Insights

… internal organizational issues tend to remain the same.

Consider this list of work challenges from 20 years ago that I found when cleaning out some files:

• Slowness in responding to market and world changes + internal change resistance
• Slow execution
• Lack of focus and traction on strategic issues, including confusing strategic plans with strategy
• Poor (or no) performance management, leadership development, and succession planning
• Team (lack of) performance
• Process inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, especially for product and software development
• Inability to attract and keep talent
• Conflicting priorities or worse, no real priorities
• Multitasking to distraction and lack of results
• Need for innovation
• Too many meetings
• Burnout and overload

There were more, but you get the idea.

How many of these look familiar? For example, how many times have you heard “how can we go faster”? Or had your calendar loaded with so many ineffective meetings that you couldn’t get any work done?

Don’t treat symptoms … look for root causes and make real, sustainable changes this year – don’t wait another year!

“Chief Remote Work Officer” is confounding, beyond the trend to name a new C-something for every new situation.

Remote work today is about how people are enabled across the business to do their best work in remote/virtual settings. That should be the province of HR, the business-wide “people” function and guiding force in workforce changes.

I can see hiring (or contracting) project managers and knowledge specialists to accelerate HR efforts. But a separate C-level officer? It only serves to gut HR’s business role and value. It will also add confusion to who does what.

Also, hiring someone from the outside, new to the business culture, to shape the business culture for the future is playing with fire. You may get culture change, but maybe not the change you had hoped and in line with your business legacy, values, and vision.

If your response is something like “HR can’t innovate” or “HR can’t handle major workforce changes” or whatever … doesn’t that indicate a problem with HR even without the remote work issue?

We are in an era of relentless change. If current HR leaders can’t help the business continually adapt, then work on THAT problem. Don’t add another C-level leader to treat the symptom.

By Mike Russell, from a LinkedIn post commenting on this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-chief-remote-working-officers-are-now-navigating-organizations-into-a/

Prelude

Like it or not, this is a time of crisis for many businesses.=

Crisis is a time when Human Resources (HR, the People function, or whatever it is called in your business) can be a key leader in helping the business move forward and out of the crisis. A crisis often calls for change – including people and how they are organized – and for people to have hope. HR – the function that is about people – should be leading the way.

Sadly, this is less the case than one would think. And the opposite is often true, with the HR function, especially training and development, being the first to take cuts.

In my last post, I offered that this is because HR rarely can show ROI or other financial relevancy. In a financial crunch, only those functions that can show – or assist – with tangible financial benefits are considered relevant at leadership table deliberations.

HR may be under attack, but there are ways out. This white paper discusses how to achieve positive ROI for one of the HR functions, learning and development, during a crisis … or anytime for that matter.

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