Pushmi-Pullyu

"Pushmi-Pullyus are now extinct. That means, there aren't any more. But long ago, when Doctor Dolittle was alive, there were some of them still left in the deepest jungles of Africa; and even then, they were very, very scarce. They had no tail, but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy and terribly hard to catch." The Story of Doctor Dolittle

Doctor Dolittle began life in letters sent home during World War 1 when the author, Hugh Lofting, was serving in the trenches overseas. John Dolittle is a doctor who focuses on animals with whom he can talk and prefers their company to those of his fellow humans. The Pushmi-Pullyu made it's first appearance in the first book and was also shown in the 1967 Musical with Rex Harrison starring as Doctor Dolittle.

Anyway, it wasn't actually my intention to extol the virtues of books or musicals in this post. It was more the fact that the pushmi-pullyu came my mind (strange I know!) when I was thinking about the difficulties we regularly experience, as HR Practitioners, when we get so caught up in the day to day transactional requirements that we are unable to be proactive and so end up constantly reacting to the business demands. This in turn leads to the business saying, rightly or wrongly, that HR is not acting as a strategic partner. This leads on to reduced emphasis on HR and its attendant functions at a Board level and can result in a diminishing in HR's ability to effect change and enable success within the business.

One of the actions that HR can take to avoid the same fate of extinction as the Pushmi-Pullyu is to actively focus on minimising the administrative transactional burden that reduces the ability of the team to engage pro-actively with the Business. Having said that, I am not sure that it is possible or desirable to remove the transactional the team entirely, as our detailed empoyee contacts come from that source. So, what we are aiming for is to reduce it to such an extent that there is more time to focus on the pro-active business partnership we all want to be part of. Remember, we are thinking of HR as a business, so we need to concentrate our limited resources on those areas where most customer value can be gained, whilst leveraging a multi-faceted plan that enhances transactional efficiency and effectiveness using actions such as process review and automation, shared services, website enhancement and Manager/Employee Self Service, amongst others.

The structure that unites all these actions is a tiered Contact and Escalation Path that you would be familiar with either having seen or experienced through your own calls with various contact centres. The Employee or Manager's first port of call when they have a query is through a self-service portal accessing either web based information or process workflow through the HRIS. (Not all companies have sophisticated HRIS, however it is still possible to create process workflow through basic HTML). If they are unable to find their answer through these means or their query is urgent, then the next step is through the 1st line helpdesk in the Shared Services Contact Centre. This is the level where the majority of basic process queries should be answered. For more complex or Specialist queries, the call or query is then routed through to a specialist desk e.g. Compensation & Benefits. Finally, for increased escalation or interpretation, the query or issue is routed up through the HR leadership chain.

Although we are never going to remove the administrative and transactional entirely, we should always be careful never to lose sight of the fact that HR is there to enable the success of the Business. We achieve this through being pro-active, effective and efficient in all that we do. The model above is but one focus as to how to focus on the transactional. It does work but it is not the only way of achieving success. Remember that every business is different and therefore requires differing ways of engineering the same outcome. But with a good basic model, the interpretation becomes easier.

And Finally...

I leave you with this quote from Albert Einstein to ponder as you consider the model.

"Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure"

All the best

Jim