Link to: Luke Johnson's article in FT.com on the value of HR

There are some great points in this article – it’s a shame they have been inelegantly put and occasionally contradicted. Let’s take some of them in turn:

“Tragically, we live in a time of overwhelming employment legislation, so getting legal procedures right can save time and heartache – that is the sort of task HR handles.”

Yes. That’s why this article should be targeted at legislators, not HR.

“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers. Other divisions that can become the enemy include IT, legal and marketing. They don’t sell or produce: they consume.”

Luke Johnson overlooks the fact that income-generating parts of the business are consumers too: of IT, legal services, marketing and HR. Maybe it does make financial sense to outsource these services – but in saying this he accepts the need for them.

“All this paraphernalia [appraisal experts, training, corporate social responsibility etc.] is accepted as essential good practice by modern-thinking corporate management. I think most of it is expensive, bureaucratic hogwash.”

It often is. But our developed markets are pretty efficient at destroying useless industries. But these practices remain, grow and refine, attracting great numbers of followers. Why? Is this inertia and mass hype led by HR practitioners themselves? I doubt it. It’s because there is value here. The problem lies not with these ideas, but with the poorly-managed non-commercial HR staff that have been hired by the CEO.

Luke Johnson is right to scrutinise the value HR brings. All CEOs should do this. In many cases it can be cut back and stripped to the bare value-adding essentials and ditching some of the “non-essential”. But to write it off completely is clumsy - and diminishes the credibility of an otherwise useful spotlight on an area that needs it.

What do you think?