iNSIDER Perspective: The Hardest Thing You’ll Ever Have to do in HR

It’s funny that the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in HR is probably one of the things we tend to do the most in HR – develop processes!

Wait. Why is this hard? (I know you’re saying that to yourself right now)

Developing processes isn’t hard – in fact it’s very easy – extremely easy – so easy everyone is doing it.

Therein lies the problem and the difficulty.

Sure it’s easy to come up with a process.

I mean, all you’re doing is documenting what you’re actually doing – and BAM! You have a process.

Unfortunately, this is exactly why we/HR get a bad rap in our organizations.

Now, I know there are a large number of you HR Pros who are saying to yourself – “well, Timmy, you aren’t talking about me! I’m great at developing processes, I have a PhD in developing processes, you need to see my 57 step orientation process that I completed over 21 months! ”

You know what? I am talking about you! The reason that Developing HR Processes is the hardest thing you’ll ever do in HR is because to do it right, means you need to do it SIMPLE!

In HR we don’t like SIMPLE. We like complex.

We like complex, because complex means it’s not simple.

Simple things aren’t strategic, complex things are strategic.

If we want a seat at the adult table we need to be strategic.

We need to be complex.

Goes the wayward thinking of well meaning HR Pros in so many organizations. SIMPLE does not mean easy. Making a very drawn out process simple, is very, very difficult.

Our goal as HR Pros should be to make things so simple for our employees and our organizations that people never once give our processes a thought. So simple that people wonder why we even have jobs! Executives are smart folks – they get this concept. They understand how difficult it is to make something SIMPLE. And they’ll make sure you have a job!

So, how do you make things Simple?

1. Think in terms of the end user. (In HR, to often, we think about our own convenience and about what our end result needs to be – not the user)

2. Think in terms of time. (Not your time, your organizations time – what might save you hours and days, might cost the organization days and weeks of productive time)

3. Think in terms of resources. (Like time – it’s about the organization, not your department)

Scale becomes a major issue when truly looking at how good your process is to the organization. I often hear an HR Pros say, “Well, it only takes them 15 minutes to complete this!”

Multiply 15 minutes by 5000 employees and suddenly you’re “little” process just cost the organization 1,250 hours of productivity.

Break those hours down into Revenue, and your process cost the organization potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, hey, you saved your department one person, one day’s work, each month – or a few thousand dollars…

How true he was.
 

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