The essence of transformative HR practices Dr. Shane Hodgson

Enterprise Transformation Consulting, Centurion, South Africa

HR Africa Conference, November 2013

Outline

This presentation looks at what is required of the HR

discipline today in terms of organisational transformation,

what we as HR practitioners need to do to ensure that

we regain our moral position in the organisation and how

we can move away from being simply a compliance-

driven and spreadsheet-heavy overhead to true value

providers.

Often HR ends up as guardians of the status quo, and

defenders of erratic management and poor strategic

decisions. We have become the last choice for genuinely

transformative activity.

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Firstly - What is the HR Function Really Good At?

1. Translating corporate strategy into people strategy,

usually enabling organisational cost cutting and driving

shareholder value

2. Retaining and developing Talent - focusing our L&D

spend on those we define as the best and brightest

3. Compliance-driven training and employment equity

number-crunching

4. Human Resources Administration and record-keeping

5. Compensation and wage bargaining

Where are we focusing our time right now?

(Thanks to Scott Adams, Certified Genius)

And Yet – is HR Valued?

Many thanks to the genius of Scott Adams

1. Emphasising Workplace Ethics

2. Promoting Corporate Social Entrepreneurship

3. Building Capacity in the Ecosystem

4. Managing Diversity to create value

5. Challenging wrong decisions and promoting

organisational justice.

What should we be doing?

Chartered Management Institute Report on Workplace Ethics 2013

What is HR’s Role in Ethics?

• We have to ask ourselves a more basic question: to what extent in the HR

arena is legal compliance a sufficient standard for ethical

behavior? (O’Toole, 2012)

• Given the lack of credibility that still taints the HR function and its

incumbents in many South African organisations. HR practitioners may

therefore perceive themselves as unable to “enforce ethical business behaviour” (Van Vuuren and Eiselen, 2006)

• http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/business/ethics-human-resources.html)

SHRM Code of Ethics – Guidelines on Fairness and Justice

• Respect the uniqueness and intrinsic worth of every individual.

• Treat people with dignity, respect and compassion to foster a trusting work

environment free of harassment, intimidation, and unlawful discrimination.

• Ensure that everyone has the opportunity to develop their skills and new

competencies.

• Assure an environment of inclusiveness and a commitment to diversity in

the organizations we serve.

• Develop, administer and advocate policies and procedures that foster fair, consistent and equitable treatment for all

http://www.shrm.org/about/Pages/code-of-ethics.aspx

HR is about Doing the Right Thing

• HR is central to creating more successful, inclusive and morally defensible

working practices, according to leading management thinkers Rob Goffee and

Gareth Jones in the opening keynote address of the CIPD Annual Conference

in Manchester, November 2013.

• But though the pair satirised HR as the “Department of Rules” with an

“insatiable desire to wrap a process around everything,” they concluded its role in building a strong social architecture could be one of the defining tenets

of organisational effectiveness in the years ahead: “HR is about doing the

right thing.”

http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2013/11/06/goffee-and-jones-39-hr-is-about-doing-the-

right-thing-39.aspx

Promoting Corporate Social Entrepreneurship

• “There is a longing for a sense of meaning with many executives,” Filipe

Santos, at the 2013 INSEAD Global Business Leaders Conference in Abu

Dhabi.

• “They are told to run a company for profit but now they’re thinking. ‘I want to

go beyond that, I want to have impact in society which is sustainable and

makes a difference.’”

• This leaves companies with the choice. Either they increase the opportunities for very highly skilled employees to engage with societal

issues or they don’t, and are likely to find many of their best people leave

the organisation to find one that meets their expectations.

Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/social-entrepreneurship/the-rise-of-the-social-intrapreneur-

2961#CbgFpuWel30cX4zE.99

Building Capacity in the Ecosystem

• Does South Africa invest enough in education and training? South

Africa spent 4.8% of its annual income on education in 2009, compared to

the OECD average of 6.2%.

• How smooth is the transition from school to work for South Africa’s

youth? In 2012, the unemployment rate of South Africa’s youth was 49.2%,

a high rate compared with the OECD average of 17.1%

• Is there scope to improve skill utilisation among South Africa’s youth? The participation rate for youth (aged 15/16-24) was 26% in 2011. In 2009,

the rate of South Africa’s youth neither in employment nor in education or

training (NEET) was 32.8%, nearly double the OECD average of 18.6%.

