How HR can drive business results and gain credibility
This impressive book review appeared in the August 2009 edition of Human Resources Magazine:
How HR can drive business results and gain credibility
HR & Other Swear Words by Paul Marsh, Strategi HR director
4 stars
This is a simple, easy-to-read guide for newcomers to the HR profession, says Michael Moran, chief executive, Fairplace. Senior professionals might find it simplistic but they could give it to their staff.
This is a great little book, and don't be put off by the slightly misleading title. For me it really ought to be called ‘Everything you need to know about HR but was afraid to ask', as it's a simple, but authoritative guide for HR generalists looking at their first or second roles in the profession.
At one point Marsh argues a group of HR professionals could be ‘a bit of a nightmare', but tongue-in cheek this text certainly is not. As soon as you start reading, the book offers practical advice about how newcomers to HR can do their jobs better. It pretty much contains everything a CIPD course doesn't teach you.
The problem with studying HR is that you come out at the end of a course with a head jam-packed full of theory, but without having done any real practice.
This tome gives practical advice on, say, how to get a quick win from managers, and how HR can win credibility from them by taking work off them and then giving it back later. As its core, it is about how HR people can drive business results, and stay connected to the business - in effect, how to prevent HR becoming another swear word.
These are very honourable aims achieved very well. I liked the fact this book opened by saying there was too much jargon in HR, and this would seek to de-jargon it. However, it did ultimately become full of buzz words and phrases - not through any fault of its own, but more because it was simply describing what HR does.
Overall, HR & Other Swear Words was nicely constructed, was simple to read, and you could pick it up and put down quite happily without losing your place.
At the end, it succumbed to temptation, by trying to throw everything in - such as branding and NLP. What it didn't do was say how you could manage your career going forward. But this is a small gripe. It's not one for HR directors, but it is one they ought to give to their staff.
