Guest post: How HR has failed, and how to fix it

In the beginning, there was the Personnel Department. Its job was to handle the mechanics of hiring and firing – basically, a clerical operation. Then came Human Resources, which was supposed to transform the department’s role into a dynamic player in finding, developing and keeping top talent. So why hasn’t that transformation taken place? Consultant Scott K. Edinger has some answers.

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In the early 1990s I was a Human Resources Associate in the firm of Coopers & Lybrand (now pricewaterhousecoopers.) I got into HR because I was interested in the elements of improving human performance.

Some veteran HR pros will remember this as a time when we bristled at being referred to as the “personnel people.” Human resource management was supposed to be something quite different.

The problem: It wasn’t. And still isn’t.

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