There are many truths in the article "Why We Hate HR:"

HR professionals need to understand all business functions and skills not just "soft skills"

HR professionals must understand and be able to execute performance metrics (a hot trend in business), as their results have a direct impact on company performance and are imperative for strategic HR practices

Organizational leadership must understand the need for balance between concern for people and concern for the organizational bottom line, not one extreme or the other.

Unfortunately, Hammond's article seems to cater to an audience that already hates the HR function, and he plays to their point of view by continually placing all the responsibility for HR department dysfunction on the backs of HR professionals while giving minimal attention and focus on the organizations that employ them. Hammond's article, "Why We Hate HR," should have been about how senior management, HR professionals, and company employees should find a common goal of understanding the important role HR has in the organization and its connection to overall organizational strategy - not about laying blame on HR.

Part A - Summarize the key points in Hammond's article "Why We Hate HR."

However, some organizations have made the connection between HR and positive organizational strategy and thus organizational performance. As you read in Taylor's article, "Why We (Shouldn't) Hate HR," business strategists rave about Cirque du Soleil - https://hbr.org/product/blue-ocean-strategy/an/R0410D-PDF-ENG(Links to an external site.) and the ideas it has embraced to reinvent the circus and invent a whole new genre of entertainment. Cirque makes an explicit connection between the people it attracts and the product it delivers, between how it does business and who it invites to become part of the business. As Lyn Heward, Cirque's director of creation-http://www.thelavinagency.com/speaker-lyn-heward.html (Links to an external site.), explains "... We need to learn about the person behind the artist. How many somersaults you can do is not as important as an open-mindedness to our process, the tough-mindedness to get through the job, and what we call a 'fire to perform.' "

Likewise, Taylor believes Pixar, the Hollywood movie hit factory-https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity (Links to an external site.), was/is successful not because of the power of its animation technology but because of the power of its culture - specifically, the mission-critical role played by Pixar University, a one-of-a-kind training complex in which all of the company's people, from security guards to programmers to finance executives, rub shoulders and learn together. (To learn more about Pixar's culture, view http://www.pixar.com/about/Life-at-Pixar (Links to an external site.) on the company's website; then view Pixar's movie intro at

Link (Links to an external site.)

Part B - What is the significance of this clip with regard to Pixar's culture?

Additionally, consider the experience of DaVita, the kidney-dialysis provider-https://hbr.org/2010/03/how-one-copmanys-turnaround (Links to an external site.) that experienced a "remarkable business turnaround driven almost exclusively by a transformation of how it approached the people side of the business" (bold added for emphasis). In particular, "Everything Speaks," one of the organization's core culture themes, suggests that even the most trivial issues (e.g., how colleagues communicate with one another, small gestures of individual kindness or selfishness) send huge signals about the health of the entire organization.

Given that human resource management (HRM), the policies, practices and systems that influence employees' behavior, attitudes, and performance, involve "people practices" and that these practices support the organization's business strategy, companies with effective HRM, employees and customers tend to be more satisfied, and the companies tend to be more innovative, have greater productivity, and develop a more favorable reputation in the community (Noe, page 2 in textbook).

Furthermore, research has demonstrated that HRM practices have economic value (i.e., capital-cash, equipment, technology, and facilities) instead of the traditional perception by managers and economists of being a necessary expense. For example, did you know that engaged and enabled employees deliver bottom-line results? Specifically, employees who are highly engaged (through communication and leadership) and highly enabled (through careful selection for well-designed jobs with adequate resources and training) result in 4 ½ times greater growth in revenues and 54% higher customer satisfaction.

Thus, HRM is critical to the success of organizations because human capital has certain qualities that make it valuable. That is, "Employees in today's organizations are not interchangeable, easily replaced parts of a system but [are] the source of the company's success or failure" (Noe, 4). So, in terms of business strategy, an organization can succeed if it has a sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations need the kind of resources that will afford them such an advantage.

Part C - Follow the directions in the paragraphs below and answer the Discussion Questions.

The Best Practices box: "How Abbott Laboratories Creates a Healthy Business," on page 9 of your textbook, presents another example of an organization that appreciates the importance of human capital. Read the case study; then answer the following questions (Questions 1 and

2 are from the textbook; Question 3 requires you to reflect on what you have learned from the readings, videos, and discussion board posts this week).

Your assignment (responses) will be graded on your analysis (logic, answering the "So what? Why should I care? question," connection to theory/experience/examples/readings) and quality (of thinking, of writing).

Discussion Questions:

How could a company such as Abbott benefit from sending an employee to school to study finance or another business subject?

Is the company training or developing Jain? Or both? Explain your answer.

How do you think hiring and training could work hand in hand to help a company such as Abbott meet its business objectives?

If possible, relate it to places where you have worked.

Are there any similarities between Abbott's appreciation of human capital and those of the three companies discussed in Taylor's article, "Why We (Shouldn't) Hate HR?" If so, what are they?