When HR turned bullshit

(Danish version here)

It has been 20 years, but I still remember my excitement when I finalized my master's thesis on Knowledge Management. In the years before, I had delved into sociology, organizational psychology, management concepts, corporate cultures and motivational theories. It culminated when I set out to document why Knowledge Management was a theoretical impossibility. Armed with the absurdly complex masterpiece, “Soziale Systeme” of the sociologist and systems theorist above them all, German Niklas Luhmann, I argued that knowledge cannot be shared. That it can only exist in the system that produced it and the only interaction between knowledge systems is communication.

Does that sound geeky? It was, but at the end of the 1990s, Knowledge Management was one of the most hyped directions in management theory, and as a young student it was like climbing Mount Everest if you could prove that the big consulting houses were just selling packaged hot air and fancy models with fast catchlines.

Anyway, it was probably not my arguing about autopoietic communication systems that convinced anyone, but Knowledge Management waned, and new trends emerged. That is how it has always been and that is probably how it will continue to be. In the same way with the HR bubble, I have moved around inside for the last 20 years. At least until someone calls the bluff and dares to saw off the branch they are sitting on. But let's start with a little history.

HR was born

In the 1960s, Human Resource Management emerged as strategic thinking about how you could gain business advantages if you worked more focused with the human “resources". Fast forward to 2023 and HRM, or simply HR, has become a fully integrated part of modern businesses on an equal footing with support functions such as finance, marketing and IT.

HR has lived a life in close symbiosis with the concepts of management and organization and together they have given birth to countless theories about management styles, organizational structuring, and personal motivation factors. One can almost only understate the industry and the financial basis it has created for consultants, authors, researchers and lecturers. With a few years' precision, one could almost predict when new management and HR trends would appear and then see from the company books how it was always followed by significant increases in learning and development spending – hopeful of the investments to strengthen business results.

In the period from the 1960s to the early 00s, new concepts lined up every decade – from McGregor's thoughts in the 60s on human motivation, Mintzberg's organizational structures in the 70s, to the Japanese-inspired Quality Management wave up through the 80s. At the beginning of the 90s, it was Knowledge Management, Situational Management, Learning Organizations and Value-based Management that gained the attention of big companies and ran off with their budgets for training and development. In the last 20 years, complexity has exploded with a jumble of new trends and combinations of existing ones – who hasn't come across examples like Democratic Management, Relationship Management, Self-management, Virtual Management, Digital Management, Transformational Management, Hybrid Management, Coaching, Empowerment, Visionary Management, Affiliative Management, Empathic Management, Authentic Management or Sustainability Management. To name just a few. Put any adjective in front of "management" and you can find examples of someone having researched or tried to conceptualize that particular type of management as decisively different from what already exists.

HR legitimacy 

The symbiosis with the HR functions requires them to desperately keep up with the new forms of management and invent or purchase training and new technology that can support the constantly changing focus. Many will probably remember when you still had to justify HR and make it business-focused with key performance indicators and annual satisfaction surveys. Today, the HR function is a matter of course in any medium-sized or large company - so complicated that no manager dares to ask whether the constant flow of new concepts, tools and trends has real value or business impact. Just look at the number of higher educations that can lead to a career with titles such as "HR Director" or "HR Vice President". Titles that were previously reserved for managers in the core business, but today are also HR positions with a seat in top management on an equal level with Finance, Sales and Product Development.

No longer will anyone argue against employees being the most valuable company asset and this naturally gives HR a position at the top of the hierarchy.

HR has gained rock star status when it comes to exerting influence and the other support functions are left envious of similar prestige and interest. Who wants to have lunch with the CFO or CIO when you can sit next to the SVP of People and have a chat about the company's talent program, bonus program or new family benefits? No longer will anyone argue against employees being the most valuable company asset and this naturally gives HR a position at the top of the hierarchy.

As part of the journey to the red carpet and the influence on the management corridors, HR has distanced itself from the relatively simple, theoretical starting point. At the beginning of the last century, Frederick W. Taylor began to experiment with the optimization of industrial work processes. He used scientific methods to define what could be expected of the workers and how they should be remunerated appropriately. He described the approach as "Scientific Management" due to its objective views of how to organize work in an ideal way for both management and employees. Scientific Management gained significant interest until the Great Depression in the 1930s. The difficult financial conditions resulted in escalating conflicts between employers and workers and soon Taylorism and Scientific Management were only seen as employers' constant focus on efficiency, reducing workers to nothing but machines. 

From Personnel Management to HRM

In the years after the Great Depression, the new "resource"-theories flourished - Financial Management, Material Management, Energy Management, Property Management - and Personnel Management.

