Enjoy your seat at the table, HR, but don’t take it for granted…

One of my favorite HR articles is Keith Hammonds’ “Why We Hate HR” (Fast Company, 2005). It’s an absolute classic and if you’re ever in one of my HR classes, you’re going to have to read it (it’s also on the People Leader Accelerator reading list).

The article starts out by describing an HR conference in Las Vegas circa 2005, with attendees feeling hopeful and optimistic that they’re just on the cusp of getting that ever elusive “seat at the table.” Hammonds offers an entertaining and cynical non-HR view of HR, lamenting the function as a “necessary evil” focused on bureaucratic minutiae, dumb rules, and general resistance to all things cool. This is all made worse, in his view, because the function seems to have so much upside potential. Confession: I, too, have generally found HR to be a maddeningly frustrating function to deal with, which is probably how/why I ended up as a professor that studies and teaches HR.

Now, let’s fast forward 17 years or so (2022) where I find myself living out the scene described by Hammonds. At an HR Conference. In Las Vegas. And hearing lots of talk about the “seat at the table.”

(I need to pause here to plug that conference, HR Transform, because it really was a solid event with tons of super smart folks—way to go, Samara Jaffe!)

There is something different about the 2022 scene, though. Namely, there were more than a handful of HR leaders there proclaimed—and I believe them—that they actually had gotten that once-elusive “seat at the table.” They were real life strategic partners, no longer like Aaron Burr struggling to get in “the room where it happens.”

How did this occur? Did we as a profession finally read, and more impressively implement, all of that great stuff about linking HR to the business (shout out to John Boudreau, Dave Ulrich, and others fighting this fight for so long!).  

Maybe. I’m sure some have, at least to some extent. My suspicion, however, is that if we (HR) look in the mirror and we’re willing to be painfully honest with ourselves, we might see that our environment contributed more than a little to our newfound status as “strategic leaders.”

Look, I’m not trying to be a wet blanket here. Without question, the past few years have been brutal in many ways: global pandemic, remote work, no school for kids, very real death and suffering, the pandemic again, return to the office...er…work from anywhere, the most competitive talent market most of us have ever seen, and so on. And HR was front and center in, not just tangentially connected to, all of these issues in ways that everyone could clearly see. CEOs, COOs, stockholders, and everyone else were at the mercy of HR to figure it out…in real time…with no playbook. So, to be crystal clear, we earned that seat at the table.

I’m worried about us, though. Situations change and, if you’re watching even just a little bit, you’ve probably noticed they have already started changing quite meaningfully. The economy is doing weird things. Investors are changing their expectations. And, whether rightly or wrongly, many company leaders are starting to shift their focus away from HR-related areas and back to “typical” business activities. What does this mean for us?

To me, it seems kind of like we made it through the triage stage admirably and now our patient (the business and its stakeholders) is stabilizing just a bit. They’ve still got some time in recovery mode, which will allow us to continue enjoying our relative importance for a bit, but soon they (CEOs, boards, investors, etc.) will get their footing back and start looking around. When they do, it’s entirely possible they will see, whether accurately or due to rose-tinted glasses, a world that seems increasingly…dare I say…normal (or less weird).

If…scratch that…when this happens, will they continue to view HR as being absolutely vital to the health of the business? Or might they sadly just remember our efforts as a series of heroic acts in a time of crisis long ago?

We can hope for the former, but I think we should plan for the latter. While this is certainly an opinion piece from one guy and should be weighted accordingly, there is some precedent for this view. Wharton Professor Peter Capelli once described it this way: “…when companies are struggling with labor issues, HR is seen as a valued leadership partner. When things are going more smoothly all around, managers tend to think, ‘What’s HR doing for us, anyway?’”

Be wary. HR has been given lots of well-deserved credit over the past few years, but we will quickly cede our standing if we go back to focusing on bureaucratic activity, chasing down every bright shiny object, or pursuing priorities that are not clearly aligned to business strategy.

Let this be a call to action, then: As our environmental context shifts ever so slightly away from whatever we just lived through, it’s on us in HR to find ways to continue adding value—real, strategic value—to our organizations. Some innovation will be required, but a lot of this will probably involve revisiting and doubling down on the simple-but-not-easy fundamentals (for more, see Effron and Ort’s work here). Beyond that, it’s also on us to explicitly and constantly communicate the HR value proposition, as we can’t assume others will just “get it.”

We’ve earned our seat at the table. Let’s not give it up.