February 11, 2008
A long time ago (I’m behind on my reading) the HR Thoughts blog had a piece about not trying to be strategic all the time. While it’s nice that managers, directors and VP’s of HR get to think so, the reality on the ground is not that simple.
The state of network HR is not as bad as my cross country skiing was a few years ago when I went to a workshop and the coach said, “let’s just focus on the arms, there are too many things wrong here!” There are a few outliers we can start with:
- We must standardize our processes, not within the medical center only, but across the network.
- We must be very selective with our hiring and our promotions. Promotions are not entitlements and if the skills we need are not present in our current staff, we need to hire externally.
- We have to mandate automation within our staffs, not encourage it. Yes, that means throwing out the typewriters and halting the show when we see someone addressing mass mailing letters individually. It means Access databases. It means intranet usage. It means Sharepoint. It means collaborative learning.
Listen – I may shudder at the thought of an access database, but if that’s what you have and where you are, then why not? Some organizations are not ready for the $200K implementation of a mid-grade HRMS system and this type of interim-automation is better than manual processing. Going back to the first bullet, you do need to standardize and plan. I see more people getting themselves in trouble for not getting these activities done before heading into an implementation than sitting where they are with heaps of manual work. You can easily get yourself into more trouble by leaping from step one to step 10 without landing on anything in the middle.
Honestly, I’m as guilty as everyone else. I sit around and talk about things that we don’t even have the technology and capabilities for today, just because I like dreaming up the future. At some point though, the managers, directors, and VP’s need to realize reality and start forcing interim solutions. If duct tape happens to be that solution, sometimes it will be better than nothing.
