Bill Ayers

President & CEO

Tel:  212.889.7788

bill.ayers@ayers.com
 
I’ve never experienced a time quite like this, when nearly all the human resources executives we speak with feel anxious, unsettled, and undervalued within their organizations. You are telling us that your performance expectations and deliverables have never been less clear.  Most of you are uncertain about your professional futures—whether you’ll have a job and, if so, where it will fall on the organizational chart—and rightfully so. Many organizations are changing the way they think about HR.  And now that the major downsizings are completed, some companies are hitting the "hit squad”—reducing within the HR function.

In our conversations, you are candidly raising some very serious issues:   How can I make myself as secure and valued as possible when so many people and functions are being viewed as expendable or, at least, interchangeable?  How do I maintain my professional integrity as tough business mandates erode the morale and basic “core” of my workplace?

There are two things every HR professional really needs to know:  what the organization’s priorities are and who your decisionmakers are.  These are the things on which your future hinges.

Unless you are the firm’s head of HR, you most likely have a responsibility to multiple leaders.  Because HR, ideally, partners with line management, one responsibility is probably to someone in senior line management—someone looking for daily, bottom-line results from everyone.  The other clearly falls within your HR organization.  You need to know how much power and influence the HR leadership really has.  Are they calling the shots or are decisions dictated by management elsewhere in the organization? What does your leadership want the HR practice to look like?  Can you align yourself with this direction and deal with the political issues or is it time to find a more meaningful alternative?

If you want to stay, conventional wisdom suggests you should align yourself with the doers—the senior team members who are drawing the road maps to get the firm through tough times.  Make it your business to have a finger on the pulse of what drives the company’s business:  Where is it today? Where will it be tomorrow?  At the same time, you need to become a historian.  In most companies, the pendulum swings in a repetitive pattern.  If you keep track of where it’s heading at all times and know the pattern, it’s hard to be surprised when the directional change occurs.

If consolidation and financial cutbacks are the order of the day, you, as a human resources professional, should be looking at your world with an eye toward gaining a clear understanding of what can and what should not be sacrificed in the short term to provide for long-term corporate strengthening, whether you should be willing to make a stand on this, and, if so, when and where.

A key issue here is that of integrity. When senior line management issues restructuring mandates, it falls to the human resources professional to deal with the soft side of the practice, and to do it in a way that keeps that workforce intact and functioning.  It’s about understanding and managing pain.  But what happens when the cuts go from fat, to muscle, to bone and then HR itself becomes the target?  What will be left to rebuild?  How will line management be able to retain, or regain, the trust of its HR partners? Will it come to pass that some of our most talented and dedicated human resources professionals will decide to look outside the function for their next career step?

I welcome your thoughts on the provocative questions above and what you are doing to take care of yourself.  You can contact me at bill.ayers@ayers.com.

So what are you doing for you, as an HR executive?  As a person?  How are you taking care of you?  Are you working out, doing something to manage your stress, staying on top of the game in terms of your profession, networking, etc.?