We started out on this journey by looking at what was happening in the performance management and appraisals. In our latest article, we are trying to reach out to the HR function. If anything, it’s been merged with the idea of HR as moderator. “HR as partner” doesn’t have a positive connotation. But it hasn’t worked out well and there is a kind of disillusion with the term. Tavis: Within HR, there has been a lot of discussion about HR as a partner.
They are not going to be much ahead on anything. So, they are a little ahead of the CFOs in that regard. In firms where the top management is relinquishing control, the HR people are part of those arrangements, but the CFO is typically not.
They are hiring and doing all the things in the HR playbook, the traditional way.Īs to HR partnering with Agile, that is, in firms that are taking Agile seriously: they are more a partner than the CFOs.
You see a lot of that, particularly in smaller companies that are not so sophisticated. We have to worry about their interests.” I don’t see that happening anywhere frankly.Īs to what you call “executioners”, I would tend to call them “administrators.” They are kind of operating in their own world, doing their own thing. But I don’t see any HR group standing up to the executives and saying: “We really have to take care of the employees. There may be an argument that they should be doing that. How does this classification compare with your perspective?Ĭappelli: I don’t see any HR department of any size that is trying to be a moderator. And third is the “business partner” role that is closely linked to the business with an external focus on external customers. A second is a kind of “moderator,” who tries to be responsive to the needs of all stakeholders-managers, staff, shareholders in this role, when HR refers to customers, it is usually referring to internal customers. One is a kind of “executioner” on behalf of the top management. In my article, I suggested three possible roles, as shown in the table below. It’s more effective to say, “I’m just showing you how that function actually works.” That’s more effective than creating tables, and labels and titles, which isn’t going to move the dial in that whole process of becoming agile.ĭenning: In different firms, HR is playing different roles. So, it’s more effective to show them how others do it, rather than preaching to them an ideology, particularly one that is considered academic. A lot of times, they need to practice, unlike some of those leading Agile organizations in Silicon Valley. Some of that is enforced by law.Īnna Tavis: Our mission is to educate HR and move it forward. The norm is the reverse: the focus is to centralize and standardize and to execute uniformly across the firm. HR has so far not really been good at that. You already have that in IT, where the IT is Agile and the rest of the firm isn’t. You could have different projects operating in a company in quite different ways. It’s an interesting question whether you can have HR systems of one branch or unit operating completely differently from the way they work at headquarters.