Article: How to Fight Back

Warren Buffett declared it: this “is an economic war.” He likened our current situation to WWII. If you work in human resources as a recruiter, trainer, and/or diversity expert, that puts you squarely on the front lines. After several happy years of growth — including a marked increase in upper management’s appreciation for the “employer of choice” and employee engagement concepts — the battle of retrenchment is engaged.

Not only are companies reducing the size of their workforce, they are cutting back on everything related to HR: recruiting, training, and development; recognition efforts; and any other kind of employee engagement program. A recent Vault survey of corporate recruitment professionals showed that more than a third of human resource departments are experiencing layoffs. Sixteen percent of respondents said the cuts affected more than 25 percent of the HR staff.

The last thing the HR community needed was last month’s cruise missile launched by Rutgers professor Richard Beatty. The academic blasted the human resources profession for working without useful analytics, and contributing so little that “typical human resources activities have no relevance to an organization’s success.” The article’s title was a blow by itself: “Memo to CFO’s: Don’t Trust HR.”

One veteran HR colleague acknowledged that there are plenty of inadequate HR people out there, just as there are weak CFOs and accounting folks. At the same time, she reminded me that there have been plenty of studies linking employee engagement to higher productivity and revenue growth (though she acknowledged that proving a causal effect is more difficult than merely linking the two). At this point, it shouldn’t be necessary to prove that engagement has value all the way to the bottom line. Unfortunately, it still has not sunk in for many executives.

Full disclosure: I am a CEO who was skeptical of HR as a young manager, but became absolutely convinced of its importance as the engine of a big organization’s hiring, appraisal, and development processes. HR can be at its worst when managing the mundane, bureaucratic necessities of a company’s workforce but when HR is seen as business partner and change agent, the role becomes critical — as important as running a finance division. Yes, I do put the HR leader at the same level as the CFO in a large organization.

If you are an HR decision-maker whose company leadership doesn’t share my perspective, here’s how to fight back. Click here to find out how.