YouBet said:
ATM9000 said:
BenTheGoodAg said:
ATM9000 said:
And to the guy who says The business is HR's 'customer'. Word of advice: just stop that not just for HR but for any function that works for the same organization as you. Because it just isn't true. You are all working to drive the most value and protect one set of resources as best as possible with how the real decision makers have decided they need to be protected and driven.
100% disagree with this. And since I made the comment earlier, I guess it's directed at me.
There is such a thing as an internal customer. I have many. I'm careful to make commitments, communicate issues, and follow through to my word. If I can't do that, downstream users in our business fail and I'm held accountable.
There are absolutely elements of HR that are in a defined support role, even by the Sr. Leadership of our company. Recruiting is an obvious example. Conversely, there are elements of HR that are not a support role, ie ethics/employee relations. There are good reasons that they are 3rd party to the issues that they get into.
We are on a sports website so I'll lay out this analogy: if you are the quarterback and your left tackle sucks and you end up with your face in the grass every other play, you'd never say you were the tackle's customer… but you would probably have some things to say to the tackle as well as the coach. Just because you have accountabilities and people rely on you for things, doesn't make you people's customer. My family relies on me to take my daughter to school every morning. It is my responsibility and I'm accountable for it but my daughter and wife aren't my customers. It's a partnership still. That's really really key and why I think the idea of internal customers is stupid.
It might be stupid but it's reality in many, many companies. We had Internal Customer metrics and goals in our PAs depending on the role. This is probably a semantics argument and depends on the specific culture of the company if they talk in terms of "partner" or "internal customer".
Big semantics difference though. A customer implies a highly transactional relationship. A partner is you are in business together for the long haul.
Like many things, so much of your view is defined by your attitude. When I first became a hiring manager years ago, I remember complaining about recruiting not having their **** together and moving slow and not getting me good candidates, loads of naval gazing and whinging about them not doing their job. Open roles on my team would sit open for months. It was embarrassing and it took me a while to get it.
Recruiting and bringing in the right people is hard and takes a lot of thought not just a couple of emails to follow up to check a box. Internal recruiters are generally looking at tons of roles at one time. There are managers who are highly engaged in all of that and others who just copy the last job spec, throw it to HR and say let me know when you have somebody. The former get good people quickly… the latter… complain that HR isn't following up for their customer. This is the same for every other bit you have accountability for at work.
If you want HR to move quicker on stuff like this, treat them like a partner. When I have an open role to fill on my team now… it is my #1 priority. I'm typically talking to the internal recruiter every other day, test screening resumes with them so they know what I'm after, asking for their feedback on what I'm looking for… basically, doing everything I can to make their job easier. It takes loads of time but I generally end up with 3-4 very good candidates to interview and roles filled in the matter of weeks rather than months.
I guess my advice here generally is if you look at HR as some sort of service function, don't really engage actively with them because you view them as just those pains in the rears in the back office ready to ruin your plans… then I don't really understand what your general expectation is. Treat them like partners instead and you'll get loads more out of the relationship and maybe even learn a thing or 2.
