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Why We Hate Hr

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SUMMARY

In the knowledge economy, companies with the best talent win. And finding, nurturing, and developing that talent should be one of the most important tasks in a corporation. So why does human resources do such a bad job – and how can we fix it?

Keith Hammonds, the deputy editor of Fast Company, asserts that human resources offices should manage an organization’s human resources the same way the information technology office manages its computers and the finance office manages its capital. They should think strategically. Instead, human resources offices focus on such administrivia as pay, benefits, and retirement - - processes increasingly being outsourced. That should be good news: human resources offices will then be free to focus on the strategic implications of what they do - - are their actions serving the organization’s strategic goals and making it more effective and successful? Unfortunately, they’re not used to thinking about such things and aren’t very good at it. Hammonds identifies four reasons why human resources offices aren’t doing a good job and suggests five ways to fix them.
CRITIQUE
In a well written article, Hammond delivers what he promises. His characterization of the kinds of people who generally seek to work in human resources is accurate. They like to work with people, but aren’t very business oriented. Their perspective is typically much like that of a social worker.
Human resources offices emphasize inputs rather than outcomes: they track the numbers of training courses employees have taken, but not the increased skills if any that have resulted. Hammond’s observation echoes the federal “No Child Left Behind” educational initiative. Schools used to measure inputs: spending per pupil, class size, teach-student ratio, age of facilities, and so on. Now, they measure outcomes: graduation rates,

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