HR Modernization: Theory and Practice

What does the term “HR Modernization” mean to you? In practicality, it means different things to different people. For example, as it relates to the public sector, HR Modernization often refers to the updating of an arcane process that is bulky, bureaucratic, costly, and difficult to manage. I think that it can be summed up as “This darn process just takes too long! By the time I can offer someone a job, they have already accepted a job with someone else.”

For the private sector, I believe HR Modernization takes on a subtly different flavor. It is typically much easier for private sector organizations to hire who they want when they want because, while they have to follow certain legal guidelines, they do not have intricate civil service rules. The closest they come to that is in a tight union shop such as the automotive industry. As a result, HR Modernization is primarily about “just in time hiring.” They have a need and want to fill it now with the best possible person. It is not that their process is too long and burdensome so much as it is that a faster process improves competitiveness.

Because HR Modernization in the public sector is more complicated—and there is more opportunity to actually make things worse—I will focus on this group of employers.
The most thoughtful approach to HR Modernization I have seen comes from Canada. They conducted extensive research into the kinds of complaints people had about the system, tried to identify ways to improve it, did some pilot testing, and generally approached the process in a step-by-step fashion.

In the US, much of the planning for HR Modernization has been of a “philosophical” nature. It is believed that the system takes to long. It is believed that we understand why, And a “solution” is proposed. No comprehensive research has been done (in my opinion) and the desired solutions are based around “perceived problems” rather than empirically derived evidence . Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to let an RFP to hire consultants or contractors who will provide services that will solve these perceived problems.

The main problem with this approach is, “what if the wrong problems were identified?” One could spend a tremendous amount of money in hardware, software and consultant hours just to find that the quality of the workforce has completely deteriorated.
Here is an example. People want to hire faster. They don’t like having to wait for a valid test to be developed (which could be avoided through effective planning) because they lose potential candidates.

Software is then purchased which may or may not allow for both automated applicant tracking and some kind of test administration. Even when the system allows for the delivery for valid tests they are not used because that would take time and defeat the purpose of purchasing the software in the first place.

So, what is a person to do? The natural thing, apparently, is to rely on what are called “education and experience surveys” or E&Es (some call them T&Es). These surveys typically ask people to self-report or provide ratings on how much experience they have in a given area, how good they are at doing a particular thing, how relevant their experience is, etc. After applicants complete the E&E surveys they are scored like a test and the person with the most relevant education and most experience gets the highest score.

You might say, “That sounds good to me. Where is the problem?”

All you have to do is step back and think about it critically. You will quickly see a series of serious problems with this approach.

First, candidate are being placed in a competitive situation. They have a built-in motivation to “inflate” their education and experience. In other words, they give themselves the benefit of the doubt. Who wouldn’t? The real problem is that more informed candidates may even lie to receive a higher score.

I have worked on several projects where we developed E&E surveys and included a “Fake Good” scale that was designed to determine the extent to which a person was artificially inflating their scores. We did this by asking questions that we knew they could not have experience with. This included made-up software packages, public laws, and statistical procedures. It was amazing to see how many people had extensive experience in their last job working with a software package that does not exist or who are well-versed in laws that have never been written. Even more interesting is the fact that if you were to subtract or adjust a person’s score based on the extent of their faking, you would see that your top candidates suddenly are in the middle or even at the bottom of your score range.

Another complicating factor is related to the issue of self-criticism. As if artificially inflating your scores is not bad enough, there is a substantial number of highly qualified people who are very critical of themselves. If you ask them to rate how much experience they have in a given area, a person who has worked in the area for 15 years may well say, “I know so and so who has worked for 20 years and they know so much more than me!” In this case, a highly qualified person will rate themselves low while far less qualified people are rating themselves high. How can you interpret this in a meaningful manner?

The natural solution is to verify the accuracy of the responses. You can’t just limit it to the people you are thinking about hiring or you will always miss out on the people who are overly critical about their abilities. You would need to do it for everyone to really get the best employees. Now you will be back to the same problem you had in the first place—a process that takes too long because you have to check the validity of the responses to your E&E survey.
And now we go from bad to worse. Incidentally, this is an area where I think the Canadians make a mistake as well.

The natural step is to “delegate the real decision to program managers because, after all, they know who they need.”

There are so many reasons that “delegation to program managers” is a bad idea that I will not get into it here—with the exception of one. Are you acquainted with different managers who seem to apply different standards to performance when they rate their employees? Some are “easy graders.” Some cannot be pleased by anyone. Some show favoritism. Do you really want to delegate your legal responsibility for legal defensibility to those with little or no training related to personnel selection and a history of inconsistent application of ratings..
The final problem I am concerned with is that if you automate the process and delegate selection to managers, the result will be HR professionals essentially becoming nothing more than “customer support/technical support staff.” The field will be further degraded, the workforce with deteriorate further, those who take pride in their HR craft will seek other jobs, and when the pendulum swings back, there will be few, if any, who maintain the knowledge base to develop, validate, develop, and retain a high qualified workforce.