Revisiting HR Failures

A question was raised in CiteHR , to understand the reasons behind the failure of HR. Certain areas including the alingment of HR and the focus from operational activites to strategic were discussed http://www.citehr.com/289282-where-do-you-think-hr-fails-organizations.html
Human Resource is the custodian and enabler to organization. Managing talent is the mainstream to an organization’s success. Just as a cog in the wheel enables the rotation, so does HR. Certain implementation of programs or the lack of it, can create a dissonance in functioning of the organization. These letdowns become a yardstick for future. The reasons for the debacles will remain at variance with the sector and immediate environment. Yet they can be categorised in few principal areas.
Business focus: If the business goals are not aligned with the HR initiatives it may create disaster. The best practices will not yield to any result if it doesn’t correspond to the next business targets. For e.g.: Technological integration remains a focus during a merger. This is planned on the basis of scalability. If the focus of the merger is to gain technological leadership in the market, HR needs to align the data integration accordingly.
HR Focus: It’s essential to review the HR Processes and audit them regularly. The economic environment changes, so does the business prerequisites. The HR processes would require refurbishing the SLA defined on the processes. Dr. John Sullivan in, ‘The think piece: How HR caused Toyota to crash’, identified eight HR processes contributing to the failure. It begins with reward and recognition that fuelled rapid growth in production and sales, ignoring the reward for acknowledging the safety based inputs. The training focussed on the plan/do/check/act. The spotlight should have been to the last two accentuating on the negative external safety-based information. Hiring failed as the assessment couldn’t identify the talent who would not sweep the error under the carpet and stand up for truth to the management. The performance management system didn’t detect the group think. The corporate culture was biased towards the positive information, consequently diminished the red flags on security.
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