A founder argues companies don't need HR departments. Instead, managers should handle hiring and development, AI should manage routine work, and a few coaches support exceptional cases. The core idea: treat people as individuals, not standardized processes.
I have a very controversial view on this, which is organizations should start out with the belief that they don't need HR. I have a strong point of view, and this is going to get a lot of people offside. But if you think about it, right, what happens in a company is you have a founder or a managing director who hires a team. And that team's job is to hire the next group of people. And what happens is, as the company gets bigger and bigger, people decide that that's a really hard job. Let's give that to somebody else to figure out. Yeah. The, you know, the nitty-gritty and the knots and untangle stuff. Guess what? That is the job. That is the job. We are going to have machines soon that are going to write all our processes, manage a lot of our risk. Our job is to grow people. And when a founder or a person who invents a company or starts a company, what they really want is they want people in their own likeness. Now, the next layer down are not exactly like them. They're going to hire people a little bit in their likeness. So, we're going to get more and more diversity, which is a good thing. And that's the leader's job, right, is to bring out the best in those people. We now have AI agents. If you want to figure out what employment lawyer is, if you want to figure out what a good CV looks like, there's a lot of technology that can help you now as a leader. And I believe the businesses of the future may have one or two people who are in people support when things go wrong and there's conflict, but I see them more as coaches. As opposed to people who are running processes. And so, my vision for the future is that we have organizations that don't have HR. When you outsource your people problems to HR or when you get HR to build learning plans for your problem, you're treating everyone as the same. And the most powerful relationship inside the company is between the manager and their employee. That's the moment of magic. And we need to start treating people in a much more higher regard. And that's where you've heard me talk about this today. It's okay for that person to leave. It's like being in a bad marriage, right? Don't try to hold on to your husband or your wife. If you're in the wrong, if they're in the wrong place, you know, you're not going to change that, right? You can try to change it, but you're not going to. If people need to leave and have a different experience, that's what they need, right? And so, it's sort of like, you know, if you love them, set them free kind of thing. I believe the most powerful relationship is between the manager and their employee and figuring it out together, having dialogue is possible.
