I’m re-reading Dave Ulrich’s great book, Human Resource Champions. I was struck by the “myths that keep HR from being a profession” and how the truths that may have existed in 1997 have changed in the past ten years.
Myth #1 – People go into HR because they like people
Truth in 1997- HR departments are not designed to provide corporate therapy or as a social or health-and-happiness retreats. HR professionals must create the practices that make employees more competitive, not comfortable.
Today? The truth may be closer to the myth that some would like to admit. Today’s HR professionals are business people who enjoy the challenges of working with people; not unlike project engineers who enjoy building things. This doesn’t make them the social workers that are implied in the myth, but they are also not the cold, calculators that are implied in the 1997 truth.
The question may not be: How should HR be viewed, but rather, how does HR view employees?
Herein may lie the problem: http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/employees-are-babies-throwing-tantrums-says-hr-their-benevolent-caretaker
By: Michelle Malay Carter on October 26, 2007
at 8:42 am
You are correctly outraged by Ghosh’s comments. When I was younger, this type of approach used to make me crazy — Ghosh is simply a reactionary type of HR professional who blames his employees for Ghosh’s own poor performance and justifies his having to fix problems (that he created!) as a reason for his “expertise” being needed. Now that I’m older, I recognize that his incompetence allows me to earn more money when I have to fix his critical errors.
By: Ed Konrady on October 28, 2007
at 6:15 pm