Author: Allan Halcrow

Despite the tremendous expectations of its many varied constituents, HR professionals are coping — and even thriving. There are many ways of dealing effectively with the countless pressures, but there is really only one strategy: “HR must be customer focused,” says Paul Benson, who has 30 years of HR experience in organizations such as Kraft Foods, Pizza Hut, and Kaiser Permanente. He interprets that customer focus broadly.

Alan Wolfson, a New York-based HR consultant with the Hay Group, concurs. “If you’re not serving an external customer, your job is to serve someone who is,” he says. “The HR organizations that score highest in any internal assessment are those that have a focus on internal customers.”

Is that really all there is to it? Yes and no. Accepting the value of having a customer focus is one thing; making it happen is another. Benson acknowledges that “it takes time to get the process right.” Carrie Shearer, an HR professional in Ithaca, New York, who has more than 30 years of experience, says it’s important that setbacks not be seen as failure. They — and Wolfson — also agree that it’s important to have a plan.

Benson draws a metaphoric triangle. “Start with self-clarity,” he suggests. “Ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What’s my contribution to the organization going to be?’” The third side of the triangle is to determine what the ultimate outcome for the organization should be and then figure out how to link the three ideas.

In considering the outcome for the organization, however, it’s vital to look outward. “Never assume you know what customers want,” Wolfson says. “Giving customers only what you currently have or do is arrogant.” He calls on HR professionals to use their consulting skills to help customers define what they need. Giving customers exactly what they want, when they want it, defect-free, at a competitive price is useless, he points out, if it doesn’t solve their problems.

How does HR know when it’s successful at solving customer problems? Too often, HR relies on what Wolfson calls “friends of the family” who offer subjective feedback and tend to say what HR wants to hear. Instead, he says, there are four requirements that any HR organization must meet before it can truly be customer-focused:

1. HR must have service standards for its internal customers (e.g., the time to provide new-hire candidates, a tangible measure of the quality of those candidates, or the timing of new-hire orientation).

   
   

2. HR must be organized to easily serve internal customers (can managers get the help they need from a single source, or do they have to call different people for help with different issues?).

   
   

3. Measurements must be customer focused (assessments of training-program quality are more important than how many programs were delivered, for example).

   
   

4. HR must get meaningful objective feedback from its customers including stakeholders, top management, line management, and employees.

   
   

To achieve those requirements, he suggests using every tool available:

• Organization structure within HR
• HR communications (formal and informal)
• Re-engineering HR processes
• Eliminating unnecessary measurements
• Setting service standards jointly with clients
• Participation (involving HR’s constituencies)

“HR and management need to sit down and come to an agreement as to what is most important and how HR fits within the company,” agrees Shearer, noting that “administrivia” and strategic issues can’t have equal priority.

But what if the items management and employees each want are different? That’s the point at which many HR professionals capitulate to management’s desires and let the chips fall where they may. Trouble is, it doesn’t work. “HR’s role is to bring the groups together to settle the schisms,” Wolfson says.

Benson observes that many HR professionals, held back by the box that asks for conformity, look for leadership at the very time they should be exerting it. “Sometimes we’re out in front, sometimes we’re in the back pushing, and sometimes we’re in the middle of the team contributing,” he says. “We can lead from the head of the table or from three seats to the left, depending on the situation.”

For Benson, the table is no metaphor. In several organizations he took the lead in getting people to the table to discuss — and agree on — HR’s goals and responsibilities. Benson acknowledges that there were disagreements, but ultimately they were resolved and the stakeholders agreed on a plan. He says that clarity and confidence were key to getting it done.

“When we were clear on our ultimate goal, and as clear as we could be about what we were working on, we were able to go into a meeting with confidence,” he says. “Then we didn’t get bogged down in how we were going to respond, and we were better able to listen to our constituents.” He adds that the clarity of purpose helped keep HR honest: “People at the table could call us on pursuing our agenda.” Benson says the process made clients much more likely to accept HR’s recommendations.

Once the plan was complete, it became a signpost for everyone. It was apparent which goals had been met and which had not, so HR’s performance was a matter of record, not conjecture. At the same time, if disagreements arose about how HR should be spending its time, the plan reminded everyone of the priorities that had been established.

Other HR professionals have taken similar approaches to getting client buy-in. Some have established oversight committees, made up of line managers who contribute to the design and delivery of major HR services, such as a training program.

In other cases, teams focus more on business initiatives than on HR programs. Ian Clark, a professor at the Leicester School of Business at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, worked with a U.S. firm he calls Exbeck (the firm asked for confidentiality when he published the results of their efforts) when they implemented a project task force initiative. The system calls for a project manager to draft a briefing on the technical and process requirements for a job. It includes a forecast of the HR needs for the project. Under the system, corporate HR is responsible for the management development program and monitoring the performance of other divisions in the task force framework. The emphasis is on developmental HR management aimed at reducing cost overruns on projects.

It works. Cost overruns before the initiative were $1.4 million a year for each year of the three-year project. Overruns after the initiative were $330,000 per year. What’s more, studies showed that most of the $1.4 million overruns were attributed to direct and indirect HR failures.

