Special Section Idea #2: Innovations in HRM

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Permalink Reply by Jon Ingham on June 21, 2008 at 7:38pm

Theresa, I think that would be a great idea - there is growing demand for more new thinking, and I would link this to Gary Hamel's call for more general innovation in management.

I'd also see this site / your journal as a good place for such a discussion.

In terms of 'how' - ask people to sumit idea, theoretical objective and case study?

For your information, I try to do my bit to raise interest in some new ways of managing and developing people in my book (Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value through People) and blogs: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com and http://social-business.blogspot.com.

Jon.

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Permalink Reply by Cam Caldwell on January 5, 2009 at 11:21am

Jon:

I saw your post and would love to network with you about your ideas.

I will check out both your book and your blogs.

Cam Caldwell

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on June 22, 2008 at 12:45pm

Thanks - I'm thinking that we will add this to an 'interview' section of HRM. Maybe we use this site as the first place to discuss how innovative something is (a bit of a pre-test) and if it receives warm reception, then we move to an invitation to do an interview with the innovator.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kearns on June 23, 2008 at 4:07am

Hi Theresa

The source of your interest in 'innovative' HRM intrigues me. Is it because the 'old' stuff is just old hat or is it a nagging feeling that you have never seen any convincing evidence of its efficacy? Would going back to first principles be innovative enough for you? For example, the current obsessions with talent mangement, employee engagement et al seem to have driven HR into a 'process' ghetto where the process/activity is slavishly followed without anyone stopping to constantly ask 'why is our organisation doing this?' Perhaps the best innovations might be a step backwards?

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on June 23, 2008 at 10:29am

Thanks for the thoughtful comments and questions. I guess it's my frustration with what you mention that spurs my interest in innovation in HRM.

Employee engagement - great example - there is nothing really new here except the "idea" of it and the growing interest by practitioners in research (which I appreciate). However, we are not delivering innovative work (in my opinion).

A Melcrum report on employee engagement shows that many people define it by specific questions on their surveys. I keep asking the question "engaged in what?" You can be truly engaged in baking cookies all day. Does that make your organization more productive? I like the words you used "slavishly followed" - following is not innovative. We keep using the same models, the same assumptions, the same theories, the same consultants and yes, even the same academics - and we all rely on what we know.

Maybe it's time for a change. What if you challenge some of our base theories and rethink assumptions? Go backwards - yes - way way back. But at the same time, you have to think about today's global, technology enabled context. Everything is speeding up, and given all that we know today, how must we change to take advantage of the new opportunities that surround us?

I'll give you an example of something people tell me is innovative (or used to be innovative at least). About 10 years ago I started doing surveys and measurement a bit differently. I was doing research on employee energy (motivation) at work, and after doing very lengthy surveys was told by a few CEOs that if I did not 'shape up,' I could not work with them any more. I watched how they worked; they were fast, global, and impatience was everywhere. So I changed what I did to match their culture. I developed one question to measure energy, made it an optimization (vs. maximization) construct, and I started measuring it weekly.

Instead of using 10 questions to measure energy and doing the survey once a year, I developed one question and asked it weekly. I learned that the one question (the standard deviation in particular) predicted turnover, customer service ratings, 360 performance, student grades at end of semester, averages over time predict firm performance, and the list goes on (longitudinal studies, with control variables, multiple sources of data, etc.). I have been told that this was innovative. Technology enabled me to do this work; it would be impossible to collect data weekly from people around the world with paper surveys or even do a phone survey. Getting 'beat up' by a CEO also helped.

Today, is it still innovative? The answer is probably now. When I started, it was. It has taken years to see the light of day because innovative meant people did not like it.

I'm looking for are these type of experiments while they are still in the early stages. I want to know about the work being done that is making people uncomfortable, that their colleagues probably think are bad ideas but that offer new ways of thinking about the same old subjects. I'd like to give these ideas some "air time" because often good ideas are criticized, and innovators need encouragement.

