I regularly hear HR managers complain about the lack of impact they have on corporate decisions. That they’re not taken seriously. Being informed way too late of decisions to act pro-actively. That they should be part of the executive committee because people are the most important assets of the company. Could it be that HR is stuck in his own theories and all together are enclosed in their own HR living environment?

I see 3 reasons which I will support by real life examples:

1. Many lack the necessary business insight to serve as a sounding board for line management. Therefore they behave as “prescribers” to questions from line management. Yey these questions are usually too symptomatic due to the daily ins and outs involvement of managers. A good example is a sales manager asking for closing skills training because of a too low hit-rate and/or decision dates continuously shifting over time. Result a closing skills training is being organized. Yet a lack of closing skills is in less then 5% the real cause of the mentioned problems. The solution should have been HR offering to analyze the root cause and to propose solutions with a lasting impact. This of course is only viable if HR is taken seriously thanks to their business insights.
2. Secondly, I see HR departments with new, good in itself, theories and plans that are too heavy and difficult to be implemented on top of the daily work that unfortunately does not stop because of a change process. This in turn leads to frustration in HR departments because they get too little involvement of line management to implement the necessary changes. These projects are usually not enough adapted and pragmatic to the real world which leads to quite large resistance. This in turn leads to a too low adoption rate and results quickly fading out. A good example is some of the competence and growth/evaluation practices and programs put in place. Heavy bureaucratic processes with formalized timing and reporting from managers to HR. Automated in user unfriendly intranets. Seldom based on simple deliverables and a common language which improves day to day communication between manager and employee. Let alone creating an environment stimulating people to give the best of themselves in order to create a chain of actions leading to optimized business results.
3. HR does too little effort to understand and create insights on management level in cross departmental issues and linkages. Their distance to the daily ins and outs puts them in the ideal position for those insights and to share these with their colleagues. Of course, they simultaneously need to propose pragmatic solutions. A good example is a solution consisting of building sales ready deliverables combined with sales training, coaching and upgrading sales meetings to becoming an experience sharing platform. This solution require budgets from 3 departments in a lot of large organizations.  Training from the HR budget, deliverables from marketing and coaching/consulting from the sales budget. I’ve seen very few HR people who took internal actions to launch such a project, let alone understanding the business need and internally sell such an integrated approach.

The above shows in a painfully obvious way that a lack of operational knowledge and insights on the one hand, and implementation focus on the other hand forms the basis of the problem.

Some possible actions which can resolve the problem:

Start by breaking down the HR walls. Translate theory into pragmatic solutions feasible even if it sounds like a bad idea from the theoretical point of view. This means that the broad and deep use of the skills and tools must get the upper hand on the theoretical appropriateness of the solution.

Focus on gaining more business insights through more time to spend in the workplace. Divide your time outside the company premises by not only networking and studying in HR circles but also spending a lot of time in broad management environments such as the vMA (management association in Flanders) to name only one. It will allow you improve your operational knowledge as well as being able to toss of your ideas and experience with line managers from other companies.

Only then will HR:

• sufficiently understand what really lives on the floor;
• get broad support from the staff and get surprised by the acceptance of their projects;
• asked to be part of the executive management team;
• and create lasting impact thanks to their efforts.