Although the rewards of getting client buy-in and participation are great, Benson says that staying on track was sometimes a challenge. “If you’re not careful, it’s very easy to spend your day putting out fires and thinking you’re doing a bang-up job because you made some folks happy,” Shearer says. “The reality is that HR should be more proactive and less reactive.”

Toward that end, Shearer carved out time for herself every day. “If you want to find the time to do what you think is important, you must make the time,” she says. Her workday officially began at 8:00, but Shearer was at her desk by 7:00 to focus on strategic thinking and mapping out the steps to take toward longer-term goals. She spent another hour immediately after lunch on the same work. “Did it work? Some days yes and some not so well,” she says. “The important thing was that I set aside time to work on what was really important.”

Shearer also was a dedicated list-maker. At the end of each day she would write down what had to be accomplished the next day, then decide what could be delegated and what was nice but not necessary.

Whether an issue is delegated or you solve it yourself, Benson says, part of the secret of success is to solve it for both for now and the long term. He likens many problems to having a small splinter in your finger. “You can put a bandage on it and make it feel better,” he says, “but the splinter is still there, and if you leave it there, it will get infected. Ultimately, it will be a much worse problem, and much harder to heal.”

No one is claiming that meeting contradictory and substantial expectations is easy. But they can — and should — be met.

The effort shows where it counts most: on the bottom line. Wolfson notes that the firms with the best-regarded HR functions perform better financially. He says that the most-admired firms (Hay participates in identifying Fortune’s most-admired companies) have two attributes their peers lack: a much stronger focus on external customers and a culture in which employees are valued as assets, not seen as expenses.

Workforce, June 2002, pp. 46-48 — Subscribe Now!

Ask the employees at your company what HR does and how well they do it, and beprepared for a verbal assault. Collar a line manager. Interview a CEO. Inquireabout HR’s organizational role and its reputation. Be ready to hear thingsabout your work that range from the politely acceptable to the downright brutal.

“Bullying bureaucrats” is a term that one employee uses to describe HR.In a quest to learn more about how employees, line managers, top executives, andprofessionals themselves describe HR’s purpose and performance, Workforceinterviewed dozens of people in all kinds of organizations. When it came toemployees, however, not one was willing to talk on the record, itself a powerfulstatement. Many said they feared retribution, and variously described HR peopleas incompetent, unsympathetic, and punitive.

Taken together, their comments contribute to a greater understanding of whereHR is today, and the future direction of the profession. The news isn’t, ofcourse, all bad. In fact, HR may be poised to play a far more pivotal leadershiprole in business in the years to come, perhaps under a different name, perhapswith a different charge.

In recent years, there may have been a great deal of buzz about HR’sincreased strategic role, but there has been far less action. However, as morepeople in leadership positions come to recognize HR’s role in adding value tobusiness, experts say, HR will be viewed not as a corporate stepchild but as arespected executive player.

Professionals in the field say a change in perception about HR is paramountto its productivity and future success. HR must re-examine its priorities andits identity. It must learn executive skills, and it must become far betterskilled at selling itself.

Employees are customers, too
Employees are HR’s largest constituency, and HR sees its obligation toemployees as substantial and profound. Rich Podurgal, vice president oforganization and people development for Analytical Sciences, Inc., in Durham,North Carolina, says, “HR is about making the company successful. We supportthe business through people.”

That happens in several ways. Paul Benson, who has spent more than 30 yearsas an HR professional in organizations such as Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay, andKaiser Permanente, likens HR’s role to teaching the hungry to fish. Benson,who is now a leadership coach with his own firm, New Directions Unlimited, inPlacentia, California, means that helping employees develop skills and allowingthem to reach their full potential is tantamount to success.

But development isn’t enough. Alan Wolfson, an HR consultant with the HayGroup and a veteran of IBM’s HR function, says that successful HRprofessionals must be focused on internal customers, including employees. One ofthe ways that HR supports the business is to ensure equity in several areas,including working conditions, rewards, and day-to-day treatment.

“This doesn’t mean that all employees are treated as equals,” he says.”But it does mean that there needs to be a justifiable reason for differences.”

But Podurgal cautions that HR should be careful not to advocate foremployees. “We have to advocate for the business,” he says. “Advocatingfor employees pits us against senior management, which is not strategic.”Instead, he argues that HR should protect employee interests through intelligentpeople policies.

Advocacy is, of course, precisely what most employees want. They say thatinequity is common. They want HR to be their advocate. An employee at anonprofit firm, for example, went to HR for help. His manager had assigned himmore work than anyone else in the department. When he asked for help in settingpriorities, his manager told him that helping him set priorities was not herjob. She then stopped speaking to him. HR responded to his plea for help bysaying there was nothing they could do.

It is an oft-repeated story. But what employees mean by advocacy issurprising. They want HR to fill jobs quickly and to hire people — includingmanagers — who are qualified to do the work. Employees say that nothing else HRdoes has as much impact on their day-to-day work experience. Though theygrudgingly admit that HR does fill jobs, they complain that the process is toolong and that HR often hires the wrong people. Asked why, they blame HR forbeing distracted by its own agenda.

“HR is a very reactive group with both feet planted firmly in old-style,autocratic, top-down, 1950s-style policies,” says a county governmentemployee. “It’s based on old-style thinking where the manager reigns supremeand employees are there to simply carry out policy and perform tasks.”

