A Radical Rethink of HR

For the human resources profession, this has been the best of times and the worst of times. Early in 2020, as the realities of the pandemic set in, all the big issues were HR issues and the function was challenged and valued as never before. Four years later, HR is asked to return to its traditional role of bridging between what business leaders insist on and what will keep the workforce at least partly happy. Some employees have been forced back to the office, against their wishes, and the only reason we’re no longer talking about quiet quitting is that we’re too busy grappling with the latest rounds of layoffs. So as we embark on the next era of work, the time is ripe for a rethink of HR.

To understand what the contours of a new concept might be, let’s tease apart the various interests at play inside a company. Imagine a Venn diagram consisting of two circles. The first circle represents the interests of a particular business. We’re quite familiar with the sorts of things it contains: Gain market share. Create better products. Invest in new opportunities. Drive efficiencies. Optimize the organization. The people-related things in this first circle include ensuring that the workforce has the right skills, or managing labor costs, or building a roster of strong leaders. These are all, obviously, necessary parts of running a business, especially one of any size, and they’re all perfectly good things. But they are not the only things, either.

So let’s consider the second circle. This circle represents not the interests of the business, as the first one does, but rather the interests of the people working there. It contains some things that are extrinsic — getting paid a fair wage, getting promoted — and many more things that are intrinsic — doing work that makes a difference, belonging to a supportive team, doing work that’s interesting and challenging at the same time, getting better at something, and so on. The second circle contains all the things that make a job worthwhile for the person doing it.

Now, the first important point to make is that our two circles do not perfectly line up with each other.