About 25 years ago departments that formerly went by the title “Personnel Department,” changed their names to “Human Resources.”  The implication was that these staff functions saw the people in their organizations as resources – human assets.

 A fundamental question is were these human resources viewed as long term assets to be nurtured and developed over a career or were they short term costs to be cut when times grew rough or their skills needed honing? 

 The unfortunate answer seems to be that many of today’s “Human Resource” functions are actually in the business of administering layoffs, managing benefit costs, and finding ways to do more work with less people.  The paradox is compounded by the fact that human resource people are often the first to be cut in an economic downturn. 

 Perhaps a better – not pretty but perhaps more appropriate – name would be something like “Human Cost Reduction Department.”

In the post-layoff era, many HR professionals are struggling to be relevant to the needs of their organizations.  This is particularly true because many HR people were victims of layoffs themselves.

 I think there is an interesting connection between the evolution and future of HR and the concept of transactional analysis (TA).  Probably some of you remember the concept and the book that popularized it – “I’m OK – You’re OK.”  Those who are really into it recall that the basic concept (parent – adult – child) came from Freudian theory (Id – Ego – Super Ego)

 One way to think of the evolution of HR is this Parent – Adult – Child frame of reference.

 When HR began (it was called personnel then) in most cases it was in the “child” mode.  It basically did line management’s bidding with out a lot of value added.  As in, “put this person on the payroll,”  “give this person a salary increase,” etc. etc. etc . . .   In some cultures – mainly in developing countries or in very low tech organizations it is still there.  The result of HR being put in a “child” role is basically putting HR people in a one-down, subordinate relationship to managers – they become second class citizens.

 The next step in the evolution was the “parent” phase.  In the US, HR got a lot of clout because of government regulations and intervention in business practices.  Labor laws and equal employment laws were examples.  HR became a function that acted as a check to make sure the organization did not get sued or loose government contracts.  This phase was accentuated in high technology firms by promoting the best engineer or technical person into management roles.  They became dependent on HR to “manage the people issues.”  The result of HR assuming the parental role is that they end up in an artificial control oriented one-up relationship.  The power is artificial but seductive and line management ends up seeing HR as pesky cops as opposed to helpers.  This is still the case in many organizations.

 The third phase is an adult/adult relationship where HR is seen as in an equal helping relationship to line management.  This is not as easy as it seems because it requires HR to learn consulting and helping skills and resist acting as a child or assuming the artificial seductive power of a parent.  I think the future of HR is in this adult/adult phase.  HR functions that don’t assume this role may not be “abolished” but they certainly won’t fulfill their potential.  I also think the line between external consultants and internal HR functions is not all that clear in terms of role.  Lots of external consultants focus on a small number of clients and actually do much the same work as internals.  The reason they are successful in this is that they approach their role in an adult/adult relationship.  Said differently, internal HR functions that want to be relevant to the needs of the business and not be replaced by external consultants need to drop the “child” and “parent” role and learn how to partner in a consulting role.