They see rules to follow and forms to complete, and their perception of HR islargely one of bullying bureaucrats. “I received an ‘urgent’ fourth noticethat I needed to get a TB test,” a university librarian says. “I was toldthe next notice would come from the college president! I got the test rightaway, but I hadn’t received any notice before the ‘death threat.’ “

One reason why employees see HR as bureaucratic is that their first and mostcommon interactions with HR are bureaucratic: TB tests, employment applications,benefit enrollment forms, I-9 forms, change-of-address forms. One HR executiveobserved, “Ask a typical four-year-old what a mother’s job is. You’relikely to hear ‘baking cupcakes’ or ‘driving to school.’ People focus onwhat they see.”

Yet even as employees deride the bureaucratic side of HR, they also depend onit. They expect accurate paychecks and prompt processing of benefit claims. Inthat context, employee perceptions of HR correlate precisely to whether theirbureaucratic needs are being met. If overtime is paid promptly and accurately,HR is great. If too much is withheld for Social Security from paychecks, then HRis terrible. You would be highly unlikely to find any employees who know or carewhether government paperwork is filed on time, even if it indirectly benefitsthem.

“One of the biggest challenges is that employees see HR as the reason fortheir problems,” says Carrie Shearer, a consultant in Ithaca, New York, withmore than 30 years of HR experience. “If they don’t like their boss, it’sHR’s fault. If they suddenly have a serious illness and realize that medicalinsurance is only supplemental and they must come up with mucho cash from theirown pockets, it’s HR’s fault. If they feel overworked and under-appreciated,it’s HR’s fault, because even if there are recognition programs and all thatother good stuff, there is always someone less deserving than the unhappyemployee who got something. HR is the scapegoat.”

The debate about whether employees and HR can ever really see eye-to-eye maynever be completely resolved. But it may be possible to narrow the gap. PaulBenson has done just that. When he took over the HR function at PresbyterianIntercommunity Hospital in Whittier, California, nurses were on strike over payand benefits issues and staff morale was low. Benson learned that nurses’salaries were lower than average among area hospitals. The benefits, however,were the best offered by any hospital in Southern California.

The trouble was, no one — not even the hospital’s management group — knewthat. Benson and his team began an aggressive communication plan to promote thebenefits. Salaries were raised to bring them into parity with those of otherhospitals. The HR team also began to address other issues in the workenvironment that were contributing to low morale, such as scheduling and lack ofcareer development. The strategy was so effective that over three years, thehospital was able to reduce the benefit package by 30 percent withoutjeopardizing morale.

In fact, not only did morale improve, but surveys conducted at the time ofthe strike also showed that 54 percent of Presbyterian employees were satisfiedwith their jobs, versus a 56 percent national average. Within three years,satisfaction had jumped to 70 percent and was continuing to rise at a time whenthe national average had stalled.

Benson credits improved communication for the turnaround. In surveys andfocus groups, employees acknowledged the benefit cuts, but said that otherchanges in the overall work environment compensated for the reductions. And theysaid they understood what HR was doing, and why the changes were necessary.

The line managers see HR’s value — really
If employees give HR mixed reviews, do the line managers see HR morefavorably? Again, the news is mixed. In a recent landmark study, CornellUniversity professor Patrick Wright and three colleagues studied how HR andmanagers each see HR’s effectiveness in its service delivery, roles, andcontributions to the firm.

The team investigated 14 companies. The process included hour-long interviewswith 103 top HR personnel and line executives. Each participant also completedsurveys. The companies were all large and had a median employee population of42,000. The industries represented included banking, computers, pharmaceuticals,and food processing. On average, the firms were in the top quartile of theirindustries in revenue, market share, and profitability. Two of the firms wereranked among Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” and five were inthe top 100 of the magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” list.

The best news is that both HR and line managers recognize HR’s potentialfor making a strategic contribution. “The line sees that HR is adding value tothe business,” says Wright, chairman of the HR Studies Department andco-director of Cornell’s Executive Education program. He says that lineexecutives view several HR activities as “critical” to a company’ssuccess.

Surprisingly, when one group rated HR services higher in importance, it wasinevitably the line managers who gave the rating. “The line has been fasterthan HR at realizing HR’s impact,” Wright says. “The line sees the valueof developing talent, of focusing on recruitment and retention.”

Although both groups recognize the potential, they also believe that HR isfalling short. The study shows a negative relationship between the importance ofan HR function and how effectively it is delivered. “If something isn’t veryimportant, we excel,” Wright says. “If it adds value, we can’t deliver.”

Specifically, HR is rated high on providing services such as equitablecompensation systems and effective staffing systems. Neither line managers norHR professionals give HR a high score on change consulting and other strategicfunctions.

While the news isn’t good, it should be considered in context. At the HayGroup, Wolfson has worked with several organizations to conduct the Hay HRAudit, a tool intended to assess HR’s effectiveness and bring people togetherto make necessary changes. He says that the view of a company’s internalsupport group is always lower than external customer satisfaction. This ispartly because few organizations have a strong internal-customer focus. He addsthat these support groups are usually perceived as having their own goals andthat IT usually scores lowest in evaluations.

