Human Resources or Human Beings: The difference between 'things' and 'people'

Among my reading lately was an article on LinkedIn (which is why I cannot post a working link here) on the subject of getting “your” Human Resources Department to work properly. Obviously the article is aimed at managers and possibly at Human Resources staff, but it made interesting reading. The main thrust of the article was that many HR Departments are not functioning well or efficiently. The author flagged up several areas of concern, among them a ‘disconnect’ between the people they are supposed to be sourcing, developing or disciplining. In part this is because there are differences between what ‘Corporate Management’ think the department does, and what the HR Manager thinks it does, but there may also be a lack of certain skills within HR, or even a lack of communication between ‘cells’ within it. 

Many years ago now, I held the “HR” management function for my then employer, a Fire and Emergency Service. It was a very interesting task, and something of a major challenge, but I enjoyed it in the main. The foregoing will tell readers that I'm old enough to remember when "HR" was called "Personnel" and frankly, the change of title is part of the problem. Suddenly 'people' became a 'resource' and thus 'objects' or 'goods'. The very word ‘resource’ suggests some sort of warehouse from which ‘workers’ can be drawn at will, and which, when worn out or no longer required, can be discarded. Treat people as objects and soon their motivation to do anything more than the absolute minimum goes straight out the window. They also become very reluctant to discuss anything at all with anyone from ‘HR’ lest it be used against them, or used to impose new responsibilities or workloads on them. 

One of the points the article raised is that a properly functioning HR Department is also about ‘developing’ skills for an employer. For many corporate employers this is an ideal situation, but all too many don’t make proper use of the possibilities it offers. Coming from a uniformed service background, it is a function that is often separated from HR under the label of “Training and Development”. For a service such as mine it was and is a key function, and it can quite easily fit within a HR remit. However, I would also caution that it must be managed by someone who understands the difference between managing the kitchens of a hotel and being able to manage a fire station with multiple functions. While some skills of management are common and therefore transferable, some of the technical skills and knowledge required to make a good Station Manager/Commander/Officer in a fire service are unique and cannot be gained through an generalised management course. Once again, my experience of trying to explain some of this to HR managers leads me to think there may be a reluctance to accept that a NVQ for managing a shop or office is not a suitable qualification for managing a crew or station in an emergency service.

As I said earlier, I am a retired senior fire officer, and one of the things one learns in 'command' is to know your people, know them, trust them, and know what makes them tick. Far to many of the HR 'professionals' I have encountered in my latter years of employment didn't understand this and could frequently undo years of trust and respect by imposing some new system or policy without consultation. This is often compounded by a refusal to discuss anything of concern to individuals with the person. Many HR Managers I have encountered in recent years insist the person must take their concerns to “their Union” so it can be aired at a “Union Consultation”. In my view, this is not the right way to handle something, the “Union” often has a wider agenda, and the individual’s ‘issue’ may not fit it. As someone who was, at best, a reluctant member of a Trade Union (I disagree strongly with their direct involvement in political ideology and links to specific political Parties), I resented being made to join one (and continuously have to explain why I refused to make a ‘donation’ to an affiliated political party) just so I could get certain concerns about the manner in which contracts were being ‘adjusted’ without consultation or appeal.

I lost count of the number of times I have been told by HR managers that the department was there to 'provide support and services to 'the management' and not to 'staff'. An employee encountering that is likely to immediately clam up and avoid disclosing anything beyond what is demanded of them. I have also found that many of those I encountered didn't know the Employment Laws as well as they should. They often made something worse when they did take a wrong turn, by trying to blame the employee, or by creating a situation which brought about a conflict with the Unions. For me the worst moment came when I was told by an HR 'Director' (who had replaced a uniformed senior officer with many years experience and success at keeping the staff happy and onside) that “no one in the fire service should expect to have a career in it” and that the “average length of ‘career’ should not exceed 12 years”. The individual concerned did not understand the fact that the fire service relies heavily on experience as well as qualification. In fact, quite clearly, there was absolutely no interest at all in even being informed of it. Remove the experience element and you have a recipe for disaster, which, unfortunately, has been borne out in reality since that discussion.

