Purely from a functional standpoint, the HR department is completely redundant in a company. Everyone knows this.
In 1996, Fortune magazine columnist Thomas Stewart wrote an article entitled “Blow Up Your HR Department.”
In 2014, Larry Charan wrote in his article “Splitting the HR Department”: “It’s time to say goodbye to the HR department. I’m not talking about canceling the tasks performed by the HR department, but the HR department itself.”
But by the end of 2021, even though the outside world is in turmoil, HR departments in various companies are still thriving. For HR, they just like to see you want to get rid of me but can’t.
Why is this? Because HR is the boss’s person. If the finance department is the boss’s knife, then the human resources department is the boss’s sword. To abolish the HR department is to abolish the boss’s martial arts.
For managers, no matter what position you are in, you must first understand what the essence of this position is. Only by understanding the essence can you understand what are the most important things in this position and have a chance for promotion.
What is personnel? Personnel is political struggle.
A capable HR does things that are inconvenient for the boss to do, can’t do, or doesn’t want to do.
If you think of a company as a rotating wheel, business departments are constantly pushing the wheel forward. But sometimes when it turns too fast it can cause problems. There needs to be power to regulate the speed of the wheel.
Therefore, for business executives, if HR becomes an obstacle to your business advancement. Don’t waste time communicating with HR, just go directly “I want to talk to the boss.” Not to complain, but to figure out what the boss is thinking. What decision-making basis do they have that you don’t know about or what information you haven’t provided to the boss? Go and reach a consensus with your boss.
Secondly, internal personnel management of the team including recruitment training assessment and evaluation are not HR’s business but team leader’s business These things are fundamental to team management and HR can’t handle them well.
Of course for HR: You are a sword and should be kept in its sheath most of the time But if it leaves its sheath it must draw blood.