Wright points to other reasons why HR isn’t viewed more favorably. Threethemes emerge from the research:

1. HR isn’t doing a good job. Wright notes that he and his colleagues wereallowed into the organizations studied at least partly because the HRorganizations were in transition. They deliberately sought data because theybelieved they could be doing better.

2. HR gets blamed when the line manager implements poorly. One HR executivein Wright’s study said that HR was blamed for a poor compensation system, butthat managers were reluctant to make tough calls on individual raises orbonuses, and that reluctance undermined the system.

3. HR is not good at marketing. When HR does great work, it often doesn’ttake the opportunity to let people know what it has accomplished. This problemis compounded by the fact that many managers — and CEOs — don’t reallyunderstand HR.

Lawrence Pope, vice president of human resources for Halliburton EnergyServices Group in Houston, says that every one of these issues can be mitigatedwhen HR has a close relationship with managers, an association he terms “absolutelyfundamental.”

At Halliburton, line managers participate directly in shaping andimplementing HR initiatives through an oversight-committee structure. Topperformers who have demonstrated a passion for specific elements of HRmanagement, such as employee development or compensation and benefits, serve onthe committees.

The performance-review board might, for example, focus on employeecompetencies. The process begins with identifying jobs and mapping the requiredskills to perform the work. Then the board looks at the people who are doing thejobs, identifies gaps between existing and optimal competencies, and developsinterventions such as stand-up, on-the-job, or self-paced training.

Pope says the effectiveness of the interventions is measured in two ways:through an exam to see if an employee grasps the content, and through acorrelation to performance improvement. Measuring performance improvement can bedifficult, he says, but can be achieved by looking at changes from year to yearin a specific area such as improved safety records.

“Many organizations abdicate management of people to HR,” Pope says. “ButHR can’t implement. If HR throws a program over the wall to the line and asksthem to implement it, it isn’t likely to be well received. It’s better ifyou present the business case for a program and explain how it adds value. TheHR challenge then is to keep from losing control, which is a better position tobe in.”

CEOs want strategic partners
Employees and managers need a better understanding of what HR is doing andwhy. So does the CEO, says Don Holzworth, the top executive at AnalyticalSciences, Inc. He says that most CEOs don’t really understand what HR can do,and don’t know how to get what they want. “They see HR as a necessary evil,as a cost center, like photocopy paper,” he says. “Most CEOs areuncomfortable with the topic of HR.”

Podurgal, Holzworth’s senior HR executive, says that until recently, HRhasn’t had clearly defined expectations or accountability. “Many CEOs justwant HR to keep them out of jail.”

Alan Schnur, a senior consultant and market leader in the San Franciscooffice of Watson Wyatt, offers this appraisal. “Sometimes, CEOs and the linedon’t really want HR to be strategic. HR is given a double message: Get out ofthe box, stay in the box.”

He tells a story about a CEO who challenged the executive team to figure outhow the company could triple revenue within five years. The HR team took theassignment seriously and came back with an assessment that said the company didn’thave the right leadership or structure to accomplish the desired growth, andproposed some changes. “The team was told, ‘You took it too far,’ “Schnur relates.

But for every organization in which strategic HR is an oxymoron, there isanother in which HR is actively helping to run the company. Talk is turning toaction, Schnur adds, and there’s never been a better time for HR to play astrategic role.

It will take the right CEOs working with the right HR executives to make ithappen. Holzworth credits Podurgal, for example, with helping to boost the450-employee organization to a new level. “There are a lot of HR professionalsout there who are not very effective,” Holzworth says. “Traditional HRpeople could not have accomplished what Rich has done. They are focused onemployment law, compensation, and dispute resolution. They don’t have theskills to be strategic.”

And it’s no wonder. HR has had few opportunities to learn strategic skills,because it hasn’t been included as a participant in the decision-makingprocess, and because many CEOs themselves operate in a strategic-planningvacuum, Schnur says. What’s more, HR’s efforts at strategy are often foiledbecause there is a disconnect between the espoused and the actual culture of anorganization, Wolfson notes. Examples of common company slogans that often havenothing to do with reality: Employees are our most important asset. We pay forperformance. We advance people on merit.

Podurgal and Holzworth are in sync about the corporate culture at AnalyticalSciences and they work closely. “In the beginning, Don couldn’t definespecific objectives for HR,” Podurgal says. “He saw that turnover was toohigh, that the company was not recruiting the top people, and wasn’t anemployer of choice.”

Holzworth says the first step in improving these critical areas was to definethe company’s broad initiatives and to confer with Podurgal about what HRshould do. What they came up with is so different from earlier notions of HRthat Holzworth dropped the term in favor of “organization development.” Theemphasis now is on performance development, performance management, supervisorand manager training, and employee competencies. Each element is tied tolong-term business goals.

“I can’t think of a proposal I took to him where he didn’t listen,”Podurgal says. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t push back, but he trusts us.”Podurgal has been given the latitude to add value to the business, and he hasseized the opportunity.

Although he has been at the company for little more than a year, Podurgal hasalready created a performance-management program that ties each employee’sgoals to organizational goals, and has implemented market-based merit pay,introduced succession planning, and built a competency model that is linked toHR. Costs per hire have been reduced, and turnover has been slashed from 38 to10 percent.