• To what extent are South Africa’s older workers supplying their skills to the labour market? In 2011, only 40% of people aged 55 to 64 were in

the labour force, compared to an OECD average of 58%

http://skills.oecd.org/informationbycountry/southafrica.html

An Example – Apprenticeships

• Barclays UK recently opened the door to its 1,000th apprentice , just over a

year since the launch of the programme. This follows a commitment earlier

this year to double the figure to 2,000 by 2015, with a continued focus on

specifically targeting young people aged 16-24 not in education,

employment or training (NEET).

• The 1,000 new apprenticeships will include roles in parts of the business

that have typically focused on recruiting graduates, with 12 places in the

Corporate and Investment businesses set to become available from the start of July. There will also be six roles in digital marketing and a host of

opportunities in branches, customer support and technology, spread across

the UK.

• Similar schemes are in operation with UK companies like AON, AVIVA, Boots, Deloitte, EY, HSBC, KPMG, PWC, Logica and many more.

True Diversity Management – HP Model

“At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by

no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.” F. Nietzsche

Nuremberg Principle IV states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order

of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility

under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.“

Doctors of the Dark Side – a hard-hitting video about the participation by

doctors and psychologists in torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, is worth

watching. It leads us to the question: “At what point does the HR practitioner or industrial psychologist stand up and challenge a decision on hiring, firing,

making redundant?”

Befehl ist Befehl – Challenging Wrong Decisions

Fairness is considered to be one of the necessary conditions leading to

trust (Beugré,1998), which is essential for employee engagement. Equity,

and in essence - fairness, is a key driver of employee engagement

(Kontakos, 2007). Fairness is composed of:

1. Distributive Justice – the distribution of outcomes is fair

2. Procedural Justice – the procedure used to determine the

distribution of outcomes is fair

3. Interpersonal Justice - Treatment with politeness, dignity, and

respect by those who execute procedures or determine outcomes

4. Informational Justice - The explanations of why procedures were

used in a certain way or outcomes were distributed in a certain

fashion

Promoting Organisational Fairness

• While one might expect, for example, a marketing director to argue for a

bigger marketing budget or an IT manager to lobby for new computers, it is more difficult to imagine HR managers calling for measures that would lift

employee morale or improve working conditions, such as a pay rise or

increased holiday entitlement.

• This perhaps reflects the extent to which HR departments operate as a tool of senior management for imposing their will on the workforce, rather than as a

medium for genuine dialogue with the aim of engaging and motivating

employees.

• http://highpaycentre.org/blog/how-should-hr-be-more-involved-in-high-pay-decisions

What Demands Does the HR Department Make?

Does HR Deservedly Have a Bad Reputation?

Many thanks to the genius of Scott Adams

Goffee and Jones (2013) believe that employees want these things, in their dreams:

• - Difference. Not just diversity, but a chance to be different, to celebrate difference.

Cohesion without homogenisation.

• - Radical honesty. To know what is really going on. No spin. No sanitisation. Share

information, don’t hoard it. Tell the truth before someone else does.

• - Extra value. To be able to work in an organisation in which your strengths are

magnified. Employers and employees adding value to each other. Letting people grow

through what they do.

• - Authenticity. To know what the organisation stands for. Not a wordy mission statement

sitting unread on the corporate intranet but a real sense of where the company has

come from and where it is going.

• - Meaning. To do work that really means something. Meaning comes from many

sources; connections, community, cause.

• - Simple rules. To work somewhere free from stupid rules. Have good rules. Simple and

agreed ones that make sense to people, and feel fair. http://hrgem.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/creating-the-best-workplace-on-earth/ (Gemma Reucrof t 2013)

In Summary - Employees Want DREAMS

As HR professionals, our new mantra should be “ Everyone has talent;

employees are still part of our community even after they leave us; we need to

develop the entire ecosystem in which we operate and not just those parts that

are immediately useful to us; and we need to open our doors and resources to

the community at large.”

The proverb says ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. However, true sustainability is not

about learning ‘how to fish’ but about understanding what the fish itself needs to

grow and reproduce itself – and to make sure that these conditions are

sustained.

(Ehnert and Harry, management revue, 23(3), 21-238)

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So What’s Stopping Us?