balance with too much of the same there is no-one to catch population blind spots. Group think takes over with the prevailing belief: “Clearly it’s not my/our fault, it’s obviously everyone else”, falsely validated in it’s own echo chamber. In practical terms, this has resulted in an overly conflict averse population keen to please everyone, that actively avoid leaning in to the discomfort of necessary conversations.
I have witnessed the effects of overly agreeable people lead to endless attempts to “save” toxic/incompetent individuals from themselves at the expense of everyone else, resulting in cultures of apathy and poor organisational performance, all evidence the individual should have been removed from post. Such a display of wilful ignorance can easily become wilful negligence having chosen to abandon employer duty of care for the majority, leaving everyone else to figure out how compensate for the mess caused by the wake of one person. It’s not just bully’s that are toxic.
Those negatively affected witness a demonstrable absence of competence and leadership to resolve a problem. This is followed by an erosion of trust based on the knowledge that stakeholders will be let down when it matters most, the ripples from one splash in the pond touch everything in their path and travel right to the edge. See the fallout associated with apathy in the above model.
Personally, I find it utterly fascinating that key decision makers that bear the responsibility for maintaining the balance between employer duty of care and employee personal responsibility, in these situations, can experience such a strong need to avoid any personal form of social discomfort in the short term they will choose to let a population and business suffer to the point of genuine financial instability in the long term. See the human fallout associated with anxiety in the above model.
To learn more about how people end up in leadership roles they are significantly under-prepared for do read: Leadership: The Side No-one Talks About
Conclusion
HR should have seat at the big table, there is no question in this day and age they have a lot to offer, fulfilling a key role in building strategies that balance the need of their organisation with necessary outcomes of the business. Two simple examples are:
Recruitment: Instead of transactionally measuring the number of vacancies filled, say 80 vacancies filled out of 100 in 12 months and hitting an 80% success rate. Success should be based on how many candidates have been retained after 6 months or 1 year, etc. How satisfied are they with their role, team and line manager? Was their role accurately scoped in terms what they are actually doing versus hired to do? How satisfied are their line manager and team with the candidate? Are they delivering their objectives OTIF? And if applicable: How satisfied are the candidates wider stakeholder population (internal and external customers)? Anyone can put bums on seats, not everyone can put the right bum on the right seat at the right time.
Learning & Development: Instead of transactionally acting as an L&D “shop” where line managers come to simply buy training on demand when they feel like it, strategic L&D should be canvassing line mangers to understand their objectives and difficulties in delivering them, curate L&D tools that meet those needs, deploy these tools and assess the impact on performance to determine ROI. Anyone can organise training, not everyone can prove they delivered the right training to the right people at the right time and attain a measurable result. In fact 93% can’t. To learn more about this do read: Learning & Development: What’s Your ROI?
To me HR is anything but a people orientated function. HR has more in common with a police force than anything else. Its purpose is to balance the needs of the organisational population with necessary business outcomes by policing the line between employer duty of care and employee personal responsibility through strategic partnerships, and keep everyone on the right side of the law while doing so.
Without a balance of agreeableness and disagreeableness HR cannot fulfil it’s purpose and step in to support resolution when leadership fails elsewhere, which it inevitably will. Nor will they be able to ask difficult questions or have difficult conversations when interactions escalate and become heated, as some inevitably will. If you don’t practice the skills required for encounters with disagreeable people and learn how to influence them, you cannot demonstrably add value. If you can’t demonstrate value-add you will never gain enough credibility to be offered a seat at the table.
A simple step to begin addressing this would be implementing a continuous training cycle that endlessly develops and reinforces how to think strategically and influence, while dealing with perceived conflict and associated difficult conversations. The ripples of which would also touch everything in their path while travelling to the edges. In fact, this approach would likely benefit any department.
An apt quote I first heard from a Navy SEAL springs to mind: “Under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. Thats why we train so hard”. It’s an adaptation of an original quote by Archilochus, a Greek Philosopher from around 650 BC: “We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.
If you recognise yourself , your team or organisation are caught up in similar scenarios, then what can you do to make a difference?
Ask your stakeholder’s for feedback that will improve your level of support.
Take note of what you are doing well.
Take note of what needs work.
Set some next steps to up your game accordingly.
If you would benefit from support to develop your business partnering community to become strategic thinking influencers then please do schedule a call with me by putting a 60mins in my diary at a time that suits you. We can discuss your situation and options over an eCoffee.
Best Wishes
Kenny
