The Engineering Metaphor for HR
This is a free article you might find interesting. It’s also a sample of our knowledge and how we can help you get a bit better at your job, and/or how we can help you fix a problem. If you’re interested in our consultation services, contact us.
This should go without saying but disclaimer: The information provided below is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or other professional advice. You should consult with a qualified professional for specific advice tailored to your circumstances.
If you’re interested learning more you can find all of our courses here.
The first textbook I ever purchased as a tertiary student (‘Images of Organizations’) was a book devoted to metaphors of organisations. I can’t tell you how the authors managed to both fill a book on metaphors on such a dry subject (and think they only did three, so the metaphors went well thrashed), and convince some management department to prescribe it for management 101, but I’m not going to read it again to figure why. Sorry.
But the idea of using metaphors to conceptualise and perceive the large and complex social systems that are modern organisations has always intrigued me. Metaphors can allow you to get both ‘bird’s eye’ perspective and a fresh, different understanding. If I asked you to think of your city as a machine, you’d get the idea- things that happen the background (inputs, outputs) without your attention get brought to the front and examined.
Metaphors are very useful for reframing an organsiation (e.g. family, a ship, a sports team, an ant colony) and so is HR. Especially of HR; a department that, in my opinion, frequently suffers from a secret identity crisis. I talk about this is other articles, that often HR takes on other roles, such the internal PR department (see here) , and/or the moral code advocators and enforcers (see here and here).
What is the engineering metaphor
Most of you won’t have worked in a manufacturing organisation; as heavy industry moves from the first world, it’s becoming less common. But HR (as personnel) has strong roots in manufacturing, so it’s useful to recognize the organisational needs that prompted the ‘invention’ of HR.
At its heart, an organisation is a process that takes raw material, and through the application of a combination of humans and capital (i.e. machinery, not finances) it produces a product of service that a customer is prepared to pay for. Some organisations you can mentally fit neatly into this model, (some you need to squeeze a little) but all organisations essentially work like this.
In a factory, there is an engineering department, staffed by engineers, fitters, electricians and other tradespeople. These employees attend to the capital side of the process, ensuring that the presses, the conveyors, the chillers, the furnaces are working; providing their function in the combined process that converts raw material to finished product.
HR supports the other key component; the labour. Where the engineering department ensures the machines are there, ready, and working, it’s HR job to ensure the same for labour. Making sure that- people are on the line, ready, willing and able to do their part in converting materials into services or product.
Primary objective is keeping the factory running
The core purpose of an engineering department is keeping the factory running. The core metric that shows this is uptime. For what percentage of planned operating hours is the factory up and running? What percentage of time is it ‘down’ or not running? Each operation and industry has their own standards, but 96% is a pretty standard uptime percentage- that if the factory’s weekly production schedule is 60 hours, it ought to be up and running for 57.6 hours. It’s their job to keep the factory running, because the factory stops when the machines breakdown.
What is the HR analogy here? The core purpose is to have people on the line; at the coal face, on the tools, on the phones, at their desk (office or WFH). Unfortunately we don’t have metrics as ideal as uptime, but metrics such as:
vacancy rates,
time to hire,
absenteeism,
turnover,
overtime
All paint pictures for us of how many, and how often we have gaps in the line.
A quick aside here; humans are flexible, and this is both a curse and a blessing for HR. most of the work that humans do- can be done at a different time or by a different person. Compare that to a machine- if your metal press isn’t available, you can’t leave it for tomorrow, or get the chiller to do it instead.
The blessing is that this allows organisations to flex and adapt, so that everything doesn’t grind to a halt when Cheryl calls in sick. The curse is that this happens naturally without HR visibility or organizing, which leads us to take our eyes of the prize. An engineer manager who doesn’t fix a machine but leaves it to the operators to fix isn’t going to an employee for long.
Attending breakdowns
The core purpose of the tradies of the engineering department is to fix problems. When a machine breakdowns, they have to drop everything, attend and fix. There are the skilled operators, the subject matter experts, and often the only ones qualified to do the work- you don’t want operators trying to fix electrical faults, only an electrician. Their job is to turn up, diagnosis why it’s not working, remedy the problem or come up with a plan to remedy it as soon as possible, we can get back to ‘working’ again.
HR also plays the same troubleshooting role, but for people. But instead of operators calling about machines, we have managers calling about reports (i.e. the value-add component and the person responsible for the overseeing the output). We are called in as the SMEs to assist in getting the competent back up to speed and the operation humming again.
What is the HR analogy here? Troubleshooting is a core function of HR. the business looks to engineers to fix the machines, and they look to us to fix their people. This is a little complicated, because the division of labour is not as clear- it is the manager job
Replacing machines
You can see where this is going, and maybe this is a little callous, but we are going to push ahead with the metaphor.
Sometimes a machine stops working- either due to a catastrophic breakdown, or it’s limping through with continuous patches. Basically, it’s not working, and really it’s the engineer department who makes the call, organizes a replacement, either to get the process up and running asap, or to avoid future breakdowns.
This often comes with some cost-benefit analysis involved- how long until we are up and running again. How much to fix vs how much are we losing with it not working, or not working optimally?
It’s the same for HR. We work hard to get it working, but we need to get it working again. This means we need to get it to work, or get it replaced.
Remembering the Human side of HRM
Once again I’m casting my mind back to a truth learnt year one of university, that labour is a not a mechanical commodity, cannot be put on a shelf, in the trash, or turned off. That people have ongoing needs (food, family, meaning) that don’t flex up and down with the needs of the business.
Humans are not machines and we should not approach them the same an engineer does, and this metaphor does not propose that. It proposes we function the business as an engineer would, albeit with very very different tools.
If you have 10 seconds, please complete this survey. It helps us know what people want to know.
