How to Be in HR and Not Talk to People

You can seriously do that - you can be in HR and avoid interaction with people. Tons of people do it.

I went to an American Electronics Association HR conference way back in 1991 or 1992, when the AEA was the shiz and the people there were the heads of HR from IBM, Motorola, etc. I listened and kept my mouth shut. I was the teeny weeny baby insignificant head of HR for U.S. Robotics which had maybe 300 employees at the time.

And these guys said "HR is a Systems job." Over and over they repeated that tiresome crap.

They said it's not about people anymore, except insofar as people are necessary to run our businesses. It's SYSTEMS! Performance management systems. Comp and benefits systems. HRIS systems. You can imagine.

Have we figured out fifteen years later that that is bull? You can have all the systems you want. Culture and communication are the key and I don't mean in some lofty four-color employee handbook kind of way, I mean one-on-one conversations all the time at all levels. Yuck. Isn't that a horrifying thought? You can't do HR without it.