What this usually means is that the functions still exist but are named differently. Unfortunately the article does not go into any details beyond that attention-grabbing headline, but it does not sound very appealing:
> "But what if there is a case of bullying to be resolved, or a contract dispute that requires specialist knowledge?
Jackson says he expects his managers to take personal responsibility for these things (with appropriate training) rather than "shelving responsibility to a third party" - just as he used to do when managing his teams."
Is he seriously claiming that he expects individual managers to deal with employment law disputes themselves? If so it only means that they have not had an employment law dispute yet...
It may well be that they'll have said dispute and will then be forced to bring in an HR department to do that work. But they'll have gotten to where they are now a billion dollar company at all which is a real feat.
Or they might look at hiring a 10-20 person HR department and say "3 million a year vs a (theoretically) one-time 3 million judgment? We'll keep taking our chances"
It could be a great place to work or an awful place to work. It probably depends a lot on who you are and which manager you end up reporting to.
Besides the obvious legal risks of this hands-off approach, I cannot imagine that this is efficient in any way. Do you really want your managers to deal with things such as pre-screenings and visa appplications themselves? Or are they simply outsourcing these tasks to agencies.
I think a lot of this discussion hinges on two roles of HR:
1) Risk management and mitigation, in which it acts like a police department. There are few checks or balances on HR power, and having police often outweighs the benefits of that police. I've heard of organizations where HR was more than a little bit toxic
2) Support and help. As a manager:
* I don't know what to do if e.g. a high-performing employee with high-level access to confidential information embezzled the company. A manager will run into situations like that one perhaps once in their career. I'd like to turn that over to professionals who know when to call the police, when to turn off the keycard and shut off IT access, or when to have a stern conversation.
* If there's a sexual assault accusation, do I want to be the person who fires someone who might be innocent and has their kids lose their livelihood? Do I want to be the person who tells a potential victim there's not enough evidence.
* There's the daily load of questions about vacation policies, health benefits, disabilities, or complex immigration issues. Quite frankly, I have no idea here, and I really don't want to have an idea.
My experience is that I run into once-a-career issues perhaps every 6-24 months at my rung of the management ladder, and it's helpful to have people who have been through them several times. I definitely don't want to be in a position of making Tough Choices when Bad Things happen. I'm good at mentorship and tech leadership, not e.g. fraud investigations, and I don't want the emotional load those entail.
A good HR department is incredibly helpful (just so long as everyone remembers they work for the company; they're not your agent or some kind of neutral party).
HR does seem like an inefficiency - and somewhat an internal police force that allows people to subvert personal responsibility. I would argue there are a lot of negatives than any positives.
People can work and function without a police force hovering over their every move. The company culture has to be really strong though.
Octopus is very tech-savvy (especially for a energy utility company), so in theory it's doable, especially in their line of business and size. Note that 1200 is still small as large companies go, especially these days when you don't have to build everything yourself and you can use agile/lean techniques to organize yourself.
* a team to manage the cloud relationship for email/web/hosting for their own apps, and colo if needed.
* design their own laptop images (or get them designed by the vendor) and outsource laptop provisioning/imaging to a 3rd party. If you use virtual desktops you can use your cloud vendor for hosting them.
Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) -- less than 5 is possible but would create key person risk. There's still people with the right set of specialized skills, but it hasn't become a huge bureaucratic organization.
Looking at their website, they appear to have a data science team, so none of this precludes them having other teams to address cross-cutting concerns like cyber-sec, reliability, etc. Or from having software developers attached to teams tasked with delivering new products, e.g. they have several API offerings[1].
"Bob left and he'd been storing everything on the cloud. We didn't notice for a while. Then we couldn't find the password, and after a year passed the data was deleted"
(This isn't to say local storage solves the problem. "The folder on the network drive is missing.")
> How can a company learn how to find better and better ways to deal with things if it takes all of the intelligence of its people and diverts them from those big problems.
