This is not a rhetorical question. I’m curious. And this is just the right group to ask.
Here’s how my internal discussion plays out…
In this day and age of almost pathological focus on employee engagement you would think they work “for” the employee ensuring they get what they need to be “engaged” and add value to the company.
I’m sure management (read: Executive Management) believes HR works for the company focusing on finding an optimal mix of cost and productivity to be competitive and drive business success.
Maybe I’m naïve but it would seem that HR is in a pretty untenable position. A lose-lose situation if there ever was one. HR is constantly making decisions that like whether to include a new employee engagement option to support the employees – even though they know it may cost the company money, and with no proof it will provide a return they could be bad stewards of the company’s money. What to do?
Sure you can make the case that the engagement investment is good for both the employee and the company, but at the end of the day HR needs to come down on one side or the other.
HR could be the arbiter… the dispassionate third-party who provides a fair and balanced point of view taking into consideration both the company’s and the employee’s points of view. But the person signing HR’s paycheck is the company and we all know we shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds us.
So, while intellectually I know that providing the best environment to your employees will drive company success, the corporate brain is going to want to make sure that expense is never more than the optimal level. Not. One. Penney. More.
And as we all know (and the internets are full of discussion about this) proving ROI on any human resource investment is d
ifficult if not impossible (I mean true cause-effect, not correlation – plenty of correlation studies out there.) No one can tell the company that spending $511.46 on a tablet for an employee will return $5,284.84 in increased productivity. Yet it is entirely possible that that employee’s engagement score would go up, regardless of the return on the investment, and the company “could” be better off spending the money – but you just don’t know.
If HR focuses too much on the employee you’re not fulfilling your responsibility to your company (remember them – you probably see their commitment to you ever 2 weeks.) If you focus too much on the company your employees will feel the pinch and the lack of attention, and be disengaged.
Who does HR work for?
It’s a question I’m glad I don’t have to struggle with each day but most HR pros are either walking that thin line between executives and employees – or have made the decision.
HR can be a friend of the employee – but not get much love from the Execs.
HR can be the friend of the company – but create a less than perfect employee environment.
There isn’t a good answer is there?
How do you manage the cognitive dissonance?
Hit me in the comments – I’m curious if most HR people work for the company and provide just enough employee love to keep riots from breaking out – or if they cater to employee desires and take the heat from management when the discussion of labor costs come up?
It is a very difficult line, for sure. I try to stay in the middle as much as possible, but in the end I work for the company (as does everyone else) and they give me my marching orders. I always try to do what is right for the employees and keep their best interests in mind, and being a small company, so does the entire management team. But you can’t always make everyone happy, unfortunately – HR gets caught in that trap and never wins.
I work for the organization. My job in HR is to assist employees with their obligations to the organization, and I’m not here to make friends. I serve the organization by serving employees. It helps that I work for a large, structured organization where the rules and regulations are very clear and apply to everyone. The reality of the job is that not everyone is going to be happy to hear that they have to follow the rules. As long as my boss and the bosses above him are happy, I’m doing my job.
As an HR professional I believe that I further the interest of employees to the extent that it is beneficial to my employer. Determining where something tips from being beneficial to the employer, to not, is sometimes tricky, but it is always something I try to keep in mind.
I work for the company, and I think that any HR person who forgets who is writing their paycheck is doing a disservice to themselves and their employer.
Thanks for weighing in. I ask because I’m guessing there is huge pressure to “give employees what they want in order to get our engagement scores up” but I know there is a limit to what you can do within the bounds of your duty to protect the company. The net net is at the end of the day HR loses. Interesting so far… thank you for helping…
Hi Paul, I think HR folks work for the organization and their role is to help facilitate an engaging workforce culture which will lead to retention and discretionary effort. Rational commitment according to the Corporate Leadership Council will lead to increased retention, but will not have the same impact on discretionary effort. It is emotional commitment that leads to discretionary effort.
The way in which you have framed your blog and your comment in the comments section makes me think that you are talking about rational commitment, which is a fool’s play. It is much harder work, and involves HR first engaging leadership and management at all levels, for HR to help the organization impact discretionary effort.
I think I’d reframe your question to ask, does HR want to work for organizations where leadership and management are committed to making employee engagement work because of the value it provides employees and the organization? Or, does HR want to work for organizations where leadership and management don’t want to do the heavy lifting and are willing to have HR spend money on stuff, but not too much?
Interesting stuff Paul, very interesting.
I think as HR professionals we work for the company, and I agree with the comment above that we work for the employees in the extent that it benefits the company.
Additionally, I think this also brings up another issue with so much HR effort being expended on engagement. The U.S. Army, has often been accused of training it’s soldiers not for the next war to be fought, but instead for the last war fought. And I think in situations like this HR is doing the exact same thing for the companies we work for.
We are operating under what I would consider a past looking world view. One where employees would be life long or long term associates of the companys for which they worked, but that mind set doesn’t hold water anymore and engagement isn’t the panacea to change that.
We, in HR, often fail to truly comprehend the socialogical influences that dictate human behavior, and certianly do almost nothing to prepare our companies for their effects.
The past 20 years have seen seismic shifts in the “employment conract” in the U.S. Companies have abandoned jobs in the US, mergers and acquisitions have proceeded at a pace never before experienced, a horrible recession has left many Americans in deep debt, underwater on their mortgages in mired in student debt.
These of course leaves many unable to truly become self actualized, and operate at a purel survival mode.
This has created the highly transient employee landscape that has been right in front of our face for years.
Instead to trying to fix a problem we can’t (at least I don’t know how to fix the economy anytime soon), we should be preparing our companies to win in the transient environment, and be in position to move quickly when someone leaves (and look, people are truly leaving for money, they have too today), and minimize the disruption.
Sorry for the long diatribe.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the post, I had this exact conversation with some friends of mine on Sunday. I called it the ‘Rock & a Hard Place’ dilema.
Firstly – get used to not being liked (regardless of which side it is) and then you can make decisions as objectively as possible. This means I support the company in some situations and the employees in others. Yes, the company pays me but I am also a human and there are some things that just don’t make sense regardless of what the spreadsheet tells you – get ready to argue both sides of the fence.
And get ready to go home lonely. Although I have to be honest, I am very upfront about where I sit on this issue with everybody and the result is that people still speak to me anyway…
On behalf of my self i do love HR very much im willing to take al the chances good and bad ones even i’m a very cool person