As you note the current obsessions with employee engagement and talent management do not reflect some new and creative thinking or insights. They are actually rather safe ways of repackaging what we already know. The marketing around some of these effort (at least the ones that are commercialized) has been tremendous (it's all about execution right). People and big firms bet on what's safe.

We want to hear about things that are not "safe" and that are indeed new ways of thinking about theory, how we work, how we do research, and how to do HRM - if they are out there!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kearns on June 24, 2008 at 5:09am

Hi Theresa

nothing is safe anymore - look what happens when an HR director slavishly follows the latest employee engagement fad

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/ret...

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/05/09/45776/bq-scoops-g...

Perhaps an innovative approach would be for HR to become evidence-based and actually focus directly on strategic organisational objectives?

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on June 24, 2008 at 9:14am

I would really appreciate your joining another network I have and writing about this topic there - with the examples you included in your comment (these are great).

It's for the members of the leadership pulse and friends of 'eePulse.' I do a lot of talking about employee engagement. In fact, in a number of studies I've done, the results (longitudinal work, with control variables, etc.) show that raising employee engagement scores for low energy employees LOWERS their performance. Thus, we could be doing 'more harm than good' in certain populations by focusing just on survey scores. Your articles are an interesting potential example.

The site is www.energizeengage.com. It looks a lot like this one - I'll have to approve your membership. I'm about to release the results of the most recent leadership study, and so it would be good to have some interesting discussions going. Thanks much!

OK.. closing thought, is "evidence-based management or evidence-based HR" (I've heard both now becoming popular) just one more fad too? It's really just about well done research - right? We're doing the same thing - taking something we know and making a new label for it and then getting people to rally around it (marketing??). I guess that's just the way it's done.

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Permalink Reply by Nilay Yajnik on June 28, 2008 at 5:50am

Hi Theresa
Congratulations on your idea of publishing new things in HRM.I guess one of the biggest challenges in HRM today is that the role of the HR manager has changed but the mindset still remains old.Its like in IT - the designation has changed to CIO but many heads of IT (especially in the emerging economies) still have a mindset of the EDP era.How can we make HRM more interdisciplinary?It may not always be possible to have robust evidence supporting an argument for the journal but it may be a very relevant idea ( remember the debate on relevance vs rigour at the Academy of Management some months back?).So I would suggest that even points of view , conceptual papers also should be allowed in this section.

Regards
Nilay

Dr.Nilay Yajnik
Professor of Information Systems
School of Business Management
NMIMS University , Mumbai , India
http://www.nmims.edu/ourteam/nilay.htm

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on June 28, 2008 at 8:41pm

I like the idea of points of view papers .. I'm looking for interviews too. Thanks - we will start moving on these ideas very soon. I do hope you can contribute.

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on July 27, 2008 at 6:32am

Our journal is open to these types of papers. In fact, we also are looking for interviews (short). If interested, let me know.

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Permalink Reply by Mino Akhtar on July 21, 2008 at 5:15pm

Hi Theresa,

A few years ago, I was hired by a Director of Organization Effectiveness at a major pharmaceutical firm, where this group, which was part of HR, was really doing something new, and that was creating an innovation culture. The CEO had realized that innovation was the ticket to survival in the competitive consumer healthcare space, and this group became the agent of change to create culture, process and people changes to make innovation the norm and instill out-of-box thinking and acting across the board. I loved it and was pleased to see that HR was open to such an idea, albeit with the CEO's support and guidance! I have been looking for opportunities to continue my multi-disciplinary work in other organizations, but am finding few HR groups that are trying new approaches....sorry I am generalizing!

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on July 27, 2008 at 6:30am

Unfortunately, many HR executives are risk averse. I run into the same issues. Have you tried working with other executives? We have had some luck working through the VP of Strategy in the organizations that have them. The CFOs in some organizations or CIOs are often also open to new ideas. Of course, it's best to get to the CEO, but it's not always so easy.

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