This is an argument for HR and IT, not against. If everyone in your organisation has to go out shopping for their own computer and set up their own sharepoint etc, they're all wasting their time doing something that should've been taken care of for them.
The problem isn't the existence of HR and IT, it's the dynamic of HR and IT as a set of interest groups - putting processes in place that make IT or HR's lives easier at the cost of productivity the other employees.
I work for an enterprise company. The motherboard on one of my staff's macbooks died during the lockdown and it needed to be repaired. Do you know what the Enterprise IT told us to do?
"Take it to the Apple store".
Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to send my staff out during the lockdown to get a piece of YOUR hardware fixed? No option to ship it, no drop off desk at our office or something.
You're absolutely right that when you setup a department called "IT" they are now a group of people that need to be catered to as much as the other staff.
"We don't want to expose IT staff to risk, so send your own staff to get the computers repaired. Then it's your fault if they get sick and die." was the message I got.
I've worked at a couple organisations where there was a mantra of 'No HR'. In all cases I saw mistakes and abuses that would / should have been picked up by a sensible HR person. I don't buy it. Granted you don't need entire departments of people but when you get to be a billion-pound company, there will be a need for some expertise.
How does HR "picks up" abuses? I work in company that has HR, but I don't see them as a place to solve actual issues - basically any of them. They do routine administration just fine, they are useful for that, but that is it.
If you actually think that something bad is going on, talking up actual hierarchy (complaining to higher ups) or leaving are only two sensible options. And if complaining to higher ups, then you put your resignation to HR.
But none of my interactions with HR made me think that these would be people capable to solve issues. They don't have processes to even realize problems are happening. They don't have trust of employees either.
I always thought that HR was the most important department. Since humans are the most important resource, then the department that makes sure those resources are safe, secure, not abused, properly vetted, happy, etc., would be the most important. I imagine if I was ever the CEO of a big company that I would be working very closely with HR to make surr we hiring the right people, not abusing them (mostly through bad managers or policies), paying them well, good benefits, and the right incentives.
Maybe HR is an underutilized or badly utilized department in certain places. I dont know. Just thoughts I been having about HR.
EDIT: I'm not saying that companies are using HR successfully. I am saying that this is my view at how HR can be (and should be) used successfully. It all stems from the realization that humans are a company's most important resource. Accepting that conjecture, having good HR (how ever way you define that) is extremely important.
This is such a laughably naïve view of HR that I can only assume you've never worked for a large corporation (Hell, possibly any corporation).
Human Resources exists to limit liability of, and reduce the associated costs caused by, the humans at your company.
I have a close friend who used to be the Vice President of Human Resources at one of the largest companies on the planet. I have known this person since I was 7. Working in HR changed him, and definitely not for the better. He told me about how early in his career, he had to a fire a man who had worked at <Enormous Defense Contractor> for 28 years. Who, according to their records, had only ever taken 3 sick days. He didn't fire him because of poor performance. He didn't fire him because of a sexual harassment scandal. He fired him because the Director of HR told him to fire him, because he was one of the last employees brought in under a 30 year retirement scheme, and he was going to eligible for a 50% pension in 14 months.
He created a predictive analytic model that could identify when someone was considering leaving their job within a 3-6 month period, with 94% accuracy.
He has told me about conversation after conversation where an employee came to him for a raise but instead he convinced them that they didn't want more money, they wanted more recognition and responsibility, so he created new job titles for them a laughably increased salaries that didn't even keep place with inflation.
He recently tendered his resignation and has since gone to work for a private firm, where he no longer has to be a, quite frankly, ruthless piece of shit.
He's a far better person for it. His drinking has considerably diminished, and his outlook on humanity is far less dark. HR is where decent people become twisted into cynical shitbags and where evil mother fuckers become downright sinister. In 25 years, I've only ever known one decent HR person. Just one.
May I inquire if you have ever worked for a larger company?
You are describing a union.
HR exists to serve the companies interests, not the employees.
As the name implies, the purpose is to manage, and maximize the efficient utilization of, the resource "human being".
