Monetizing HR: A single word changes everything, or does it?

Monetizing HR: The First in a Series

These days most people are fluent in Corporate Acronym, the shorthand language of doing business or having a job. Indeed, if you have employees of any sort then they almost surely started with the HR Department, aka Human Resources. Whether you are the owner of a business with two employees or CEO of a medical conglomerate with 15,000 people, HR is HR. Of course, that's the shorthand shortcut. HR actually stands for Human Resources, the definition of which is, according to Google:

 

hu·man re·sourc·es

noun

plural noun: human resources

1.

the personnel of a business or organization, esp. when regarded as a significant asset.

 

 Employees as significant assets? Does any Senior Executive really believe that at their core? Do they treat their employees as they would a valuable but perishable business asset? To smart C-Level Executives, the answer is yes. But that's not the point here; rather, it's the irony. Because when people refer to 'HR', they are not referring to the employees themselves but to the Human Resources Department, and very often the HR Department is viewed more as a necessary evil than as a positive companion in doing commerce. It is one of the reasons, if not the biggest reason, for companies bleeding revenue. 

So, what is the definition of 'Human Resources Department'? According to the Encyclopedia at Entrepreneur.com, it is:

 

Definition: The department or support systems responsible for personnel sourcing and hiring, applicant tracking, skills development and tracking, benefits administration and compliance with associated government regulations 

 

Adding the word 'Department' changed everything; this definition bears little resemblance to the first one. Assets are valuable because of their monetary value, but verbs such as 'sourcing', 'tracking', 'administering' and 'complying' are not usually associated with increasing revenue. Human Resource Departments do not increase revenue because they are not designed for that purpose, they bleed revenue because they are sourcing, tracking, administering and complying with the company's employee assets. Human Resource Departments are a necessary evil in the 21st Century business environment. They do not sell more product or encourage greater volunteer participation or increase efficient handling of patients, because that is not their intended function, right?

That depends on who you believe. 

Next:  Reconciling the definitions to make more money

What's your company's culture?

Do you, or someone you know, sometimes work through lunch to impress the boss? Or to keep the boss from questioning your value? Do you know anyone who comes in to work even when they are sick, because the company has no tolerance for unplanned absences? Are ideas freely shared in your work culture with no worries about who gets credit, or blame? When you take your vacation does your tablet or smart phone go with you, in case the office calls?

If the answer to one or more of those questions is 'yes,' and for most of America it is,  then you work for or know of a company that thinks the year is 1980, because such a culture no longer works. Sure, there are plenty of people out there looking for a job, but how many of those looking for work are employees the company would seek out intentionally? And, if they are people the company wants to hire, why didn't they try to find them in the first place?

In fact, company culture is directly tied to company profits, as the Top 100 Places to Work in America are well aware. The more your company culture makes it obvious how much employees are valued, the higher the company profits soar. Or, as in the case of a non-profit, the lower the revenues spent attracting and retaining the best employees when competitive salary and benefits are not always easy to fund.

The following article brilliantly addresses this 21st Century paradigm shift.

What the Top 100 Places to work know that other companies do not

Culture counts at top companies

The top performing American companies are showing every other company how it's done, but not all of them are listening. A company's culture is the Undiscovered Country for many CEOs, who are invariably trying to squeeze more productivity out of their work force but without doing anything radically different than before.

This, of course, is a short cut to disaster, since the latest Gallup results show that more than 70% of American workers are disengaged from their work. Therefore, those CEOs who try the same old thing over and over again are depending on employees who largely don't care about their job and are looking for a new place to work to increase their productivity with no additional motivation. And those disengaged employees are often ruining the workplace environment for the employees who do care.

Retention problems, anyone?


Below is a link to a brilliantly insightful piece by the CEO of a highly successful firm that has finally seen its hard work pay off; you can bet their employees are not only engaged in their work, but are glad to have their jobs and will fight to keep them.You can also bet that their bottom line reflects this.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/11/14/four-ingredients-for-a-winning-company-culture/#!

Budapest, anybody?

When I ask friends if they would like to travel to Budapest, Hungary, with Kathy and I, and then to Vienna, Austria, they all look at me like I have three heads. Budapest? Seriously? Well, yes, seriously. I need to go there for the book I'm writing, but more importantly I want to go there because I've heard it's an amazing place and I can stay in a 5 star hotel for less than a Micro-Tel would cost here in the states. Who doesn't want to visit one of the great capitals of Europe?

Apparently, everybody we know.

But in a list of the top 10 Most Overrated Places in the world and where you should go instead, travel writer David Landsel has this to say about Vienna and Budapest:

"#8 Berlin
An awkward teenager of a city, brimming with potential, Germany's big town has a long way to go before it's nearly as ready for its close-up as many travel writers (who often visit places like Berlin on expenses-paid junkets) would have you believe. The best reason for Americans to bother with pricey Europe these days is to roll around in the continent's colorful past. Berlin is too modern, too sterile, too expensive and too unsure of itself to merit much of your time or money.
Instead, try Head to the Hauptbahnhof and buy a train ticket to Prague. It's only 4 ½ hours away. After stopping to admire one of the most attractive cities in the world, you will probably be hungry, in which case you should leave Prague as quickly as possible in order to get to Vienna, where you can eat and drink like a civilized person. From here, it's an easy ride to Budapest, where you will consume your weight in strudel, go for a schvitz at the baths in City Park and buy tickets to a classical music concert that will ideally include everything Dvorak ever wrote."

Prague is awesome, I agree, but three days is plenty to see what should be seen.  It's the emphasized part that caught my attention.

Vienna is amazing and my one visit there was all too brief. After luxuriating in Budapest for 4 or 5 days I'd head on to Vienna to enjoy the good life. It would be so much fun, but it seems I'm the only one who thinks so.