The biggest trap for human resources professionals is becoming immersed in the world of HR. If you read HR books, take HR courses and hang out with other HR specialists, you may lose sight of the real needs of your business.
HR specialists often talk about scales based on observable behaviours as if they were finely calibrated laser range finders. The truth is that sometimes what they measure is not something we would normally think of as a behaviour, and almost always there is a good deal of ambiguity and imprecision in their use.
The trouble with trends is that the important ones play out over decades; they become “old news” even while they remain important in shaping our lives. Once such trend is automation and it has been playing out not just over a few decades but for more than a hundred years. Even so it is hardly old news and recent advances in a whole range of automation technologies mean it is time for HR to look at the topic again.
Communal behaviour occurs because we are social animals, a phrase of such importance to HR that we should be using the acronym WASA as often as we use WIIFM.
There is a mood in HR that it ought to emulate the finance department. Finance seems to have rigor, respect, professional methods and accreditation. HR wants to be like that. That HR often reports to finance only magnifies the sentiment that this is the function to emulate.
Management’s actions are often inconsistent with their espoused values. It is the HR leader’s job to point this out. A colleague of mine calls this ‘holding up the mirror’.
I recently helped an organization re-think their approach to training and this exercise really brought home to me how much training has changed. It is not just that we have improved instructional design, a more thoughtful approach to blended learning, or new online delivery options; some fundamental thinking about training has changed.
Many people have been struck by how hard people ‘work’ at playing video games. They wonder if they can make real work more like games to spur motivation. The act of redesigning work to make it more game-like is called ‘gamification’.
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