This can mean preventing abuse because it's a legal issue or because it's bad for productivity and team morale.
But it just as often means shuffling people around and making sure affected employees keep quiet, don't cause a stir or actually sue.
This is not black or white, of course, there are companies and HR departments that value employees and try protect them, but there will always be a conflict of interest because the primary goal is to help the company.
the department that makes sure those resources are safe, secure, not abused, properly vetted, happy
You have a very strange idea of what a HR department does. Its job is to protect management from workers, and that's it. "HR is not your friend" is a common saying for a reason.
[+] [-] mytailorisrich|5 years ago|reply
> "But what if there is a case of bullying to be resolved, or a contract dispute that requires specialist knowledge?
Jackson says he expects his managers to take personal responsibility for these things (with appropriate training) rather than "shelving responsibility to a third party" - just as he used to do when managing his teams."
Is he seriously claiming that he expects individual managers to deal with employment law disputes themselves? If so it only means that they have not had an employment law dispute yet...
[+] [-] chmod775|5 years ago|reply
If you insert HR in the main company hierarchy, you now have managers who do HR stuff.
Even if you don't call it HR, you still have HR.
[+] [-] msandford|5 years ago|reply
Or they might look at hiring a 10-20 person HR department and say "3 million a year vs a (theoretically) one-time 3 million judgment? We'll keep taking our chances"
It could be a great place to work or an awful place to work. It probably depends a lot on who you are and which manager you end up reporting to.
[+] [-] EveYoung|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wegs|5 years ago|reply
1) Risk management and mitigation, in which it acts like a police department. There are few checks or balances on HR power, and having police often outweighs the benefits of that police. I've heard of organizations where HR was more than a little bit toxic
2) Support and help. As a manager:
* I don't know what to do if e.g. a high-performing employee with high-level access to confidential information embezzled the company. A manager will run into situations like that one perhaps once in their career. I'd like to turn that over to professionals who know when to call the police, when to turn off the keycard and shut off IT access, or when to have a stern conversation.
* If there's a sexual assault accusation, do I want to be the person who fires someone who might be innocent and has their kids lose their livelihood? Do I want to be the person who tells a potential victim there's not enough evidence.
* There's the daily load of questions about vacation policies, health benefits, disabilities, or complex immigration issues. Quite frankly, I have no idea here, and I really don't want to have an idea.
My experience is that I run into once-a-career issues perhaps every 6-24 months at my rung of the management ladder, and it's helpful to have people who have been through them several times. I definitely don't want to be in a position of making Tough Choices when Bad Things happen. I'm good at mentorship and tech leadership, not e.g. fraud investigations, and I don't want the emotional load those entail.
A good HR department is incredibly helpful (just so long as everyone remembers they work for the company; they're not your agent or some kind of neutral party).
[+] [-] vagrantJin|5 years ago|reply
People can work and function without a police force hovering over their every move. The company culture has to be really strong though.
[+] [-] jmuguy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] signal11|5 years ago|reply
* a team to manage the cloud relationship for email/web/hosting for their own apps, and colo if needed.
* design their own laptop images (or get them designed by the vendor) and outsource laptop provisioning/imaging to a 3rd party. If you use virtual desktops you can use your cloud vendor for hosting them.
Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) -- less than 5 is possible but would create key person risk. There's still people with the right set of specialized skills, but it hasn't become a huge bureaucratic organization.
Looking at their website, they appear to have a data science team, so none of this precludes them having other teams to address cross-cutting concerns like cyber-sec, reliability, etc. Or from having software developers attached to teams tasked with delivering new products, e.g. they have several API offerings[1].
[1] https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/
[+] [-] Forge36|5 years ago|reply
"we lost all the sales data from before 2012"
How?
"Bob left and he'd been storing everything on the cloud. We didn't notice for a while. Then we couldn't find the password, and after a year passed the data was deleted"
(This isn't to say local storage solves the problem. "The folder on the network drive is missing.")
