People will have a range of views on the HR profession, I’m ok with that. It may not surprise you to know that I don’t come to work to either fulfil or disprove a myriad of perceptions of my worth or usefulness. It may surprise people to know that the reason I do come to work is to steer the organisation that employs me at the time to do the right thing for the people it employs.
Obviously if you take this to the macro level, profitable organisations can invest back in the workforce, successful organisations ensure they have capital investment, commercial organisations ensure they can see and instigate the opportunities that lead to success and profitability – and so the cycle continues.
But that’s not the reason I get out of bed in the morning, the reason I do is to try to create the place to work that my colleagues want to be in. Even if that will inevitably involve some bitching and moaning along the way – you can’t please all the people all of the time…
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen a rise in calls for “HR to step forward”, or how strong HR is needed more than ever. The clarion call of a crisis, once again being used to throw the profession into the light. Remember 2007?
Whilst it starts with obvious decisions about furloughing, protection of wages, short term working, redundancies, protection of health, safety and wellbeing, managing remote workers and resource and contingency planning. It extends to issues such as executive reward, dividends, culture, engagement and productivity and post crisis recovery. There is no doubt that there is a lot for us to navigate.
The cynic in me wants to ask why it requires a global pandemic for the profession to find some backbone and step into the role that it should be playing every day? Why it requires something of such magnitude to bring a focus on the contribution that we make? But I guess beggars can’t be choosers, and as a collective we have been beggars for far too long.
We have seen and will continue to see some shocking examples of bad HR practice through this event, we need to hold these organisations and decision makers to account. But if we genuinely want to learn and grow from this, we also need to celebrate those organisations that are doing the right thing, protecting their employees and stepping up and into the right leadership space.
Because frankly, if not now then when?