In fairness, senior management can often put the HR personnel into an unenviable position of having to implement policies which they may know will cause hardship. The management is abusing their HR Department in this case, and using them as a buffer between themselves and the difficulties their policy may cause. A typical example is the ‘policy’ that imposes some operational requirement which those who will be affected by it know is going to cause them to come into conflict with the public. Having been there, I can tell you it is useless trying to raise those concerns, so you are faced with either disobeying the policy and hoping to get away with it - or letting the proverbial wheels fall off. Either way you know you, and you alone, as the “resource” involved will be blamed, and will be punished for it having gone wrong. No wonder “HR” are frequently seen as the enemy.

It is my experience that all to often, HR managers adopt an 'adverserial' approach to legitimate staff concerns and generally ramp up the conflict. Sometimes this is down to 'management' decisions requiring the shedding of staff, but more often than not it is down to sheer bad  communications skills and sometimes to clumsy efforts to change employment contracts by stealth. For many the concept of 'consultation' is to send round a letter stating something is to be ‘changed', and when the staff object, tell them to 'like it or leave it'. As you may gather, my experience of modern 'HR' is not a happy one. There is, I feel, too much emphasis on the ‘resource’ and not enough on the people. Too much generalisation instead of addressing some of the real problems and difficulties - like bullying, or constant playing of the ‘minority’ card to cover poor skills or knowledge gaps, and not enough attention to addressing identified problems rather than, as was common in my last employer, blaming everyone for the problems created by one or two individuals instead of dealing with the individuals concerned. I still remember with enormous anger having notices plastered everywhere setting out “our core values” (the same one’s I, and every other uniformed employee had worked to our entire careers) and threatening disciplinary action if we failed to adhere to them. I should mention that the very same people who put these up everywhere, were the worst offenders in breaking them …  

The author of the article that set me off on this listed ten suggestions for improving Human Resources functions. Four of the listed items would, in my view help. They included breaking down the tendency toward isolating skills within the department, adopting a more consultative approach, getting to know peoples’ needs and development ambitions and being less remote. I think that the first step is to have an HR manager who actually understands the 'operations' the 'Human Resources' he manages are engaged in, what stresses and strains those impose on individuals and then to find ways not to compound them. All too frequently, the HR Manager is someone from outside the organisation who has little, if any, knowledge of what the resources they are managing actually do. While it would be impossible to know in detail what each and every post does and how it does it, it would help to actually talk to the individual before attempting to change it. Consulting the Union doesn’t cut it, since the Union representative probably doesn’t know either. 

How do we fix the disconnect between what management think HR does, what HR think they do, and what the staff think HR is there for? It will certainly go a very long way if "HR" stops treating people as 'assets' in the manner of 'goods' to be pigeon-holed, costed and measured all the time.

Could This be Why We're in Trouble?

The report by Mr Neary in the BBC regarding the manner in which his autistic son is 'managed' by Social Services might explain a bit about what is wrong with the UK today. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining how many of our 'services' have become unanswerable and worse, unaccountable. But, who can challnge them? Everything is concealed by the use of 'jargon', and worse, the people they are supposed to 'help' are treated as objects incapable of thinking for themselves and unable to decide what is good for themselves. Mr Neary's case is far from unique, though he probably is unique in having taken the social services in this case to court and winning.

Social Services were set up to look after the vulnerable in our society, but, like a lot of good ideas, have been overtaken by the 'systemisers' and 'processers'. It has become a self perpetuating 'industry' in which its all about 'numbers' and 'procedures' and not about looking after people as individuals. This particular instance involves the Social Services, but almost all the 'new' professions that have arisen since the 1960s do it. Everything is about creating a niche, a permanent home for all those who like to feel they are 'caring' about something. The first thing that inevitably arises is an opaque 'jargon' which only insiders can actually interpret. It builds a mystique around whatever the profession does, and prevents outsiders from seeing or understanding how it operates or what it really does.

