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The State of Human Resources
- RyanZAG 14y agoReally great points. This is also not just restricted to small companies either - most large companies have HR departments with so many levels and decades old procedures that they have literal armies of drones filling in useless paperwork put in place by numerous HR directors over the years. Some companies have HR departments collect dossiers on employees, including fingerprints, history of photos, all medical conditions, all leave dates and vacation destinations, financial history, etc. This is expensive to maintain and nearly always useless in the extreme. HR in general needs a major reworking.
- spencerfry 14y agoThose are my feelings exactly. I'm not as familiar with companies over ten employees -- I've never been in an environment any bigger -- but I'm sure that if we're having issues at ten then companies of one hundred, five hundred, and thousand+ are having any even worse time keeping track of everything.
- ktsmith 14y agoPeople talk about IT the same way you are talking about HR. It's not always the case that what is put in place is unnecessary or useless. It is often the case that those not having to deal with these processes on a regular basis think they are unnecessary or useless.
- spencerfry 14y agoI don't think either of us are saying that they're unnecessary or useless. We're just saying in 2013, technology can make these processes more efficient as well as better designed.
- DavidAdams 14y agoStay tuned. I'm working on getting a benefits and HR startup off the ground right now. I can't tell you how heartening it was to read this article, because we want to solve a lot of these problems, and I'm glad to know that there are other people who think the state of the industry is as dismal as I think it is. If there's anyone out there who would like to be a part of a company that's going to bring HR into the 21st century, let me know. We're in San Francisco, and we just closed a substantial seed round. Edit: Email me at 9kjbo711fglm6sl@jetable.org
- hydralist 14y agoI am curious to hear more, is there an email I can shoot you?
- DavidAdams 14y ago9kjbo711fglm6sl@jetable.org
- hydralist 14y agocool dude sent email from navidb (at) gmail
- ommunist 14y agoSince when we started to consider calling people "human resources"? Probably Nazi been the first.
- spencerfry 14y agoI'm not sure the origin exactly, but Googling found that the term supposedly comes from the mid-80s: "Around the mid-80s, the term ‘human resource management’ arrived from the USA."
- contingencies 14y agoHow much of this is US-centric?
- DavidAdams 14y agoA lot of HR has to do with legal compliance, so generally HR systems are country-specific.
- spencerfry 14y agoThat's true, but the overall themes apply to most -- if not all -- countries.