Despite impressive successes, no one says HR’s job is getting easier. AsSchnur points out, the wobbly economy is forcing CEOs to put more pressure onevery department to contribute more, including HR. He says there is a shortageof qualified people for important jobs, and that adds considerably to thepressure on HR to retain top performers and develop employees.

In recent weeks, he’s met with a dozen CEOs who have expressed a wish thatHR could make a greater contribution to their companies. A lot of people are “rootingfor HR” to step up to the plate and redefine its charge, Schnur says. “Whereare the models for brilliant HR work? Where are the Jack Welches of HR? When isthe last time that a CEO told shareholders, ‘Profits are up because we havethe best performance-appraisal system anywhere’?”

Schnur concedes that becoming a pivotal player won’t be easy. He predictsthat it will begin with small steps. “HR can be the quiet kid in the back ofthe class who has been watching for a long time and finally raises her hand tosay, ‘How about these three ideas?’ “

Workforce, June 2002, pp. 28-34 — Subscribe Now!

What a difference a decade makes. Just 10 years ago, HR in most organizations was still an administrative support function. Some went so far as to call it a backwater, where old forms were sent to die and where useless rules were written. But a few visionary souls–within HR and outside it–had seen the future and it looked very different. They saw a world in which HR was a key force in business, a valued player grappling with big challenges and helping to move business forward.

The visionaries faced rampant skepticism and even pockets of open derision. Undaunted, they set about proving they were right. They have succeeded. HR today is not only a major force in business, it s also the custodian of what we understand more than ever to be our greatest assets: employees.

The story of the transformation from administrator to strategist is a story we ve told through the experiences of the 89 organizations that have received the Workforce Optimas Award. It isn t a story punctuated by policies, forms or rules. It isn t a story told with the vocabulary of benefit plan enrollment, EEOC compliance or salary grades. It is a story writ large, of rules broken, conventional wisdom shattered and boundaries stretched.

It is, above all, a business story. In it you will find all the buzzwords of the past decade: reengineering, TQM, rightsizing, diversity, globalization. Like it or not, that s what everyone in business was dealing with. But whatever the lingo being slung at any point in time, the real business story of the ’90s is that HR was right in the thick of it, working alongside everyone else to make business better.

So the stories of the Optimas Award winners are stories of aging businesses reinventing themselves to compete in a new economy and of record growth in new high technology firms. They are stories of public-sector organizations struggling to compete in unfamiliar ways with the private sector. They are stories of organizations confronting deregulated marketplaces, a more diverse workforce and global expansion. They are stories of mergers and acquisitions that have reshaped the business landscape. They are, in short, stories of business in the often thrilling and always turbulent 90s.

In that sense, the Optimas Awards have fulfilled our mission. We created them 10 years ago to focus on business issues. We sought not only to celebrate the best work being done in HR but also to prove that HR could transform itself from administrator to strategist. We sought to focus on new, broader interdisciplinary competencies such as Managing Change and Vision. We sought to inform and to inspire.

Choosing the organizations to offer that inspiration is a labyrinthine process of reading, research, interviewing and heated debate. It may not be easily described, but the process affords us a unique opportunity to watch HR evolve. Although we never sit down with an agenda in mind, each year a theme or trend nonetheless has become apparent.

Never has that been more true than this year. It somehow seems fitting that in the 10th year of the Optimas Awards–and the first year of a new decade–HR has come full circle. Year after year we ve seen HR confront the new: new technology, new markets, new labor laws. This year, in organization after organization, the focus was on something so fundamental you could be forgiven for calling it old-fashioned: employee development. Yes, after years of solving other problems, HR is again focused on getting the best work out of the best people.

Was the work driven by competitive forces that made it necessary to focus on developing employees, or was it simply time to revisit HR s core purpose? Some of both, and probably other reasons, as well. In any case, the back-to-basics approach to human resources is not a step backward. HR may have come full circle, but in making the journey the circle itself has been transformed.

In the new circle, employee development looks radically different from one organization to another and perhaps even from one employee to another. In the new circle, there s a clear return in every dollar invested. And in the new circle, employee development is always in support of meeting a specific business goal.

Reaching those goals is never easy, as you ll see when you read the profiles of the 10 organizations added to the Optimas honor roll this year. But goals do get met, and today they are most often met because HR plays an integral role. That s what the visionaries a decade ago hoped to see.

So read on–join us in celebrating the remarkable achievements of this year s winners, and in doing so celebrating HR.

Have you noticed how little work characters in most television series actually do? Oh, I know the doctors on “ER” save their share of patients, the cops on “Law and Order” investigate crimes and the White House staff in “The West Wing” respond to issues of national importance. But I’m talking about the average show. Work is a secondary concern, and when characters are at work they’re far too concerned with cracking wise and pursuing office romance to actually be productive.

True, television programs are intended at least theoretically to entertain. But they’ve also become a sort of national water cooler, where characters we know and like talk about the things that interest and concern us. Most of the really important social issues of our time single parenthood, the impact of divorce, AIDS and more have been explored, at least superficially, on TV.

But work where most of us spend more than eight hours of every weekday is rarely discussed. There’s no real exploration of the struggle to balance the demands of work and family, of the fact that new technology makes it harder to get away from work, or of the fear and confusion borne of the escalating pace of change we all experience.

