Not sure why, but “HR for Idiots” is one of the most common search phrases bringing most volume to my site. I am not lucky as it says a lot about the opinion of the people about Human Resources management. Sorry, HR is not for idiots. It is for clever people, who are skilled in people management skills.

But, it is a sign for the HR Teams, what the employees can think about Human Resources. That is the business function for the idiots. They can easily work over there and they can influence the business hardly.

The HR Professionals have to work on the theoretical background of Human Resources as they can explain the HR theoretical models. The theory behind the business practice is extremely important. It builds the foundation for a discussion about the right decision and the right vision for Human Resources.

The HR Professionals have to be strong in the knowledge of the HR theories as they can proudly discuss about the motivation, compensation and leadership practices in the organization. The arguments have to be based on the theories and the results from different studies, the arguments cannot be emotional and full of “I think” or “I personally believe”. The managers believe to facts, tables and graphs. The emotions are not enough. When you are too emotional, you are the HR idiot.

It is the same as with the measurement of HR contribution to the business, the HR Professionals have to demonstrate their strong knowledge of the HR theories as the people can trust to the HR initiatives and they can understand how they are compliant with the theories, which work.

In other case, you will be seen as the HR idiot. Human Resources is not for idiots, it is not.

The first month of the Free HR Guide is finished. It was December and the last month of the year is always special. The people are not interested in Human Resources and we celebrate the Christmas.

Nevertheless, for Free HR Guide it was a good month. The main accomplishments and observations:

1. Google gave me PageRank 2 after one month. This is amazing, but it will take long time to change it from 2 to 3.
2. The Bing search engine is extremely lazy. Google and Yahoo indexed my site, but Bing is still waiting in the queue.
3. The average daily number of the unique visitor is 9, which is not that bad for a completely new site, I think.

The goals for January:

1. Finish the part about 4 major HR roles
2. Describe David Ulrich’s HR Model
3. Get 5 email subscriptions

Quite luckily, HR sites are not good in SEO generally. It is not that hard to score high for several keyword if it is not a job, resume or something bringing high volumes.

Human Resources will face many challenges in 2010. The pressure for building slimmer and cheaper global organization will continue and Human Resources will be asked to deliver its parts of the goal of the reengineered global organization. Or the local organization able to win the battle with the global players. This will be the main goal and priority for many Human Resources around the globe – to help building a new global organization able to predict the issues in different countries and utilizing the strong growth potential at different local markets.

The global economy goes through a dramatic change and new products and services will be born as the recession changed the behavior of the customers for many years. We all carry a lot of debts and we cannot continue in our spending habits. We have to find a new way of living and it will hardly impact many organizations.

The recession 2009 was the recession of the global organizations. They have learned several lessons, which have to be solved and they will be a major improvement to the future:

1. Too big to manage globally
2. Keeping local risks under global supervision
3. Global management of talents

The big organizations found it extremely difficult to manage the whole organization globally. The local management was not loyal to the global decisions and the local law was their main argument. The global organization will spend a lot of time investigating the possibilities to manage the organization efficiently and using more centralized power over the local entities. The global organization will set a new management best practice for the international organizations.

The local risks are extremely dangerous for the global organizations; they cannot build their healthiness on the global level. The banks were a good learning story, which the risks have to be managed locally as the organization can be healthy on the global level. It is will be a huge challenge for the organization and it will be the next best practice for many organizations. It gives a chance to the local organization, as the rules of the global competition will change completely.

The global organization discovered again, how difficult it is to build a real global team. They spent a lot of time and money into special global training sessions, but they were not able to react quickly in the coming recession and the entities used their local approach, which was extremely hard to coordinate on the global level. The real global organization is still a dream to come, it is not working right now. The Human Resources will be asked to be a part of the global team, bringing the solution, which will be suitable for all the different nations working for the global organization. Hard task, but the work in the team will be inspiring all.

The HR will have to reengineer itself again to be successful. The recession changed the view of the top managers and the leaders on their organizations. The organizations are vulnerable and they are not that strong as they expected. Many big organizations failed in the recession and the governmental help was needed for them. Building the independent and strong global organization will be a challenge of 2010. Human Resources has to be closely attached to the initiative as it is about the people, nothing more.

