HR cannot get rid of the people responsibilities of a manager. Coaching should sit with managers. Giving feedback should sit with managers. Setting career goals should sit with managers. Having difficult conversations should sit with managers. Capacity planning should sit with managers. HR can enable managers to take on their responsibilities by offering guidelines, training and support, however, HR cannot do these things for managers. Being a manager of a team means being a people leader. It is part of the job description! Trying to have HR take on the responsibilities of managers leads to chaos. HR is not big enough to own all of these items across an entire company and HR will never be as close to the work and the people as the managers running those teams. HR should enable. Managers should execute. #hr #management #leadership
100% Vanesa, HR should never ever execute the work of managers. It's about learning how to say "no", how to set hard boundaries, and finally, how to stand up for what is right. HR often fails to stand up for what it believes in, and that's the very reason why most managers don't take HR seriously. That said, leaders like you and others are changing the fate of HR, one post at a time.
Now assuming that the people manager is able to obtain the advice elsewhere, ie. chat bot or other resource, does that make the HR function redundant?
This is where my manager training came from. As an HR person I had no ability to impact employees directly, but managers didn't seem to have the training or tools to genuinely lead their employees (as individuals). Some might have the ability to lead a team as a unit, but leading the individuals will have the biggest impact. It didn't make sense that somehow the knowledge to lead employees, give feedback, plan for their growth, work through performance issues, etc is expected to live in the HR office. Somehow it's still a big perspective shift for people to buy into the importance for managers to own those responsibilities and, as you said, for HR to empower them to do so.
Absolutely agree, Vanesa. Managers need to step up and embrace their role as people leaders. HR's role is to support and enable them, not take over their responsibilities.
Yes exactly, we can enable these skills with training, coaching and support, but they have to live with the managers themselves.
We also need to make sure that organizations provide appropriate leadership training so that managers know how to take the lead in these areas. When organizations don’t support continual learning, it falls on HR to take the lead which is too often condoned by the organization leading to burnout.
Agreed! Too many managers try to push these responsibilities off on HR and too many organizations let them!
Wholeheartedly agree with this point. So often we see HR trying to own service & product silos to stay relevant. It doesn't work. The HR role has a conflict of interest should it get too involved and ought to remain removed from the core function of the business. Human Resources should be just that- a place for management et al to access relevant resources.
Strategic Human Resources Business Partner at BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina
1wCouldn’t agree more. The role of an HR partner of any type - and the main value to leaders - is to provide advice and recommendations. This is why it is essential for the HR partner to: 1) view the world through multiple lenses, not just “employee relations” and 2) build and maintain robust relationships within the business, with leaders and non-leaders. This way, the advice and counsel comes from a place of trust and experience…and round and round the cycle goes!