Some of my former colleagues will recall how our own profession was highjacked by a small group who suddenly got the 'education' bug. It wasn't long and everything was reduced to acronyms which most of us couldn't interpret. We went to meetings and listened as the 'experts' delivered briefings that consisted entirely of acronyms linked by a few verbs, articles and the odd noun. I once sat and listed every acronym used and when the bright spark giving the briefing finally asked 'any questions?' stuck my hand up and asked where I could find a list of the 43 acronyms I'd noted which would enable me to interpret them into English. There was no answer, and I think I was removed from the management Christmas Card list at that point.

One of the prime examples of the manner this quasi-professional jargon is used to exclude or to control access must be the Politically Correct process which dictates that no one may identify any group as being more likely to commit some offence, or more likely to be 'at risk' of something. The result is that everyone is now regarded as a potential criminal, or of being 'at risk' of dying in a fire starting in their kitchen due to falling asleep while heating a pot full of oil to make chips. Everyone - particularly pensioners - are suspected of 'fiddling' their tax returns and hiding income, but not, it seems those with mega incomes and clever accountants who make sure the money stays in tax havens. Every home must now be 'disabled friendly' in case the occupant is disabled - or a disbaled person wishes to buy it. Everyone is considered to be potentially racist, sexist or any other -ist, particularly those who profess to be followers of Christianity.

This 'process' imposition on every aspect of our lives is, in my view, one of the major reasons our society is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. By allowing quasi-professions like Social Services to reduce us all to 'cases', by allowing the family courts to hold sessions 'in camera' and accept evidence that would not be given to time of day in any other court, we are slowly but surely dehumanising the very people we are supposedly trying to help - and in dehumanising them, we lose something ourselves.

The second aspect to this that is deeply disturbing is that we are conceding power and control to these opaque professions. Their jargon passes for 'expert speak' and sounds 'professional' but it conceals the opposite. Much of it isn't scientific at all, it just sounds good. As the example given by Mr Neary illustrates: if you or I make a choice, it is a simple 'choice'. If someone in the care of Social Services makes the same choice - they are 'being empowered'. If one of us loses their temper, we get it off our chests. If someone in the 'care' system loses their temper, it requires a 'case review', followed by 'anger management training' and a 'risk management plan', somewhere along the line involving at least one psychologist for an 'assessment'.

When one reads of this and similar cases, one does begin to wonder if we have all taken collective leave of our senses. We actually believe this 'processification' and 'objectification' of the subjects is good for society? As I said, Social Services does do some good work, but all too often the good work is undone by a slavish adherence to 'procedure'. The powers over us all that have been given to the ubiquitous "Social Worker" are far greater than most Trading Standards Officers or Fire Safety Inspectors wield, and most have less legal training. Surely we can find a less soulless approach? Surely we can find a way that doesn't become so bureaucratic and rule bound it loses sight of children and adults who really are at risk while dealing in an often draconian manner with those who are trying to follow the rules?

The more I look at this, the more convinced I become that we are in trouble. We've allowed a lot of very smart people to highjack key parts of our lives, and now they have entrenched themselves - at the expense of the very people they are supposedly helping (see Mr Neary's comments on the closeure of Day Centres) and covering their deceits in jargon.

After each and every failure of 'care' by a Social Services Department we hear the same excuse, and the same 'remedy'. "We are revising our procedures" or "we are understaffed and underfunded". But, as I said, we should not look only at Social Services, there are numerous other 'industries' now all building little empires, all with their own jargon, all with their own clientele and all demanding ever bigger handouts to fund their 'activity'.

It is time we took a long hard look at all of them and demanded proper, jargin and acronym free answers. Until we do we will not get anywhere near repairing the divisions in a society that is becoming more fractured with each passing year.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-23423541