It is a new year and many employees will ask for their salary increase. It was a good story for previous years to select several employees and giving them a nice salary increase in the beginning of the challenging year. Year 2010 will be extremely challenging and the employees can expect no salary increase, they can be lucky to receive some job from their manager.

The employees will have to continue in being patient and not expecting too much from their manager. The employees will have to live on the same personal budget as they did manage to live in 2009. The money is not that bad. They will survive.

The economy and we enjoyed several year of the unhealthy growths and we made a lot of debts. We are called to pay back those debts and the organizations have to focus on two main initiatives:

• Cutting the debts
• Innovate the product lines

The manager will have to motivate the employees to focus on the main two initiatives of the organization without giving any financial motivation (except the base salary). The manager will not be Santa Claus coming at the end of the month giving the extra money to employees.

The bad role of the manager will continue through 2010.

The performance appraisal is not about the forms used to formally record the appraisal discussion, but the HR Professionals always discuss about the forms used in their companies. The appraisal procedure is not about the form, but it is focused on the correct filling of the forms in many organizations.

The performance management system is about consistent links between HR Processes as the employees feel the impact of increasing their performance on their career, promotions, learning opportunities and salary slips. In reality, the performance management is not connected and the employees see just the performance appraisal forms, which are archived and nobody works with them consistently.

The Human Resources is responsible for the design and setting of the performance management system in the organization. Generally, the HR employees are focused on the correct filling of all forms and HR does not monitor and evaluates the content of the appraisal forms. The number of the returned appraisal forms measures the performance management process; it is not monitored by the satisfaction of employees with the appraisal procedure.

The performance appraisal should bring a clear feedback to the employee on the most important moments of the last year. The employee should know about his or her value for the manager, team and organization. The employee should receive information about the necessary next steps and the outlook to the future. The content of the appraisal procedure should not be the surprise for the employee or the manager and the performance appraisal should act as the mutual contract for the next period as both the manager and employee are satisfied with the results. The performance appraisal forms should just record the discussion, they should not be leading the discussion and they are not the main goal of the evaluation procedure.

The salary negotiations were so easy. The employees expected to get a high salary increase, the Finance guys projected large salary increase in the budget projection and the Board of Directors agreed to pay a price for the success. It changed last year. We have to be cutting our costs, Guys. The message was pretty simple, but the solution was painful.

The salary negotiations for 2010 will not be easy. The employees expect to get at least some salary increase. The Finance guys expect to continue a nice trend of the cost cutting. All the players remain the same.

The employees believe they invested a lot into the future of the organization. They worked hard. They received no bonuses for 2008 and 2009. They did not receive any salary increase in 2009. The newspapers are optimistic about the future of the economy. They want to be recognized and they want to receive some salary increase in 2010. It is a starting point for the discussion about the salary increase in 2010.

The Finance guys believe the economy will not get better in 2010. They believe the recession is not over and the organization will have to cut the jobs and costs to keep competitive on the market. The Finance guys are usually right, when it comes to the decision of the top management.

The HR Management has to find the right compromise for the salary negotiations 2010. The employees have to be kept conservative about the idea of increasing the salaries quickly. They have to expect the salaries will be kept flat, but they should not be lowered.

The employees can be right and the economy can improve. But there is a competition running for the winner in the industry and the organization wants to be a successful participant. The organization has a chance to buy its its less lucky competitors.

The HR Management has to be careful in the salary negotiations 2010, as the job market is still full of people willing to be employed (at any price). The job market can change dramatically in 2010 again and the expectation of the high salary increase is completely wrong.

The managers know the secret of the short-term motivation of the team to get the results, but this motivation cannot be used to receive sustainable results as it can destroy the team completely. The consistent performance results need different approach, which is fully focused on the team, its organization and the individual members.

The sustainable performance needs a different managerial approach. The manager has to cultivate the performance and the growth of the performance is slow and consistent. It is about building the team spirit and helping the members of the team to discover their strengths and weaknesses.

The sustainable team performance is about the common vision of the team and their shared values. The manager is not a person to teach the team, but the manager has to lead and manage the employees to treat other members of the organization fairly and the managers help the employees to grow their skills and competencies.

The consistent high performance is not born itself, the manager has to develop it and the HR tools have to be helpful in this effort. The boss can make the promises, but the promises have to be realized and the employees have to be developing as they see their value for the organization growing. Without the trust, the consistent performance will disappear.

