NEW EXCERPT from my forthcoming book, “Transforming Your HR Department into a Profit Center.” Here’s: A Tale of Two Companies. Learn the value of how a company’s treatment of its employees impacts performance:
I want to tell you about my GE Capital HR experience versus another company I worked for- I’ll call it Company X.
I was working in corporate HR, for GE Capital, as an HR leader. Alan Hanes, the CEO, his leadership team, and I would talk regularly. They would come to my office, or I would go to theirs to discuss different strategies around our people. They saw me and HR as a strategic department, and myself as an internal management consultant.
GE Capital’s leadership was very committed to recruiting the best and brightest, and they provided a lot of HR support for the employees. HR was powerful and equal to all other functions in the company.
There was a companywide initiative led by HR called “workout” which empowered all line employees to make appropriate decisions because they were the closest to the customer.
HR led training sessions for all employees to teach them how to work collaboratively, and how to make good decisions for both the company and the customer.
In essence, everyone in GE Capital was a leader and they were taught how to be one. It was very successful.
The company I worked for next was quite different (Company X). Despite the promises made upon my hiring, the CEO did not value HR and, in turn, nor did his leadership team. He was dismissive of my ideas and pretended he valued me, but he didn’t take my input.
He was ego-driven, arrogant, and inappropriate. He set the tone and culture of the organization, and it was not an engaged workforce.
He had a machine where he could monitor how many voicemails all the leaders accumulated. He had a microphone in his office and would publicly announce how many voicemails each leader had in their queue- “Kim you have seven voicemails, Paul you have ten voicemails, three from two days ago that you haven’t listened to.” Obviously, this was not a good role model at all for trust and engagement.
These companies were vastly different in how they valued and treated their employees. GE Capital unleashed the power of its people which had a direct impact on the company’s ROI. Company X did not.
An effective HR strategy and department will lead to transformative improvements in your business approach and bottom line. It will unleash the power of your people.
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Next week we’ll talk about the place of the CEO in HR.
