The COVID 19 crisis is changing the world of work in every sector.  In government the crisis has prompted a very different approach to staffing and workforce management – It alters how supervisors and their people interact and communicate, made front line workers essential while others were laid off, and highlighted the value of individual expertise and initiative.  The new work management is alien to traditional civil service thinking.

The crisis raises the prominence and value of the HR office.  No other function has the expertise to address the breadth of people management issues.  Historically, unfortunately, elected leaders have rarely expressed interest in workforce or HR issues.  Few have relevant management experience.  Where unions oppose change, leaders are reluctant to push back.  Leaders at all levels of government will need help to understand and appreciate the new importance of HR.

Three decades ago the HR community in the private sector was confronted with a similar problem.  Until the late 1980s, it had been ‘business as usual’ for US companies.  Then global, low-cost competitors began to emerge.  Competition forced companies to become more agile and responsive to market developments.  The new knowledge jobs made it obvious workers were no longer interchangeable, individual expertise now governs an employee’s value.  That triggered a revolution in the way workers are managed.  The private sector is years ahead of government in creating a positive work experience.

HR’s Expanded Role

For far too long the HR function has had a limited, backroom role – administering HR policies and systems, keeping personnel records, enforcing employment laws, and handling problem employees.  That role prompted pejorative terms – ‘administrivia’ – and nicknames – ‘HR police’ — and the phrase “ghettoized themselves” in the article “Why We Hate HR”.  In government, it is still common to find the HR office buried as one of several offices reporting to a secretary administration levels away from elected officials.

That article was published in 2005 and was written for a private sector audience.  There was minimal public pushback from the HR community.  As late as 2015 Wharton’s Peter Cappelli adopted the same title for an article but added – “. . . — And What HR Can Do About It.”  He stated “Little has been done in the past few decades to examine the value of widely used practices . . . By separating the effective from the worthless, HR leaders can secure huge payoffs for their organizations.”  His comments are directly relevant to public employers.

More recently, in a Harvard Business Review article, “People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO”, three leading business consultants argue HR executives should work closely with CEOs and chief financial executives as a troika.

“It’s time for HR to make the same leap that the finance function has made in recent decades and become a true partner to the CEO.  . . .the CHRO should help the CEO by building and assigning talent, especially key people, and working to unleash the organization’s energy.”

That changes and expands HR’s role in two ways.  One is a shift from the somewhat passive role of filling vacancies to a more assertive role of building the talent capabilities an organization needs.  The second is  related to “unleashing energy” and involves “building and mobilizing an organization’s emotional, cognitive and behavioral capabilities in pursuit of an organization’s goals.”  In discussing energy, writers have also described it as “dynamic, responsive and innovative” and “capturing employees’ emotional excitement.” 

That contrasts with the old industrial engineering view that focused narrowly on worker efficiency.  Anyone working on the front lines of the pandemic or as another example fighting forest fires understands what is meant by unleashing energy.

But it’s incumbent on leaders to communicate “the tremendous contribution the CHRO could be making and spell out those expectations in clear, specific language.”  Leaders need to make the case to executives and managers and follow that with the investment in strengthening HR functions.  It starts with CHROs presenting a convincing argument.

The HBR authors argue HR offices should use the growing understanding of people management to bring three activities to management: “predicting outcomes, diagnosing problems, and prescribing actions on the people side that will add value to the business” — and to government as well.

To emphasize what may be obvious, the authors are defining a role for HR that positions the function to use well-documented expertise to improve an organization’s performance.  One of the commonly cited metrics in the past was the ratio of HR staff to an organization’s size, with the goal of reducing the ratio.  At the extreme that suggests eliminating the function.  But when HR adds value, investing in the staff and building capabilities is a sound strategy.