Obsolescence. It comes for everyone…and everything, eventually.
For as long as the corporate world can remember, there’s been HR. Human Resources. Even the words sound archaic when said aloud. So much of what is transforming the business landscape isn’t even “human” to begin with, and yet we still have this department that leads a strangely concocted, mixed bag of functions that now seem like the wrong focal points for today’s dynamic and volatile work environment.
Everything from employee opinion surveys to safety to learning and development to compensation and benefits. And that’s not nearly all of it. The range of things HR is accountable for is mind-boggling. But it’s largely reactive and task-oriented. Sit through these online trainings, fill out these surveys, get your people’s signatures. Is it any wonder these departments’ work has become progressively inconsequential to the businesses they support?
In almost four decades as a leader, I cannot remember any call or email I received from HR that wasn’t about some mandatory thing I needed to do by a certain date which was atop their goals for the year and nowhere on mine. They never came to me with ideas to help make me or my department better at our jobs. Was ensuring our compliance with the rules around protecting proprietary information and using acceptable hiring practices valuable? Sure. Vital. But HR’s only role was tracking whether I completed those tasks on time or how many of my people hadn’t.
Somewhere along the way, this profession became the org chart’s junk drawer, with every function nobody else wanted, each one stacked on top of the one before, until the original mission got buried under the pile. That’s not a talent or commitment problem. It’s a design problem. The people in HR today didn’t choose to be spread so thinly across many disconnected functions with no time to go deep on any of them. They inherited it, and they’ve made it work far longer than it should have. They deserve medals.
While Marketing, Sales, Operations, and other critical business functions have evolved (or been forced to evolve) over the years, it’s ‘Human Resources’ that has been left behind. An afterthought. It’s not fair to them. And it’s certainly not fair to the other people in the organization who have unmet needs that, in theory, could be filled by their partners in HR.
That’s why traditional HR is obsolete.
You read that right. As crazy as it may sound, it’s long past time to sunset the traditional HR department and usher in the dawn of a new era for these talented but underutilized people in the fight against sagging employee loyalty, engagement and productivity.
If you’ve read any of my posts online or had conversations with me, you know I’ve been very candid about what’s broken for people working in business. I don’t mince words about the root cause of all that’s wrong with our work environments and how global workforce opinion survey data clearly shows we’re in crisis. It all comes back to ineffective leadership. And yet, HR has other priorities. They just keep chugging along, doing the best they can to fulfill their laundry list of to-do’s.
So, hypothetically, if we were to tear this antiquated HR thing down to the studs and rebuild it in a way that is tailored not only our emerging needs, but also future-proofing it so it can withstand the shifts we know are taking place in business? What could that look like?
Since we know that the employee engagement crisis is really a leadership crisis, let’s start there.
Picture this: a department that acts as an independent, objective auditor of leadership. One that’s constantly observing, evaluating, upskilling, and developing leaders so that they are fully equipped to enable their people’s success. Simultaneously, they’re holding leaders accountable for behaviors that reduce effectiveness, especially in high-pressure situations.
That’s right. No more HR folks sitting at their desk waiting for the next disenchanted employee to complain about something. Instead, their days would be spent embedded in the other departments. Always in their meetings, not as surveillance by some “big brother” group, but as a partner invested in, and tied to, their success. They would observe one-on-one’s, help in career planning discussions, anything and everything that helped raise the standard of leadership.
And what if this was their primary function? Their raison d’être? Imagine how that might change that company’s work environment. Imagine what it would do to employee loyalty, engagement, and productivity.
Hiring people you like instead of the best candidates? This department would intercede before a mistake was made. Failing to communicate expectations clearly or hold people accountable to them? That would show up in a monthly assessment with specific behavioral changes that were required, instead of in an annual review. Lacking AI skills? Here’s a 6-week certification process that will make you proficient. That’s how you help leaders get better so they can lead better. That’s how you create tangible value.
All the things today’s HR departments wish leaders did better would be priority one for this group and weighted heavily in their annual goals. I’m calling it Leadership Development and Accountability, or LD&A for now. Now you know why I’m not in marketing. Naming aside, the mission is the point. Just think about how many people-related disasters could be averted if this new LD&A department was completely focused on those core skills and critical behaviors.
But don’t stop there. Give LD&A the authority and autonomy it needs to hold even the C-Suite accountable for the same skill and behavior-based standards that all leaders are held to. No leader at any level would be exempt from being held to the new, much higher standard of skills, behavior, and performance.
I’m not naive. Some legacy responsibilities, like the compliance-heavy, administrative, transactional work, will always need a home. The difference is that those functions wouldn’t share a roof with the department responsible for upgrading leadership. Whether that’s automation, a shared services model, or a different reporting structure entirely is a design question for each company.
The group responsible for making leaders better at what they do while holding them accountable, can’t also be the group that’s buried in administrative work. Split the mission, and the increased focus would make each one perform far better.
There’s a famous Latin phrase, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” and it means, “Who watches the watchmen?” It questions how to hold those with power accountable. With LD&A and its new focus, we’d finally have a way to do just that, where the benefits are tangible, measurable, and deliver positive impacts across even the largest companies. In the same way we talk about the results of employee opinion results today, the LD&A group would publish company-wide reports and discuss the unique things they’re working to improve at each level of leadership in the company. That way, everyone, including frontline employees, would know that accountability isn’t level-conscious.
Just so we’re clear, none of this is an indictment of the people who’ve spent careers carrying HR on their backs. No way. They’ve held together a job that should’ve been three jobs, longer than they should have had to. But what they deserve isn’t just credit for enduring it. They deserve a mission narrow enough, and important enough, to actually go all in on.
Obsolescence does indeed come for everyone and everything. But in this case, that could be exactly what we need.
