Its not better - or mnore - HR you need.

 A recent article on the Gartner website suggested that with other approaches not producing effective results, what the business world needs is better human resource management to improve labour productivity.

I couldn't agree less.

I've said before that whoever coined the phrase 'human resource management' should have been shot - at least twice.  Referring to employees as if they are simply numbers in a spreadsheet just like other resources demeans the people involved and suggests people, their needs ,their support, their performance can be treated collectively in groups or batches.

I am not suggesting that we do not bother to address these issues.  They are important but I know that labour productivity is rarely a core issue that can be addressed alone. Most productivity failures are due to errors or deficits in strategy, infrastructure , and in system and process design,  

Of course …get those right and you do have to address training and development needs of employees to make sure they have the right knowledge and skills to realise the potential productivity of those underlying success factors.  But addressing the training  and development needs of groups and individuals is not likely to be successful if those underlying success factors are not addressed first.

It's like the issues of computerisation and automation.  If you apply these to your present inefficient systems and processes, you get faster mistakes, errors snd defects.   Applying skilled, competent snd proficient employees to  poor systems snd processes can not make up for those inherent, existing inefficiencies.

Improving roads has more effect on the speed and comfort of car travel than building better cars.

So don't, by implication, blame your employees. Us ethem to help you improve those underlying systems, processes snd working methods.

Bring People Together

We know that innovation often arises from an odd or unexpected coming together of people with disparate skills, different attitudes, different knowledge sets and perhaps different attitudes.  There are even innovation approaches and techniques that aim to simulate (or stimulate) these 'comings together' amongst individuals.

Yet over the last few years we have allowed workers to choose to work from home where such comings together are impossible. 

The water cooler, the kettle, the snack machine are places where people gather (informally, yes and for a short time) but brief interchanges of information, progress reports, ideas, even complaints can get others thinking.

When would you not encourage (or even insist on) people coming back to the office to make these interchanges possible once more.   It may not give you immediate revolutionary innovation but it almost certainly does no harm - and it does help employees engage with their colleagues and with the organisation.

You might even think of new ways of creating interaction and idea-generation and use this as an attraction to entice people back to the office.

Doomed to be Disappointed

 I was reading some research recently which suggested that managers and employees have quite different assessments of how much time might be saved by the introduction of AI to an organisation, with managers expecting significantly larger productivity gains.

This may not be surprising but it is important.  It means that employees are more wary about AI and managers are much more likely to be disappointed by those gains if they fall short of their expectations.

Of course it is difficult to make the assessment in the first place since the largest source of information is the publicity and 'information' put about by the companies selling AI models and services.

It seems as though managers need to question this information more thoroughly and ask for information (and results) that are set in their particular situation and context.

This has always been true - and the lack of such research and questioning is why so many 'snake oil salesmen' and consultants make a lot of money whilst often disappointing their clients.

You have been warned!

Talk To Me!

Do you spend a lot of trime reading- and writing - emails? Are you an avid user of Slack or What's App?   Many people do / are.

Well, perhaps you need to rethink your approach to communications.

Why not talk to people.

Generally, face-to-face, or at least synchronous, communication is better for complex and important matters.  It is easier to read body language and other signs so you can recognise your message has been understood  It allows the recipient to ask questions and seek clarifications .It allows further expansion on a topic and genrally is more efficient.

Email is still very useful - especially for circulating information to a group - but tends to lead to information overload as people send copies to people who do not need the communication.

So, in 2026, plan your communication media/methods for maximum effect.

Happy New Year!