Friday, August 14, 2009

One for HR to Ponder

You can find engineering departments that may drag their knuckles on personnel issues but are top-notch when a road needs to be built.

So here's a question for HR-types (and I ask this sincerely and with no malice):

In general, what do Human Resources departments do very, very well?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do Human Resource departments do VERY well? Use up human resources.

Bald Dog said...

>> What do Human Resource departments do VERY well? Use up human resources.

I think this is why HR is also called Human Remains or Human Repression. I think this is the reason why there are so many HR experts without an inch of empathy in them. Many of them inherently hate people and dealing with them.

Rob said...

'human capital' accounting, working out how to make people more like numbers.

JR said...

The question is similar to asking what makes a football player great/ Are you asking about a QB, defensive lineman, punter, etc? HR managers come in all shapes and sizes (and good ones and bad ones), but what they do well is dependent on the company culture, their specific talents and how they meet the needs of their 3customers: employees, managers and the organization. This is a balancing act that the good ones handle well. The good ones develop relationships with their customers and identify their needs and meet or exceed them, but these differ from organization to organization (and HR person to HR person).

JR (20 ++ years of leadership / HR)