Do You Need an HR Department?
The question stands. Is there a need for an HR Department? HRLocker’s CEO, Adam Coleman, shares his view on the matter.
“There should be no such thing as an HR Department. People talk about HR Problems and HR Solutions, surely they should be people problems and productivity solutions?
Every Manager should be skilled in how to get the best out of their people. The best way of doing this is by educating your managers on how to manage their people, not allowing them to throw the difficult stuff off to a department that has no relationship with their own team.
Sure, get in really good professionals to educate your people on how to lead and how to ‘manage’. But no one person will know all the best ways to manage.
Find specialists around each specific area when you need them. And develop a good learning and delivery culture within your organisation, where the Managers are responsible for the people that they manage.
Fear of Being Sued?
Companies, and particularly Entrepreneurs, can fear being sued. Thus, HR consultants and departments can ‘help’. Really?
If your HR people are compliance-only focussed, best of luck with that culture of productivity and progressiveness.
My advice is to seek out a commercially-minded, equitable HR Professional, that puts culture at the heart of everything and compliance will take care of itself.
Compliance is easy. Issue your employees with a contract as they start, record the hours that they work, pay them fairly, treat them well and stop worrying about litigation.
An HR Professional should be capable of imparting knowledge and systems to your Managers to make their people more productive and happy in what they do and the way they do it.
So, Do You Need an HR Department?
There’s no need for an HR department in any company. Only competent People Managers are capable of learning from the best.
This is simply about leadership. And growing managers into leaders. (Do you have ‘reluctant leaders’ on your team?)
And your job as the CEO or Entrepreneur or founder or Director of X, Y or Z is to select the right leaders and managers. And to feed them with the most appropriate knowledge and systems to manage their talent most effectively.”
