Why do companies let people in HR, Benefits, Payroll and their related IT support groups stay in the same position for 10, 20 or even more years? Job rotation is a good thing, but I don’t see it happening in many clients I work with – and it is to their detriment; both the companies and their employees.
When someone is in one position for a long time, more often than not what I see is stagnation and too much resistance to change. They become the go-to person on whatever topic they work with, which often results in less of that expertise being shared with the organization and codified in documentation.
If you want to know how we do payroll around here, you have to talk with Bob – he’s our expert. He doesn’t have it written down, but he knows it and we can’t survive now without him there. And we can’t go making changes unless we have his buy-in, because if he leaves, we’re screwed.
Substitute any subject area for payroll and it still rings true: HR, Benefits, Time Management, Learning, etc. And it doesn’t help that Bob eventually becomes territorial – because if he isn’t the expert in payroll, then his value is diminished because he’s been there so long and forgot how to master new subjects. His sense of worth is tied to his domain of knowledge.
No one around here has an appreciation for the complexity we have here in payroll. I know, because I lived it and I’ve made it work. I’ve been through three system conversions and two acquisitions! I’m so busy, I don’t have time to document it all – but I know it all.
When we want to make changes, implement something new – innovations, Bob is there to let us know it’s not as easy or simple as we might think. It will take longer to get it done because they just don’t know the details and all our complexity here.
But it’s not only Bob’s fault. His managers – he’s outlasted four of them so far – never pushed him to broaden his internal career. They kept him in payroll because; well, no one wants to risk it with a new person. And with Bob always talking about how complex and tough it is, no manager wanted to take the risk of changing him out.
Everyone has taken the easy way, and now we complain about how slow and outdated payroll is, how long it takes to get something done. How difficult it is to get something done.
And it doesn’t have to be that way. HR, Benefits, Payroll and all their related functions are not so complex that we can’t document them well enough to rotate people in and out of analyst positions every few years! I see Finance and non-HR IT functions do that all the time – it’s part of how they operate. HR/Payroll doesn’t have to be any different – it just takes some effort to transition to that new model. And once you do, you’ll find just how worth it the work was to get there!
So, don’t be a ‘Payroll Bob’… or his manager.