From HR Departments to HR Committees

A recent article in Human Resources Online described how Decathlon, a sporting goods chaim, replaced its HR department with an HR committee in some countries. According to the CFO of their Hong Kong operation, their committee includes 6 members from various functions, with no specific committee leader, and “[o]ur group is composed 100% of anyone who raised their hands!”

Bringing the employee voice into HR sounds like a great idea. Removing the HR voice from HR, though, may have its downsides.

Much has been made in the last decade about the need for HR to be a strategic partner with the value-generating side of the business. In that light, it’s great to have an HR committee consisting of people from different functions, because an HR person can’t know all the details about how Finance or IT or Sales or any other function runs. At the same time, though, not having a dedicated team of HR professionals means you have people from Finance and IT and Sales making decisions when they don’t have any knowledge or, or experience in, HR.

It seems like the pendulum may have swung too far on this one.

A lot of things that leaders and managers should be doing often get passed to HR, either because people are uncomfortable with it (performance feedback comes to mind) or don’t want to be bothered (like, say, succession planning). So it certainly is a good sign to see people from the business taking responsibility for more people-centered functions. But when it comes to things like learning and development, strategic workforce planning, compensation, organizational restructuring, retention strategies, talent analytics, HIPO identification, and critical functions, you need to have someone who knows what they are doing. Many operational decisions can be made and implemented by people throughout the company, but the strategic thought requires a combination of HR expertise and business acumen, and people with experience in one facet of the business aren’t in the best position to provide that. Making poor strategic choices can have a long-term effect on the business’ viability, and it can take a long time to correct mistakes.

Add more voices…yes. Remove knowledgeable voices…be careful. The article didn’t get into all the details about what this committee does and what impact it has had, so maybe there is more to it that actually sets them up for success. Based on the information given, though, it does seem like Decathlon HK may be flying on a trapeze without a net below.