And now .. let's have a big hand for HR   (Tue Nov 27 2007)

I've been feeling guilty about it all day.

It started with a LinkedIn question: "What is good about contemporary HR, what rocks your HR world?" Sounded pretty good. I opened it up. And found myself accused - well, not of crimes against HR exactly, but certainly of letting the side down. "I'm getting slightly cross", said Scott McArthur, "about all the negative comments and reports about HR and the HR profession."

That's me he's looking at. That post just the other day The 5% HR Manager. And I've been promoting that vicious article Why We Hate HR (oops - I did it again).

And that's not all. I asked my own LinkedIn question this week, asking people to complete the sentence "My company makes me mad when ...". It wasn't a bare-faced attack on HR. But what I was secretly hoping was that I'd get irrefutable evidence that HR was responsible for everything that makes us miserable at work. In fact, no-one seemed miserable at all. And not one of them attacked HR. That's LinkedInners for you. Goody Two-Shoes, all of them.

But I have to confess now, after hearing how cross I'm making Scott, that my question was ill-intentioned and unworthy of someone who calls himself an HR professional.

So what's Scott's take on this? He asks us to apply the principles of AI - no, not Artificial Intelligence but Appreciative Inquiry. I hadn't come across the term before, but it's a sweet philosophy. 'It's an approach to change that focuses on probing an organisation's best attributes and practices', Scott tells us helpfully.

And then there are 4 D's - Discover the best, Dream what might be, Design what should be, and create a Destiny - which will be.

Like that? I did.

In fact, it pretty much corresponds with my philosophy - except that for the first D, discovering, I'd been denouncing instead.

So is Scott right? Should we be identifying the positives rather than moaning at the negatives? And what are your HR dreams? What rocks - or would rock - your HR world?

Scott posted the question on his blog - McArthur's Rant - as well, and I enjoyed his site so much that you'll see it's one of my first Desert Island Blogs - sites that I read on my desert island, Bahrain (well, a little desert, lots of islands), and want to share with you.

Filed under: HR