HR's Business Should Be Happiness Raising

Rewarding HR on financial measures is a big mistake.

There is a lot of wishful thinking about CHROs becoming Chief Happiness Officers but, in reality, there are very few ways in which most HR departments today hook up with happiness

It is a good sign that compensation for star HR performers is reaching astronomical levels and the better CHROs take home no less than any other CXO. The worry arises because a substantial part of the variable and long term remuneration that stellar HR performers enjoy is linked primarily to the financial and share performance of the company and this dangerously contaminates the goals HR should be pursuing for people. By making these financial goals excessively incentivized, we are burdening our HR leaders with an Andvaranaut ring1, which does not promise a happy end to its owners. Rewards that can be earned without serving the purpose for which HR should exist are likely to cause a Buridanian paralysis at best and a virtual neglect of non-financial goals at worst. Frequent and demoralizing downsizings, diminishment of durable employment and neglect of the long-term development of internal people can all be traced to the curse of the Andvaranaut. However well paid the HR leaders who take these calls, they cannot be considered to have made the profession proud or, more importantly, made a difference to a lot of the people in their organizations. As Issac Watts put it:

…, forbear to call him blest

That only boasts a large estate,

Should all the treasures of the west

Meet, and conspire to make him great …

Let a broad stream, with golden sands,

Through all his meadows roll,

He's but a wretch, with all his lands,

That wears a narrow soul.2