Reinventing Human Resources For The Human Workplace

Unless you occasionallyexamine your beliefs, they control you. Every so often you have to look closely at what you believe to be true, and question it. You have to ask Why do I believe this?

Maybe it was taught to you. Maybe theres no validity to your belief at all. I feel that way about the practice of Human Resources as it widely taught. We teach HR people to comply with employment laws, and often we dont teach them a lot more. We view the purpose of HR this way: Our HR department makes Acme Explosives a great place to work and keeps us out of court.

We are obsessed with the compliance side of HR. We imagine that there are employees hiding behind every pillar and cubicle wall, waiting to jump out and sue us. Thats ridiculous, and its also a self-fulfilling prophecy. I worked for two startups that got much bigger, fast.

I joined my first startup when sales were USD $1M per year and ran their HR function as the company grew to $180M in sales. I was nineteen when I walked into that company, and 28 when I left.

Next Next, I joined U.S. Robotics, where sales were $15M in my first year on board. We grew to $3B in annual sales. We focused on trust and communication all the time, and had so few employee relations issues, even with nearly ten thousand team members, that I can remember each situation in great detail. This was a fast-growing company with deep pockets. Why didnt we have more employee relations problems?

We didnt have them because were were always listening, asking Hows it going? How are you doing? and making it easy for people to tell us when something was off or needed attention.

We treated the culture as a strategic advantage and a competitive weapon.

Roger was a senior leader in the Sales group when I started at USR. I asked him How do you get customers to buy?

Its a great product, he said, but if I can get them to come here they always buy from us.

Here meant our office, with the manufacturing plant just behind it and attached to it by a long hallway. If Roger could get a customer onto our premises for a tour, the customer was sold. Why? The energy was so good, the customer wanted to be part of it. They believed in us once they walked around and saw people happy and trusting and working their asses off. Who wouldnt?

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Reinventing Human Resources For The Human Workplace