Human Resources without Resources is only Human™

I've been using a saying for over a decade "Human Resources without Resources is only Human." This mantra came to me while managing a Human Resources team. Payroll services was one of the functions that I managed. During my first year end payroll cycle with that organization, we were in the midst of completing a complicated payroll cycle when things fell apart.

Much of the data that we needed to help ensure the accuracy of the payroll wasn't centralized. Some of the information could be found in various spreadsheets. Other information was only recorded on paper. Even the payroll system itself was not intuitive enough to capture all of the information that we needed.

So, like many small Human Resources teams, we were forced to do the best we could by entering information manually. This would prove to become both a headache and a disaster.

The most important responsibility that an employer has to its employees it to pay them. Paying them with accuracy should be a given, however, without the right resources (in this case the technology) to assist the human beings doing the work human error was inevitable. We made mistakes that negatively impacted our most important customers, the staff.

Having previously managed the payroll function on my own at other institutions I was already aware that this could happen. It was not unlike my experiences conducting employee evaluations without adequate resources for training and development as a follow up. It was also similar to the arduous task of trying to enroll employees into their medical benefits using paper, emails and faxes.

In the debrief that followed the day after this payroll process was complete, I found myself trying to motivate a team that felt defeated in spite of their best efforts. I refused to let them take this event personally. Instead, I chose to break down the issue for us professionally.

The truth was that we were not set up for success. The organization valued our output but it had not invested in the resources that were necessary for us to do our jobs well. I told my team, "We didn't fail. We did our best, but at the end of the day Human Resources without resources is only human."

My mantra remains true to this day and it isn't just about transactional functions such as payroll. It's about the Human Resources function overall.

Resources in our profession can be scarce when the institution we work for isn't aligned to provide us with what we need. Resources can also be overlooked by Human Resource professionals that don't understand how and what to ask for. Often times we are a department of one and to keep ourselves from being replaced we sometimes keep the processes as human driven on purpose.

One thing is certain, the Human Resources function exists as a business partner to add value and to find solutions. It isn't a function where one can easily hit the ground running.

There is no replacement for human experience in my profession and without the right resources we cannot fully deliver on our commitment to the organizations that we serve.