An article on workforce.com says we need to ditch the HR Generalist:

They resist measurement. If you look within your firm, you’ll find that your generalists have no output or results metrics of any kind. They resist corporate-wide HR metrics and technology because once those are instituted, they’ll no longer be allowed to hide in their well-protected enclaves.

Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the same thing: Generalists protect information. Never mind the importance of transparency for governance in general, within a company, it is paramount. By hiding information, HR Generalists become the siloed barriers to change. At the same time, the more their role becomes “information conduit,” the easier it is to replace them with technology.

In all fairness to the HR generalist, people in all sorts of roles try to protect information and serve as barriers to change. I’ve seen companies where every single one of those complaints can describe anyone there, including senior management. It just so happens that HR generalists have these problems structurally built into their role.

Categories: Business and Economics, Careers, Information Asymmetries, Managing, Metrics