Back to basics
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If you work in HR you are a service. You are not a profit centre, you are an overhead. Don’t fight it, don’t run from it, don’t try to conjure up nebulous arguments about how you add to the bottom line. Just do your job. Simple.
I’m not saying you have to sit there passively and take it up the arse from any passing manager. Of course not. but there is a world of difference between providing a good service and being a doormat. But ALL good service starts with being focussed on delivery and on delight. It focuses on the needs of the client, it doesn’t focus on the needs, wants and desires of the provider.
Do you really know what your organisation wants? Do you really know what they need? Or do you just know what you think they need and what you want to do? Because believe me, they won’t be the same things.
Being a service doesn’t make you secondary, it doesn’t make you superficial, it doesn’t make you disposable.
Being crap at what you do, does.
My Hell is Other People 
Similarly there is a lot of mediocrity in HR because there is a lot of mediocre management. Too many organisations don’t know what they want from their HR team and wouldn’t know HR best practice if it hit them over the head. Sad but true – it’s not all HR’s fault but we do need to be more proactive as a profession.
Excellent point.
I tried to tackle this in my own words, but as usual – you manage to say it in more eloquent and succint manner, especially the point about not having to “take it up the arse”.
You are right – it’s much easier to do HR when you are running on assumptions and not facts, but definitely not as effective.
CD
Come, come my dear HRD.
Now is not the time for modesty.
You surely get that you are champion of the people agenda.
Without people there is no profit.
People make the profit.
People make the interactions with customers which are every single time the source of your profits. Imagine your own business without people. How much profit would there be?
Owning the people agenda thoroughly is actually owning the interaction between people and customers. It’s actually owning the relationship that people have to making profit.
Very nearly, you will agree, owning profit itself.
Seeing yourself as a service is not just modesty, but dangerous shyness. It’s a dangerous shyness that subordinates people and what they do to make profit to profit itself as a concept, as an abstract, as a number, rather than seeing that people actually are profit. And a modesty which veils HR’s strongest arguments in the Boardroom.
No, no, HRD. you are not the butler. You are his bloody Lordship!
Go on. Claim the title that is your birthright.
Think about it a little dear HRD and you will, I am sure, see the sense of this. Otherwise ply me with wine and food and I shall explain more fully!!!
@NZHRGuy – Agree, but I think sometimes as a profession we fill the gap with hot air and not substance.
@Corporate Daycare – Facts, facts, facts….that is the heart of the matter.
@Henry – I hate comments that are better than my original post! You were saying about this food and wine thingimy…..