HR and other thoughts

Regina at BNET points to a McKinsey report on The Dearth of HR Talent in Europe.
The hilarious bit was this quote:

"These findings echo our experience throughout Continental Europe and should worry boards and senior executives, who spend increasing amounts of time on people-management issues. Sixty percent of the HR directors we interviewed, for example, said that the senior-management teams of their companies devote more than one day a week to such issues (exhibit). One leader commented, "Everything we do today is a people-management issue."

Yeah. Right. Like it's the legal group's responsibility to ensure that all managers do lawful things ! When will people understand that HR is not a group like Marketing, Sales or Production. HR is a facilitative group and the translation of HR processes into reality is in the hands of the line functions !

Regina also points to Liz Ryan's article at Business Week Why HR Gets No Respect? I agree that the vicious cycle HR finds itself in is because of CEOs who don't know how to get value from their HR people, and HR people who can't tell them how they can help them get value from them.

That's why I believe that the best HR organizations would be ones with CEOs who know how to leverage HR to sync with their business strategy.