And it’s not only entertainment programs that largely ignore such issues. Talk shows are usually more concerned with adultery and weight loss, and the evening news is more likely to give us a steady diet of crime and weather than a meaningful dialogue about how we spend our lives and earn our living.

It may be unfair to single out television, because the print media for the most part doesn’t do a much better job. Yes, some magazines (Working Woman, Fortune and Fast Company come to mind) talk about work issues with some regularity. But the average daily newspaper does not.

My point is that there’s very little national dialogue about the topic that, for most people, is second only to family relationships in terms of its impact on our daily lives. I imagine that editors and producers would tell me that such content doesn’t sell, and they may be right.

But I also suspect that there’s less work-focused content than there might otherwise be because it is a tough topic in which the “answers” are far from clear.

Still, my wish for the new year is that there be more discussion about work in the months and years ahead. The pace of change we all experienced in the ’90s is nothing compared to the rate of change we face in the decade ahead. Almost every facet of when, where, what, why and how of work will change. Ignoring it will not make it easier, and none of us alone is going to figure out how to adapt.

The judge explained that we were potential jurors in a wrongful termination case. Because of that, the attorneys on both sides would be asking a lot of questions about our jobs, work histories, attitudes toward our employers, and so on. I suspected my chances of being chosen for the jury were somewhere between slim and nil, but I assumed the questioning would be interesting. What do employees think about work?

I didn t expect it would get interesting so quickly. The lawyers began with what I thought were the easy questions: “What s your job?” and “What s the nature of your work?” I was surprised when most of the panel found the questions tough to answer.

One woman explained she had been hired as a secretary for one executive, who subsequently left the organization. While they were looking for his replacement, she was asked to help another department. Eventually, the first executive s replacement was hired and she was asked to be his secretary, too, but retained the other duties she had taken on during the hiring process. Then another secretary went on maternity leave, and the woman assumed her work as well. That situation, too, proved to be permanent. The woman concluded, “My job description really bears no resemblance to what I actually do.”

When asked about her job, another woman answered by saying, “Do you mean what they think I do, or what I really do?” One man said his organization had changed hands four times in the preceding 18 months and that he no longer even knew who he reported to. And so it went. Only a handful of the prospective jurors could easily define their jobs.

We all know how it happens. A problem presents itself and we solve it. Then another problem surfaces and we solve that. Over time, the cumulative effect of the decisions has taken us somewhere entirely different from where we intended to go. Employees seem to understand how it happens, too. There was very little anger or confusion about the mercurial nature of work; it just was. In fact, some seemed grateful to have the opportunities to do new things and acquire additional skills.

If there was any frustration, it was about the fact that so many of the changes in work tasks and responsibilities happen below the radar screen of The Powers That Be. The potential jurors felt the changes would play no part in future job assignments, salary increases and so on. In other words, while they understood the semi-random nature of workplace change, they felt the future would be entirely random.

I can t help but feel there s some truth in that assumption, and I think it s a lost opportunity. Think how much better off organizations would be if they knew—really knew—what skills the workforce had and where in the organization those skills were. That knowledge would make it easier to deploy talent when needed. It would be easier to address pay inequities, establish succession plans and even reduce turnover. Ultimately, it would make for smarter management of the workforce.

Gathering that data won t be easy, I know. Maintaining it will be tougher still. But HR stands to gain a lot by initiating an effort, particularly if supervisors and even employees themselves have responsibility for managing such knowledge.

Employees understand the reality of business today. The question is, can we use that reality to our advantage?

Other columns by Allan Halcrow:

• Free Speech Isn’t Free of Responsibility
• Can This Marriage Be Saved?
• Filling Jobs Is Only the Beginning
• Dealing with the Challenges of a Workforce on the Edge

Recently I received a letter from one of our vendors. Letters from vendors are an almost daily occurrence, of course, but this one was different. It wasn’t about new technology or price increases. It was about HR.

The letter began by acknowledging that customers (including yours truly) probably were concerned about high turnover in the organization. (In truth, it has seemed that the organization in question has unlocked a revolving door.) The letter shared several reasons why employees have left the organization, but as I read between the lines, it all seems to come down to a single reason: They left because they could move on to something they believed to be better.

We’re all struggling to cope with a tight labor market, but employers in some areas are struggling more than in others. Our vendor, located in a relatively rural area, is among them. The letter outlined some of the challenges of the current job market, and then some of the steps the vendor is taking to address the problem. In the end, the message was simple: We know there’s a problem, we’re working on it, please hang in there.

This vendor is unique in its candor, but not in the problem it faces. The labor shortage is hitting businesses hard, and the evidence is everywhere. If you’ve tried to buy a hamburger, book a hotel room or get your car serviced, I’m sure you know what I mean. In a very real way, the labor shortage is beginning to impinge on efforts to stay competitive. That fact may be interpreted as either cause for despair or as a golden opportunity for HR.

In truth, the situation is both. But while everyone seems familiar with the despair, the opportunity remains largely unrecognized. That was my reaction, anyway, in the few days after I received the letter from our vendor. During that time, I answered several telephone calls asking me, in one way or another, to address the issue of strategic HR. Some were invitations to speak, others were questions from readers. But the underlying issue was the same: Please help us understand what strategic HR really is.

