1) Are any of the assertations in the article true about the HR function in organizations?

2) Are any of the assertations in the article false or contain myths about the role of HR in organizations?

In today’s globalized world Human Resource Management has to face now many new tasks then it had in the past. The change from personnel to a HR department brought a lot of changes that affect the key areas of the human resource manager’s work. Companies that have understood how HRM can add value to company performance have now completely new requirements of their HR staff.

But the main question is if businesses have changed their HR department as well as their company structure in order to allow human resource managers to be strategic and to add value to the bottom line. Can we say that companies today know how HR can help to reach company goals? Are the right persons performing HR task and do they have a “seat at the table”?

The purpose of the following essay is to clarify the validity of the assumptions made by Keith Hammonds in the article “Why we hate HR” (Hammonds 2006)

In the article, Hammonds is describing HR as a bureaucratic force that makes useless rules. He wants to say that HR is a barrier for creativity and change.  He explains that many of the tasks of human resource managers are just time-consuming and can be abolished.  Moreover there is no effective output that can be seen as proactive for the company.  According to Kaufman (2006, p.30) it is right that many of today’s HR departments are too bureaucratic and do not focus the same goals as the company.  A reason therefore might by the HR mission statement. “To provide quality services and support in hiring, training, staff relations, benefits, compensation, and safety beyond the expectations of all employees, enabling them to better serve our external customers.” (Kaufman 2006, p.30). After reading  this example  it is clear that this is one of the mayor problems of HR and that such a mission statement can be a barrier for proactive work.  Where is the connection to the company goals and to overall performance?  Hammonds is right in saying that HR departments are not up to date with reality and that their work is more likely to be useless than meaningful as there is no real link between them and the performance of the company. Lawler (2005) has a similar view of today’s HR as he is criticizing that the change from personal to human resource management hasn’t took place yet. There is still too much administrative work which is not related to the company goals. Being a strategic business partner means to hire the most talented or to act as an effective change agent and thereby improve the performance (Lawler 2005, p. 165). But HR still has problems to fulfill this and studies show that it is often nothing more than an administrative authority which delivers no value to the bottom line (Lawler 2005, p. 166).

Hammonds mentioned also that HR has ghettoized themselve. He means that HR acts as a company in the company with no relation to other parts of the firm. On the one hand he is right in saying this as in most cases HR departments are more responsible for administrative work like payroll, benefits and retirement then for strategic business and thereby it isn’t necessary for them to be always up to date with the current business(Kaufman 2006, p.30). But on the other hand it is not right to blame just the HR department for this. According to Kaufman, it is the fault of the whole company and especially senior managers as they have to guarantee that HR is involved in the core business. Companies with centralized decision making for instance will make it very difficult for HR to act as a strategic business partner as this wouldn’t encourage them to act more like a leader (Roehling et al. 2006 p.213).  

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Nevertheless it is hard to say what has lead to such thinking of senior managers. Haven’t they put trust in the work of HR from the beginning or is it just a reaction to poor contribution of the human resource department regarding strategic business goals? However it is not justified to put the shame just on the human resource department as they can’t invite themselves to a “seat at the table” as Hammonds described it.

Further, Hammonds presents us reasons what had lead to such a non-strategic output of HR.

At first he points out that ...

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