Punk Rock HR Episode 121:
Just like the conversation all over America, and really the world, about defunding police work, today I want to talk about defunding human resources, recruiting, and compensation. HR oversees a system with rules that they don’t control and might not even agree with but can’t change, and they rarely see people at their best. For the past 40 years, we’ve been pumping money into human resources and we are not getting the ROI we deserve.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Management science is not with HR.
- How compensation programs are still biased.
- How to embrace the golden age of technology.
- Why you need to quit a job that requires you to police people.
- Have you thought about the legacy you’re leaving behind?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
WHY IS MANAGEMENT SCIENCE NOT WITH YOU?
First of all, we cannot do good studies to test the effect of having an optimal HR department and a sub-optimal HR department. We can’t test any of this because the mediocre establishment of human resources is so pervasive that you cannot create a sample size of companies that have said they’ve invested in their people without HR. And we can’t even go out and look for alternatives to measure and monitor because they just don’t exist.
HOW ARE COMPENSATION PROGRAMS BIASED?
Equal opportunity in most organizations is a joke. We haven’t addressed racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, a bias against veterans in our workforce. In fact, we haven’t even trained people to fake it. We can’t get them to fake it and be decent people. On top of that, for all the money and academic rigor around leadership and excellence, we still have corporate org charts that resemble family trees, toxic family trees, with the dad on top and everybody else falling in line underneath.
HOW CAN I EMBRACE THE GOLDEN AGE OF TECHNOLOGY?
You can know technology without being a technologist. Go partner with that vendor who’s trying to sell you stuff regularly, ask questions, make suggestions, in fact, be brave and sit on customer advisory boards, but more importantly, demand better. We can defund outdated HR technology. And I think if we do that, we’ll find more funding and more resources for the programs and policies that can change the very nature of how we do work.