he movie Snakes on a Plane
depicts the terror of being trapped in a confined space with life-threatening pythons,
rattlesnakes and the like. While some might see this movie as having no connection
to human resources, I see it as the perfect metaphor for the typical HR department.
Snakes are much like the scary types in HR who contribute to making the function
less effective. They quietly undermine efforts by others to transform HR into a
powerhouse function by choking off innovation and injecting paralyzing venom in
the form of socialism and compliance-speak. Some might think that putting these
people in the same category as dangerous reptiles is harsh, but in my 35-plus years
in HR, I’ve found their actions scarier and more despicable than any real snake
I’ve come across.
Who are the snakes in HR? Every organization has people who resist change and
thwart efforts by real HR professionals to dramatically improve human resources,
so in reading this list, think of both current and past snakes who have hindered
progressive work you were trying to do. I hope we are talking about a small percentage
of HR professionals here, but it is important to remember that the damage they do
well exceeds their numbers.
HR generalists: Generalists are the ultimate silo- and boundary-builders in HR.
They set up empires and resist change by saying, "That’s great for everyone else,
but it won’t work in my business unit." They have made it to the top by building
relationships and playing politics, instead of producing measurable business results.
International HR managers, particularly those in Japan and Europe, tend to be the
worst of the lot. Most lack the cojones to manage talent aggressively, blocking
staffing professionals who try to innovate. You can spot these snakes easily because
they are always "in a meeting." They love meetings, and think that going to a meeting
is more beneficial than reviewing metrics, doing a postmortem or forecasting future
people problems.
Lazy recruiters: Great recruiters are aggressive and are constantly trying new
sources and approaches to reach the best talent. However, there are snakes in recruiting.
The most venomous are administrative recruiters, who are not really recruiters at
all but rather requisition managers more concerned with seeking approvals and ensuring
that the forms get filled out. Other snakes in recruiting include those who regularly
scream "That’s illegal!" when in fact their exclamation has no basis in law, and
"search firm managers" who do more to stifle the work of retained search firms than
help them. The final group includes those recruiters who use the same sources no
matter what job they are trying to fill, as if janitors and lawyers come from the
same bucket.
Compensation and benefit cost cutters: These people hinder great recruiting and
retention by giving "equal pay" wherever possible in order to avoid conflict. They
lose candidates by being slow and generating offers with lowball starting salaries
in the hopes that candidates might accept them. Benefit specialists make the list
when they dedicate 100 percent of their time to cutting costs while ignoring the
impacts of benefit changes on worker performance, recruiting and retention.
Pseudo-technologists: Among my favorites, these snakes will buy almost any argument
that a vendor gives. They love to form task forces that endlessly study technology
to the point where the system they eventually buy is obsolete. The task force approach
allows them to avoid individual accountability when the system they buy handcuffs
the productivity of everyone in HR.
Employee relations specialists: No one avoids conflict better than these individuals.
They will postpone firing someone for years. These snakes never have the nerve to
confront—no less fire—bad managers, who cause 85 percent of all recruiting, retention
and productivity problems.
You could probably keep adding to this list, but I’m sure you get the point.
When you have HR professionals who say they know the business but can’t read a P&L
statement, refuse to remain current on business issues by reading Workforce Management,
BusinessWeek, Fortune, Business 2.0 and leading business books like
The World Is
Flat and Jack Welch’s Winning, and who are unwilling to abandon intuition and emotion
as a basis for decision-making, you have a bunch of snakes with individual objectives
slithering sideways in an effort to derail or slow change.
If you agree with me, help your organization by confronting them the next time
one crosses your path. Incidentally, don’t bother looking under rocks. HR snakes
are best found by going to meetings and looking for the people who say, "That’ll
never work."
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