Workers were now perceived as resources comparable to capital, machines, buildings and energy, and it was recognized that competitive advantages could be the result of attracting and retaining the right workforce. However, it was still mainly technical and administrative processes focusing on hiring and firing, salaries to be paid on time and training to be arranged for workers to perform better on the increasingly demanding industrial tasks. During the same period, humanistic trends gained further momentum – Freud's psychoanalysis was now widely recognized, Watson had founded behaviourism and out of the two grew humanistic psychology and a host of new psychological disciplines. Humans were suddenly more than raw labour, women flocked to the labour market, the economy boomed, and Human Resource Management emerged as a method for working strategically with "human resources" to positively influence business results. Workers were no longer just treated at a group level, but as individuals with rights and abilities that could have a decisive influence on a company's success. It became relevant to minimize occupational accidents and illness, and in terms of legislation, workers were given rights, freedom, benefits and opportunities for further development. They became employees, rather than workers, they made individual demands and even allowed themselves to move to a different employer if conditions or opportunities were better. All this had to be managed and for many, the modern HR function became indispensable, but at the same time an increasingly expensive support function. More HR employees were needed, more and more education and training hours were bought, and more was spent on recruiting and selecting the best employees. As a natural consequence, HR had to continuously show that it was adding value. KPIs found their way into HR reports, training and courses had to be counted and documented, personality tests had to be carried out before employment, efforts to reduce sickness absence had to be established - and annual surveys were carried out to “measure the temperature” of the organization and show whether employees were motivated and engaged.

Keeping ourselves busy

And this is where sanity derails. Over the last 20 years or more, HR has reached - let's call it what it is, a self-reinforcing bullshit stage. There is no longer any limit to how many or how often new things can be introduced. The work on documenting effects and making business value-add probable has become a circular task that, in itself, requires more and more resources. “Let's keep ourselves busy" may sound like a joke, but in HR it is not that far from reality. The palette of management trends is vast and continuously introduced. Cultural behaviours and organizational values are constantly increasing in numbers and complexity, and they take on new linguistic shades every few years. HR processes are retired and renewed before anyone has a chance to get familiar with them. Commonplaces like "lifelong learning" are carried forward like the Olympic torch, although most "education" consists of 2-day seminars with long “email catch-up breaks” or 30-minute online courses that are completed because it is mandatory and not out of interest or relevance. When everyone has completed their yearly elements of education and training, HR can "document" that they have generated thousands of learning hours and prepared the employees for a new year full of new challenges. To further increase the complexity, they have separated themselves into subdivisions such as Benefits, Payroll, Compensation, Staffing, Business Partnering, Training & Development, Labor Relations, Health & Safety, Policy... and the list goes on.

To further increase the complexity, they have separated themselves into subdivisions such as Benefits, Payroll, Compensation, Staffing, Business Partnering, Training & Development, Labor Relations, Health & Safety, Policy... and the list goes on.

No one has an overview of who is doing what - not even internally in HR. Task groups are formed to clarify scope of work and avoid too much redundancy. No one can see-through Human Resource Management anymore. It is everything and everywhere. It’s an umbrella organization with a jumble of subdivisions that has more internal meetings than with the business units it is supposed to support. Imagine the commotion if a manager suddenly decided on his own rather than staring apathetically at his latest NPS score and replying to the employee who wants time off to look after his sick aunt: "You'd better check that with HR".

Happy Holidays

The work tasks in Human Resources have moved by leaps and bounds away from the original "hire and fire" or determining a reasonable salary for the effort provided. HR and its sub-functions are now the champions of the company's culture – this is where "right" and "wrong" originates - marketed with their own graphic universe, on the intranet, posters, flyers, mugs, t-shirts, email newsletters and video greetings - especially up to the religious or cultural holidays which may no longer be mentioned by name but are simply celebrated as "Happy Holidays". From here, company managers are provided “approved communication” without any edge or risk of offending anyone, this is where rules and correct behaviour are created, written in policies and communicated through compulsory courses. Good management is defined here, models for employment interviews, exit interviews, engagement interviews and development interviews are built here. From here, culture is defined and documented in such airy phrases that no one quite knows what it is - apart from the fact that everyone is equal, and everyone is included.

Now what? Do we continue to increase complexity or will someone stand up and say it's gone too far? That the bullshit barometer has reached a dangerously high level and that we will have to put limits on how much time and how many resources a company can spend on non-business related activities?

Here's a suggestion: Let HR introduce another new management form. A way of conducting management that can neither be visualized with a complicated model nor requires expensive certifications.

In contrast to the last 60 or 70 years, the result this time should not be to increase complexity but to reduce it. It just requires the fundamental ability that most of us are equipped with. An ability that does not require special talent or a long education, but simply needs to be trained because we have forgotten how to use it. The ability to speak up. Oppose the foolish.

As with all new forms of management, it must have a unique name. We will call it "Cut the Crap Management".

