Library Worklife

HR Practice

Moving Towards Strategic HR in Libraries

By Jeanne Goodrich

We all know that we can’t deliver our library services without our employees. We know that the largest budget item (easily 55–85%) in our operating budgets goes for personnel costs: salaries, wages, benefits. And, we know that managing people is time and energy consuming. As with so much else we do, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details of HR work and forget that our great investment in people is for a greater purpose: providing the library services the library’s customers need and desire.

Implementing Strategic Plans Requires the Right People

Human resources leaders have written quite a bit lately about the differences between tactical and strategic HR. A tactic, by definition, is a small-scale action serving a larger purpose. A strategy is the larger purpose, the goal that the library is attempting to reach. Many libraries and/or their parent institutions have strategic plans, designed to guide them over a fairly long time horizon. These plans typically review the internal and external environment within which the library operates and identify the library’s mission, service priorities, and goals and objectives that will be undertaken during the plan’s life.

Even if a library doesn’t have a formal, written strategic plan, its administration and governing body usually has some sense of what it is trying to accomplish and where it wants to go. This sense is often articulated through the budget process and the output or outcome measures that are now usually part of that process. You cannot deploy staff effectively if you don’t know what you want to accomplish. If you don’t have a sense of priorities and direction, you won’t be able to do anything in a strategic way. Your library services and your library as an organization will be not just static, but in decline.

How often are HR activities reviewed and aligned with the strategic goals and objectives of the library’s plan? What place at the decision-making and strategic plan-making table does the library HR function have? How can we think of HR in a way that moves us beyond the tactical paper pushing and record-keeping that takes so much time into the realm of helping the library meet its strategic goals? As Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan have written in their excellent book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, too few leaders don’t ask the basic question: Who are the people who are going to execute that strategy, and can they do it?"¹

Tactical HR

Traditionally, the human resources function has been viewed as overhead, a necessary staff function that requires scarce budget resources to fund and doesn’t provide direct services. Administration and managers often see it as more of an impediment to providing service than a partner, especially if it is provided outside the library by the university, city, county, school, or corporation of which the library is a part.

This is the day-to-day HR delivery that the term “tactical HR” refers to. It can have the following characteristics:

Internal focus on day- to-day issues such as handling personnel requisitions, payroll, employee records, planning recognition events, benefits administration, etc.
Focus on doing things right (efficiency) rather than doing the right things (effectiveness)
Maintaining the status quo within HR by making only slight refinements rather than looking for and adopting broader innovations and programs
Maintaining a reactive posture through offering services and support in response to events rather than anticipating them in order to prevent problems or to minimize their negative impact

Strategic HR

What can strategic HR look like? Consider these possibilities:

Measures and increases workforce productivity by identifying key measures, collecting data, and distributing to managers in the library
Designs HR programs and services and modifies policies and procedures so that HR helps library managers deliver high priority services
Looks ahead to develop initiatives and programs that help the library meet its strategic goals, future-focused
Provides the library with a competitive advantage through its HR programs, initiatives, and services
Utilizes compensation and rewards systems that emphasize rewarding performance
Coordinates all its efforts (recruitment, training, compensation, etc.) to maximize the achievement of the library’s strategic goals
Helps library managers make fact-based decisions through providing a variety of metrics to them
Helps build a library brand: employees are proud to work there, others know of the library and want to work there
Uses technology extensively and well: absolutely necessary to provide managers with the information and metrics they need to make decisions consistent with the strategic goals of the library

Strategic HR Activities

What can you DO to become strategic in your HR activities? Here are a few ideas adopted from John Sullivan’s new book, Rethinking Strategic HR.²

Identify both bad and good people management practices in your library and reward accordingly. People management should be identified as a critical expectation of library managers, should be discussed during performance reviews, and should be linked to pay increases. Poor people managers should be identified and then strategies developed to fix them, transfer them back to more technical jobs, or release them if people management performance doesn’t reach required levels.
Provide good metrics to your library managers. Work with them to develop the list of metrics (turnover rates, time from requisition to working on the job, results of employee climate surveys, training outcomes, etc.) and then provide the information in a timely and consistent manner.
Define the HR program areas that are critical for the library’s success. For example, if you recruit successfully for the skills and competencies your library needs, you may not have to focus so hard on training.
Recognize that the library’s supervisors and middle managers are often the delivery system for HR information. Design your program and communications systems accordingly, to be sure the intended messages, policies, and practices get through to employees.
Develop a “most wanted list” of employees in other libraries you’d like to see working in yours. Even if you’re experiencing cutbacks or hiring freezes now, you want to be ready when key openings appear.
Re-recruit to keep top performing employees. Instead of conducting an exit interview to find out why an employee has left, conduct periodic climate surveys to find out how current employees feel about their jobs, supervisors, and working conditions. Develop a picture of what keeps employees with your library. Use what you learn to resell your top performers on working for you.
Develop challenge or learning plans to keep employees challenged with new job assignments, new projects, or advancement opportunities. Many employees don’t self-select for advancement or reassignment. Talk with them as part of the performance management process to find out their interests and aspirations and to encourage them to consider new assignments in the library.

As you can see, the list of possible activities can be quite extensive, once you start thinking about how you can use HR strategically. Take a look at your own library’s HR practices. Are you tactical or strategic?

References

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (New York: Crown Business, 2002).
John Sullivan, Rethinking Strategic HR (Riverwoods, Ill.: CCH Incorporated, 2004) .

Jeanne Goodrich is at Jeanne Goodrich Consulting, Portland, Ore.; www.jeannegoodrich.com.