How they do this could be it's own article
[+] [-] Jimmc414|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moistbar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotthtaylor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
> How can a company learn how to find better and better ways to deal with things if it takes all of the intelligence of its people and diverts them from those big problems.
This is an argument for HR and IT, not against. If everyone in your organisation has to go out shopping for their own computer and set up their own sharepoint etc, they're all wasting their time doing something that should've been taken care of for them.
The problem isn't the existence of HR and IT, it's the dynamic of HR and IT as a set of interest groups - putting processes in place that make IT or HR's lives easier at the cost of productivity the other employees.
[+] [-] jbob2000|5 years ago|reply
"Take it to the Apple store".
Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to send my staff out during the lockdown to get a piece of YOUR hardware fixed? No option to ship it, no drop off desk at our office or something.
You're absolutely right that when you setup a department called "IT" they are now a group of people that need to be catered to as much as the other staff.
"We don't want to expose IT staff to risk, so send your own staff to get the computers repaired. Then it's your fault if they get sick and die." was the message I got.
[+] [-] jka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fazza99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
If you actually think that something bad is going on, talking up actual hierarchy (complaining to higher ups) or leaving are only two sensible options. And if complaining to higher ups, then you put your resignation to HR.
But none of my interactions with HR made me think that these would be people capable to solve issues. They don't have processes to even realize problems are happening. They don't have trust of employees either.
[+] [-] jcadam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcadam|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ojnabieoot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmartrican|5 years ago|reply
Maybe HR is an underutilized or badly utilized department in certain places. I dont know. Just thoughts I been having about HR.
EDIT: I'm not saying that companies are using HR successfully. I am saying that this is my view at how HR can be (and should be) used successfully. It all stems from the realization that humans are a company's most important resource. Accepting that conjecture, having good HR (how ever way you define that) is extremely important.
[+] [-] cbozeman|5 years ago|reply
Human Resources exists to limit liability of, and reduce the associated costs caused by, the humans at your company.
I have a close friend who used to be the Vice President of Human Resources at one of the largest companies on the planet. I have known this person since I was 7. Working in HR changed him, and definitely not for the better. He told me about how early in his career, he had to a fire a man who had worked at <Enormous Defense Contractor> for 28 years. Who, according to their records, had only ever taken 3 sick days. He didn't fire him because of poor performance. He didn't fire him because of a sexual harassment scandal. He fired him because the Director of HR told him to fire him, because he was one of the last employees brought in under a 30 year retirement scheme, and he was going to eligible for a 50% pension in 14 months.
He created a predictive analytic model that could identify when someone was considering leaving their job within a 3-6 month period, with 94% accuracy.
He has told me about conversation after conversation where an employee came to him for a raise but instead he convinced them that they didn't want more money, they wanted more recognition and responsibility, so he created new job titles for them a laughably increased salaries that didn't even keep place with inflation.
He recently tendered his resignation and has since gone to work for a private firm, where he no longer has to be a, quite frankly, ruthless piece of shit.
He's a far better person for it. His drinking has considerably diminished, and his outlook on humanity is far less dark. HR is where decent people become twisted into cynical shitbags and where evil mother fuckers become downright sinister. In 25 years, I've only ever known one decent HR person. Just one.
[+] [-] ThePadawan|5 years ago|reply
They're literally paper pushers to make sure contracts are drafted correctly, salary payments arrive etc..
[+] [-] the_duke|5 years ago|reply
You are describing a union.
HR exists to serve the companies interests, not the employees.
As the name implies, the purpose is to manage, and maximize the efficient utilization of, the resource "human being".
This can mean preventing abuse because it's a legal issue or because it's bad for productivity and team morale.
But it just as often means shuffling people around and making sure affected employees keep quiet, don't cause a stir or actually sue.
This is not black or white, of course, there are companies and HR departments that value employees and try protect them, but there will always be a conflict of interest because the primary goal is to help the company.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] goatinaboat|5 years ago|reply
You have a very strange idea of what a HR department does. Its job is to protect management from workers, and that's it. "HR is not your friend" is a common saying for a reason.