The performance management is one of the hardest HR areas as the HR employees will be asked to deliver more by the managers and the HR employees will have to explain the split of the responsibility in the area of the performance management. Without a fair treatment of the employees, the sustainable high performance is not possible to be reached.

What do you think about the sustainable performance and the managers? What about the HR Role in the performance management area?

The management is not just about managing the priorities and deadlines, it is also about managing people the human way. Human Resources should know about that as we promote the people management across the whole organization. We develop highly sophisticated system to allow to manager to work with their employees correctly and to motivate their subordinates, as the performance does not suffer. And HR employees? Many times, they are forgotten. Then you are not a good HR Manager.

The HR Manager provides the help to the internal clients and manages the design of the extremely sophisticated performance management and evaluation appraisal processes, which are not used correctly inside the HR Team.

The HR Team produces interesting statistics for the top management about the number of internal rotations and numbers about the promotions, but HR Team is stable for many years and there is nobody interested in the career planning of the HR employees. This is quite common, that the internal clients have a better behavior toward their employees than the HR Management Team toward own HR employees.

The good HR Manager has the ability to divide the time among the internal clients and the employees in his or her own team. The good HR Manager has always time in the morning to ask common questions “How are you? What are your weekend plans?” and the good HR Manager remembers the answers.

The good HR Managers thinks about the employees in the team and he understands their strengths and weaknesses. He is able to motivate the team, when the difficult situation comes and he thinks about the career paths for his subordinates, as they feel motivated working on their self-improvement and their self-education.

Generally, the good management is not about the mechanical usage of the HR tools, it is about a normal human approach to employees and using their best potential. The employees recognize the good manager and they are not leaving him or her, when they feel the common future for both.

What about you? Are a good HR Manager?

The managers always believe that HR is an administrative department. As they make a strategic decision and HR will make the necessary paperwork. Oh, my God, it is not true. The real HR job is not about the administration (at least partly).

The managers do not recognize, Human Resources is highly regulated business area and the HR employees have to follow many standard procedures, which are required by the law. They just see how much HR employees complicate their managerial decisions, which are always brilliant. Just the decisions are a bit illegal sometimes. HR Employees have to correct the mistakes of managers and they have to adjust the managerial decisions as it is fully compliant with the law.

When you speak with you managers, you have always to explain, you are not there to make the necessary administrative job. That you are a natural part of the managerial decision to be made.

Honestly, it is the role and responsibility of Human Resources to explain the content of the HR job to managers. It is not just about the explanation, but it is also about the acting as the HR role is defined. When the HR employee explains, that his role is not about the administration and then the employee just waits for the requests from the manager, it will be always the administrative HR role.

HR cannot wait for the requests to process the papers correctly and fully compliant with the law.

The recession changed our opinion about our jobs. It is not easy to find a new job opportunity and our employers are not that bad as we thought previously. It is quite common idea of many people. When they saw a lot of opportunities to change their job, they were just complaining. When they have no chance to change the job easily, they do not complain, they are worried; they will be selected in the next round of redundancies. They want to know how they can keep their job to be secure and not late with the mortgage payment.

It is never too late to secure the job, at least for a while. The employer likes the employees, who are motivated and who have the trust in the company, even when the situation is extremely difficult. The employee has to adjust its requirements and its working habits in the recession as the managers cannot be fully focused on solving the issues of the individual employees and they have to be fully focused on the cost cutting initiatives.

The manager, who has to make decision about the redundancies, selects the employees according several criteria:

1. What tasks the team has to perform?
2. Who keeps the key know-how, which cannot be learned quickly?
3. Whom do other managers in the organization recognize?
4. Who has the best chance to takeover additional responsibilities?
5. Who will help to move the team over the difficult period?
6. Who helps others in the team?
7. Who is the worst performer in the team?
8. Who brings conflicts?

You can say, it is too late to start changing myself, but it is not that late. As the decision about redundancies is done, the manager starts to think from the scratch. The redundancies means, that also some processes are made redundant and the team does not continue in their execution. It is your chance to demonstrate your ability and willingness to takeover additional responsibilities without asking the extra money.

It is sad, the layoff is also a competition. There are winners and losers. Try to be a part of the winning team. But sometimes, it is better to be redundant and starting the career again without repeating the past mistakes.