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One of the wisest CIOs I know identifies three people with whom you must have a great relationship: your boss's assistant, the person in charge of facilities and the head of human resources.
But if you had to kick two of the three off the island, the smart choice would be to retain your head of HR. Great CIOs know that aggressively managing and cultivating their HR leaders is critical to success. Every high-performance IT organization I've encountered has a liaison who negotiates effectively between the two departments.
In theory, IT and HR should be closely allied so that HR can demonstrate the most innovative, highest payback of IT deployments. In theory, IT people should be the most precisely measured and compensated and best-optimized resources in the enterprise.
But as our data in this month's CIO Habitat report shows, the reality falls far short of the theory. We surveyed more than 150 IT thought leaders and found a curious mix of antagonistic, even fearful portrayals of the IT/HR relationship by senior IT executives.
As the CIO at one Southern company notes grimly, "You have to play the game with HR. You will not win. In the end, they will always get even."
Fear and Loathing of the HR Suite
Our data shows that the IT/HR relationship at large companies lies somewhere beyond tragic and short of toxic. The situation at midmarket firms is somewhat better, but not great (see data boxes 1 and 2). More than one-third of large-company respondents say that the relationship between IT and HR is worsening (38%), while only 15% of those at midsized companies say that the situation is going downhill.
Interestingly, the IT/HR relationship is one of the least discussed "uglies" in the economy today -- possibly because people are actually afraid of HR. As the CIO at a Midwestern manufacturer explains, managers often believe that if they get on the wrong side of HR, "their careers could be in trouble really quickly." At one large company, several IT executives documented how HR was "responsible for driving fear into the organization." Particularly in large organizations, there is some animosity between "the man" (i.e., high-level executives) and employees. HR works for the man and has been known to use intimidation to achieve what management wants.
And while everyone agrees that people make organizations work, not vice versa, managing the performance of IT people is rarely a priority for HR departments. The CTO at an auto company notes that HR policy tends to support "other parts of the enterprise." The IT workforce is not a large piece of the organizational pie, so it's easy to overlook.
Notably, our research indicates that work satisfaction among IT professionals is higher at midmarket companies. We asked how much of the workday is devoted to activities that IT employees find gratifying -- an issue to which HR should pay close attention. Among respondents, 78% of the workday is devoted to meaningful work at midmarket firms, compared with only 43% at large firms.
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