Cut the Crap Management

As with all new forms of management, it must have a unique name. We will call it "Cut the Crap Management". This requires managers to act as managers, make independent decisions, stop doing foolish things and speak up when initiatives from HR or its sub-functions do not add clear business value. We can start by breaking the relevance of 30 different forms of management which pretend to be unique and offer something decisively new. These are concepts – created with a purpose. Think of this - to be relevant, a researcher, keynote speaker, consultant or lecturer must be able to present something new. Nobody wants to read a management book that does not offer a new direction, a new model, or a new methodology. Nobody wants to participate in a course with the same name as the one you participated in 3 years ago.

The goal here is not to discount the relevance of the last 60 years of humanistic research or experience in human motivation factors. We just have to insist that there cannot possibly be so many different types of good management that they can reasonably each bear an individual name, demand individual courses, have their own unique models or claim to present something epoch-making new. Clearly, to some extent, this is repackaging, old wine is being poured into new bottles.

Leadership is direction, motivation and respect

Leadership basically consists of three elements – provide direction, motivate, and show respect. For the same reason, Frederick Taylor was not entirely wrong back in 1903 and 1911 when he published his books on Scientific Management. Although it lies deep in every HR or management-educated academic to distance themselves from Taylor's philosophy, he basically got it right. Slightly oversimplified, it is a trade relationship subject to mutual satisfaction.

The employer needs to have a piece of work performed and has a reasonable expectation that it will be done following the directions given. The worker must have something in return and has a reasonable expectation that it is appropriately linked to the effort or the result.

To counter the most rigid opponents of such a simplistic presentation, we can add that a "piece of work" can be interpreted broadly - it can be tangible and physical, a pile of rocks that needs to be moved from A to B, a product that must be developed or an intangible creative process that has to take place. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was probably mostly about delivering a piece of physical work in exchange for financial compensation. Today, the relationship can of course take all kinds of forms – the work delivered can be diffuse and virtual, it is not necessarily measurable, and the number of hours spent performing it does not have to be counted carefully and remunerated comparably. Today, the compensation can be both financial, in the form of freedom, special benefits, self-determination or self-realization. The primary thing is no longer only the financial incentive, it can also be that the nature of the work in itself gives satisfaction in life, special experiences, personal development or insight you could not otherwise achieve.

A barter

Ultimately, though, it's still a trade-off. You do something - and you get something. And it was exactly this basic relationship that was already the key focus 120 years ago when Taylor developed his now-criticized theory. It lacked depth and understanding of the individual's needs and the different nature of the work. Yes – today. Naturally. It was a time when you worked to survive and survived because you got paid and could support yourself and your family. Of course, work became more complex, but fundamentally it is still the barter and the mutual satisfaction that is the most important relationship between employer and employee - and thus the core of management. Good or bad.

The exchange relationship starts with an employer's desire to move the company in a certain direction to achieve something. The reasons are in principle irrelevant to the employee. It can be producing gizmos, providing transport, designing houses, publishing new knowledge, or creating digital works of art. Regardless of why a company exists and for what purpose, it is the employer who defines and sets the direction. To get the necessary help, the employer must motivate others to become workers. Motivate to take part in the relationship. This can be done by giving something in return - even today, few people would do without some form of financial compensation. After all, biological survival is still essential, but when the basic needs are covered - then the barter is wide open for negotiation. Maslow's old “hierarchy of needs” from the 1940s provides a good starting point, although today you can probably make do with only 2 layers – the physical needs and everything else. In 2023, it no longer makes sense to define common human needs beyond the basics. Motivation is individual and therefore the barter in a working relationship must be flexible and with many options.

Mutual respect

The last element is mutual respect. Respect for the premise under which the working relationship exists. The employee's respect for the employer providing the direction. The employer's respect for the fact that the employee can leave the relationship or underperform if the motivational elements are not sufficient. You can also equate mutual respect with empathy – the ability to put oneself in another's place, to understand another's situation and feelings. (And by the way - it goes both ways. Many employees naively think that being a personnel manager means having a lot of influence or deciding the details of employee conditions. The opposite is most often the case. The middle management role is a trivial position).

Adhering to those simple, fundamental principles just requires common sense and human insight. So why is it that in the last 100 years or more, we have not seen a managerial trend called "Common Sense Management"? Why isn't anyone writing books about common sense or developing common sense online courses?

Because common sense is relative and because Human Resources, with all its subdivisions, has long since become autonomous and has no real interest in promoting the plain and simple. HR has created a self-reinforcing right to exist and is so integrated into the internal structures of modern organizations that no one can imagine how to operate without it. Can you imagine Situational Management, Holistic Management, Transformational Management or Value-based Management replaced by common sense? Can you imagine the company's values being replaced by common sense? Company policies? No, of course not - and there are many weighty and reasonable reasons for that, but if you have ever worked in a large, complex company, chances are that, occasionally, you have wanted to apply a little common sense to free up time for "real work". Work that was in your job description when you joined. How many courses, workshops, tools, and processes have HR presented where the employees have probably said to themselves: "Can't I just use common sense"?