I think there are as many ways for HR to be strategic as there are organizations, but every effort should support a single objective: To keep the organization as competitive as possible. The labor shortage-which, incidentally, I do not believe is temporary-is a competitive issue. Beyond such niceties as customer-service standards is the reality that burgers must be made, hotel rooms must be cleaned, autos must be serviced. Without people, those activities will simply stop. Those who can’t provide the service or produce the product will go out of business.

There’s no magic-bullet response to the challenge. Instead, there are thousands of answers applicable to thousands of businesses in thousands of circumstances. The answers lie in getting creative with candidate sourcing, fine-tuning the hiring process, rethinking pay plans and training, training, training. In each case, HR can drive the process, HR can make a difference, HR can prove its worth.

It’s time to stop looking for the “right” answer, and to start taking action-any action-that makes things better. Otherwise, it’ll soon be time for your organization to be sending a letter to customers. That’s not the reflection of HR we hope to present, is it?

Other columns by Allan Halcrow:

• Free Speech Isn’t Free of Responsibility
• Can This Marriage Be Saved?
• Filling Jobs Is Only the Beginning
• Dealing with the Challenges of a Workforce on the Edge

I haven’t met Charles L. Walker, a former mechanic for American Airlines, but I suspect that he has a few thoughts about free speech in the workplace.

Walker says that in 1996 he entered a restroom at American’s maintenance facility at Los Angeles International Airport, and found the phrase “All Blacks Must Die” scrawled on a sign. In subsequent incidents, he found a cartoon of himself labeled “nigger” and his name next to a Nazi swastika. He also found a hangman’s noose (on several occasions) in the main walkway leading to the center of the airline’s servicing and repair facility.

He says that the graffiti and nooses were left untouched for months; several past and current employees have corroborated his story. Walker thinks that what happened is unacceptable, and that American didn’t do enough to correct the situation. He’s suing the company, and the trial was about to begin at our press time.

No one—including Walker—suggests that the airline did nothing in response to the problems. Among other things, the company conducted a formal investigation and created a graffiti patrol. Whether the company did enough will be the central question of the trial.

Technically, of course, whoever wrote the graffiti and displayed the nooses was exercising his or her free speech rights. I suspect that looking at the situation in that context offers scant comfort to Walker.

Neither, I’m sure, does American’s assertion that with 100,000 employees on the payroll, “not everyone in the company is an angel.” No doubt that’s true. But does that mean that Walker—and others—have to live with repugnant behavior? It certainly shouldn’t.

Organizations of all sizes are grappling with these issues, and we all know some of the steps taken to address such problems: antidiscrimination policies, diversity training, and so on.

At every turn, however, efforts to monitor employee expression in the interest of reducing workplace hostility are met with an equal pressure to solicit employee ideas, suggestions and participation. What’s an employer to do?

Imperfect though the situation is, living with the seeming contradiction of both encouraging and discouraging open dialogue is necessary. Policies, training and so forth are part of the answer.

But in most corporations—and in most of our national dialogue about this issue—one key factor has been overlooked. While we educate employees, and the population, about the particulars of discrimination and acceptable conduct, we must also remind people that with privilege comes responsibility.

For too long, we’ve focused on our privileges—free speech among them. The nation’s architects, however, never intended that democracy should be a free ride. To enjoy the privileges that life in the United States affords, we all have a responsibility to participate. Sadly, the ways in which we can do that—voting, serving jury duty, and so on—are widely ignored or disparaged.

I’m not suggesting that HR can fix our societal malaise. But HR can work to remind employees at all levels that any job offers both privileges and responsibilities, and that failing to meet those responsibilities is unacceptable. It’s a radical concept whose time has come—again.

Other columns by Allan Halcrow:

• Can This Marriage Be Saved?
• Filling Jobs Is Only the Beginning
• Dealing with the Challenges of a Workforce on the Edge

George Bernard Shaw famously observed that the United States and England are separated by the same language, but he might as well have been talking about HR and line managers.

Officially, of course, HR has arrived as a strategic business partner. Throughout this spring’s busy conference season, the conversation focused almost exclusively on working with the line: how to make it work, how to measure HR’s contribution, how to communicate success, and so on. The question is no longer if but how, and it’s all discussed in the somewhat self-congratulatory tone used by people who have arrived.

Unofficially, the story is very different. Away from the office, I hear a lot of frustration about HR from line managers. As soon as people find out what I do for a living, it becomes license to unload all their pent-up frustration. Adjectives like “irrelevant,” “clueless,” “unresponsive” and “bureaucratic” are among the kinder terms that I’ve heard.

These are painful conversations. After all, I know HR’s potential, and I’ve spent my professional life advocating for HR. Yet there’s such conviction in the stories I hear that I know I should listen carefully. In some cases, I have to agree that HR really does seem clueless, out of touch with reality and far from being any sort of partner, strategic or otherwise. More often, I think communication (or the lack thereof) is the issue. But I frequently struggle to figure out the real issue.