As one of history's most famous sociologists, German Niklas Luhmann, somewhat cryptically, put it, "only complexity can reduce complexity".

Complexity as a strategy

Unfortunately, common sense is impossible to implement in a modern, hyper-complex society where most is individual, and little is shared. As one of history's most famous sociologists, German Niklas Luhmann, somewhat cryptically, put it, "only complexity can reduce complexity". So, when large companies have to embrace diversity - in culture, behaviour, needs and expectations, we struggle to find any other options than to build correspondingly complex structures that can regulate even the most basic things. Human Resources is without comparison the organizational function that has had to embrace and address the biggest challenges relative to when it emerged. In a time when even biological gender is no longer firmly definable, HR must develop and maintain systems that can handle a non-discriminatory organizational culture and help managers and employees to navigate in a world where nothing is fixed and common anymore. Therefore, common sense cannot function as a benchmark because "common" and "sense" are individual, and we must, to some extent, accept the myriads of supporting systems, performance tools and conduct policies that have flooded our large and medium-sized companies.

That brings us back to "Cut the Crap Management". It is a fast and easy way of reducing complexity. Some people know early in life what they are passionate about - what education they would like to have and what job they dream of doing. But the majority probably have doubts, and then it might be easier to opt out than to opt in. Without knowing what you want, you can still say for sure that you don’t want to be a heart surgeon, a professional swimming coach or a racing driver.

What doesn’t make sense

We do not need a shared "common sense” to determine what doesn’t make sense. Take all the ”checkbox exercises” as an example. We must tick off, for the sake of documentation (HRs annual targets) and at the risk of legal consequences, that we accept being subject to the company's Code of Conduct, that we have seen the video about the company's culture, completed the online course about diversity, passed the test or promised not to accept bribes or share business secrets with our neighbours.

Why do you have to record working hours per week if you are judged based on results, why should dentist visits mainly be “scheduled outside working hours” if you spend Sunday evening preparing for your Monday meetings? Why do we track training and courses completed, but not if its content is applied in daily work or has contributed to better results?

It took a pandemic before the world's companies discovered that working from home can be more efficient than sitting in the office from 8 to 6, but it also took a pandemic to show how little trust we have in people being able to behave responsibly. HR has hardly invented more rules or registration than during Covid-19 or had a greater “moment” or more influence, than when there was a ”carte blanche” to order protective equipment, deny office access or set up one-way traffic in the corridors.

Some will say that we would have been lost without HR guidance, others will say we are thinking beings who can take care of ourselves and cross a road without being run over. We can collaborate without a manual or a specific model and decide on what is meaningful in a given situation. After all, employees are hired based on a long list of requirements and through a well-structured process - so they can likely also make sane decisions and solve challenges constructively. Because the world is constantly changing and the tasks of tomorrow are different from those of today, it doesn't make sense to manage people through rigid policies and rules. We need employees and managers who can act independently, who can say yes and no and focus on the task at hand - achieve a goal by using their intellect.

Now that is a challenge, I would like to see HR address. It seems like regulation and uniformity are feeding themselves. Large companies celebrate diversity, but at the same time, they create policies that are the same for everyone across cultures and local norms. Training and education are designed based on mistrust and the lowest common denominator and have a focus on what can go wrong rather than what can succeed. Compulsory courses are about limiting risks and securing common frameworks and rules – instead of promoting creativity and unleashing potential.

Hire smart people

Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, often spoke about the importance of employing independent-thinking employees and, not least, giving them space to challenge the existing:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” - Steve Jobs

That requires a break from uniformity and constraining policies. It requires HR functions to promote trust and help managers lead based on what makes sense locally.

You cannot act as a manager and set direction if you are constrained by rigid procedures or do not have the competence to decide how employees should be supported or motivated. If you are responsible for achieving a goal, you must also have decision-making competence to influence the way to get there.

Modern HR functions should work to reduce rules and frameworks and support managers to act in a way that makes sense in the role they are assigned to perform. Instead of dictating meaningless uniformity, HR should work to support meaningful diversity.

Historically, Human Resource Management emerged as a strategic perspective on human resources, a function that should help the business navigate the relationship between employer and employee. Instead, HR has become a function supporting its legitimacy by creating a self-reinforcing complexity. A narrative of HR being indispensable based on additional complexity rather than less.

But no one is indispensable. Human Resource Management does have a relevant role in modern organizations, but it should be from a humbler position. Let’s reduce unnecessary complexity and focus on releasing organizational potential.

I think “Cut the Crap Management” can help us get started.