Consider a conversation I had at a Fourth of July barbecue. A good friend, who works in a large hospital, had nothing good to say about HR. She explained that her department has been short a staff member for several months. Because of the vacancy, everyone else has been working long hours, and now some are threatening to leave. And although the department is under pressure to meet the demands for tests ordered by physicians, they are falling behind.

HRhas been silent. The job remains unfilled. Calls to HR aren’t returned. Interviews haven’t been scheduled. The only visible activity has been to post the job in the cafeteria. Given the highly technical nature of the job, however, existing employees don’t have the requisite skills.

After many weeks of waiting for help, the department staff members did some networking with employees of other hospitals and gathered résumés. They sent the résumés to HR, and again heard nothing. Neither did the candidates. Now the department is doing its own interviewing, all the while cursing about HR.

This is partnering? Clearly not. But I hope it’s a matter of overload in HR because of the current labor market. My friend was genuinely surprised when I explained how tight the job market is, and how hard HR must work to fill jobs. She said she can understand the challenge, but can’t understand why no one in HR is taking the time to explain the situation. She now has no expectations of HR, because none have been set for her.

I confess that even I began to feel that HR, in this situation, is not a partner at all. By definition, partnering is a mutual relationship—it demands communication. If HR is to really succeed as a strategic partner, then it must help set expectations. Without open dialogue, where’s the evidence that HR isn’t clueless?

As we go to press this month, the national unemployment rate is just 5.2 percent. In Orange County, California—the labor market that most affects our ability to fill jobs—the rate is an incredible 2.5 percent. I’ll let you imagine some of the candidates that we’ve interviewed.

Employment statistics have dominated the business headlines for months. For all practical purposes, we’re living in an era of full employment. Many experts argue that those who are without jobs at this point are unemployable—permanently outside the job market.

But even that’s beginning to change. Recent studies show single mothers and young African-American men—groups that never before have seen the real rewards of even our greatest prosperity—are entering the workforce in record numbers. Now comes news that even ex-convicts are being offered jobs. Sherwood Ross, a business writer for Reuters, reports that more than 400 companies are hiring through the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

All of this is good news. It means that the economy is continuing to grow, and that, at last, everyone in society may benefit from that growth. It also means that many previously unemployable people will get job training and experience, which will help alleviate the looming long-term labor shortage.

That’s if—and this is a big if—we do the right things now. We can’t simply extend the reach of our candidate sourcing efforts and then breathe a collective sigh of relief when jobs are filled. And yet that’s often what’s happening.

As people are brought into the workforce who have no job skills and no job experience, it’s a fact that most of them lack the skills they need to succeed. That seems logical, doesn’t it? What doesn’t seem logical is that expenditures on training are pretty flat.

Once again, we’re falling victim to our own propensity for short-term solutions. Fill the jobs and we’ll worry about the rest later. The problem is that in today’s business climate, “later” is never very long from now.

Much of what we’re seeing, I think, is a reflection of the belief that the current labor shortage will just go away sometime soon. It won’t. We’ll be much better off if we make a deliberate decision now to invest in training, development, communication, and more.

Part of our focus should be on what we’ve traditionally labeled as “soft skills,” too. As Shari Caudron makes crystal clear in her story on emotional intelligence, it’s the soft skills that actually are better predictors of job success.

I realize that my suggestion is a lot like asking a driver to change his flat tire while the car is still zooming down the freeway. How are we to address such massive training when we’re still dealing with sexual harassment, new technologies and, yes, even employee sabotage?

The answer, I think, is to accept that we will reach some of our destinations later than we planned or than we may like. But if we don’t stop to address the issues, then we surely won’t ever get where we’re going. We can only drive with a flat tire for just so long before we are overrun or forced off the road. That moment is imminent.

When we asked you to identify the worst crisis you ever faced first thing in the morning, one respondent asked, “Aren’t all HR problems a crisis from someone’s perspective?”

Clearly the answer is yes: One person’s crisis (“the fax machine wasn’t working”) is another person’s minor inconvenience. Still, with all due respect, some crises seem distinctly more serious than others. This year, we were particularly struck by the remarkable number of you who have faced workplace violence. Here are some of the other crises you shared. We aren’t so presumptuous as to say any one is the worst, but collectively, they show the range of problems faced by HR:

1. Four women got into a fight during class. They all had to go to the hospital by ambulance.
2. Employees that were held at gunpoint during a robbery needed counseling.
3. I had to report a stolen car after an employee didn’t return with a corporate vehicle.
4. Medical insurance was canceled in error over the weekend.
5. A rogue supervisor started a mutiny. There were petitions and mass resignations.
6. The morning newspaper included a letter to the editorfrom an employee that charged racial discrimination.
7. Lightning struck one of our employees through his computer.
8. No espresso for our French staff. Eeeeck!
9. Placed an order for 10 temps, and none reported.
10. A high-level sales employee, who was supposed to be making sales calls, instead had flown to Las Vegas, gone on a drinking binge and was gambling using the corporate credit card.
11. A female employee pursued a male co-worker. When he did not respond, she killed his cat.
12. An employee was trapped at the airport in Lithuania. I had to get diplomatic authorities to intervene.
13. I came back from vacation to find that five vice presidents had resigned after receiving their bonuses.
14. Union organizers were onsite passing out cards.
15. We had to justify our entire budget by 11:30 or lose $500,000 in funds.