未來職場 讓我們向HR說再見

When Deloitte revealed recently that it was redesigning its approach to performance management—hoping to fix a process that chews up nearly 2 million hours a year but yields crummy results—the professional services giant suggested that people might be surprised by “what we’ll include” in the new system “and what we won’t.”

德勤會計師事務所最近披露稱，該公司重新設計了績效管理方法，以期完善這個每年耗時近200萬個小時但效果不佳的管理流程。這家專業服務巨頭表示，新制度將包含的內容，以及將要捨棄的內容，可能會讓人們感到吃驚。

As notable as the “what,” however, is the “who.”

然而，與“內容”同樣值得注意的，是“誰”來負責這項工作。

Deloitte plans to give more tools, along with more of a sense of urgency, to individual team leaders so that they can conduct formal check-ins with all of their direct reports at least once a week.

德勤計劃以一種更大的緊迫感，向每個團隊領導者提供更多工具，使他們可以至少每週評估一次所有直接下屬的工作情況。

“These brief conversations … provide clarity regarding what is expected of each team member and why, what great work looks like, and how each can do his or her best work in the upcoming days,” Ashley Goodall, Deloitte’s director of leader development, explained in the current issue ofHarvard Business Review, where he laid out the initiative.

在最近的一期《哈佛商業評論》中，德勤的領導者發展總監阿什利o古道爾對該公司的這項新舉措進行了一番解釋：“這類簡短的對話可以闡明領導者對每一位團隊成員的期望與原因，告訴他們什麼是出色的工作，以及在未來幾天內每個人如何做到最好。”

Deloitte is at the fore of a trend that is changing how major companies are managed: Team leaders are being offered—and, in some instances, simply seizing—more responsibility and autonomy in evaluating and guiding the people who work for them. As part of this movement, they are taking over functions that have traditionally been the province of corporate HR.

目前，大公司的管理方式正在發生變化：團隊領導者獲得了（在個別例子中，使用“奪取”一詞更準確）更多評估和指導下屬的責任與自主權，德勤正處在這一趨勢的最前沿。在這一趨勢當中，團隊領導者正在接管傳統意義上屬於公司人力資源部的職能。

“We now have the opportunity to put power right into the hands of the team leader,” says Marcus Buckingham, who wrote the HBR article with Goodall and whose company, TMBC, has been advising Deloitte. (Full disclosure: Buckingham is a member of the board of advisors of the Drucker Institute, which I run, and he is a friend.)

馬庫斯o白金漢表示：“我們現在有機會將權力合理分配到團隊領導者手中。”白金漢與古道爾共同撰寫了這篇發表在《哈佛商業評論》的文章，他的公司TMBC在爲德勤提供諮詢。（提示：白金漢是筆者經營的德魯克研究會顧問委員會成員，也是筆者的好友。）

Under the classic corporate hierarchy to which most businesses still adhere, HR centrally administers a performance evaluation once or twice a year. By the time feedback filters down to front-line managers, it’s often too backward-looking to be useful.

在大多數公司仍在執行的傳統組織結構中，人力資源部負責進行每年一次或兩次的績效評估。當反饋傳達給一線管理者時，往往因爲滯後而失去了作用。

“The most important audience for this information is the person who doesn’t get any of it in a timely way—the team leader,” says Buckingham. “The real work of a company happens in microclimates.”

白金漢表示：“評估信息最重要的聽衆是團隊領導者，但他們往往無法及時得到這些信息。對於一家公司來說，真正的工作是在局部小環境中展開的。”

In the case of Deloitte, as well as other organizations using Buckingham’s methods, team leader check-ins are augmented by an initial online self-assessment taken by every member of the group. The instrument allows employees to explore and understand their strengths and share those insights with their supervisor and other colleagues.

在德勤和其他採用這種方式的公司，首先由每一位團隊成員進行在線自我評估，這將增強團隊領導者評估的效果。這種方法使員工可以開發和了解自身的優勢，與他們的上司和其他同事分享自己的見解。

Automated reminders then ensure that the team leader is given a weekly dose of data, making it possible for him or her to answer three questions shown to measure and help spur engagement and productivity: What are the strengths and capabilities of each of my people? What are they doing this week (and, implicitly, how does that match up with their strengths)? And how are they feeling this week?

自動提醒可以確保團隊領導者每週獲得一批數據，使他或她可以回答下面三個問題，衡量和幫助刺激下屬的積極性與工作效率：我的每一位下屬有什麼優點和能力？他們這一週在做什麼工作（暗含的意思是，他們的工作與能力是否匹配）？以及他們本週的感受如何？

Performance management isn’t the only activity undertaken directly by a growing number of team leaders. Goal-setting, surveying workers, training, and even hiring are increasingly being handled in much the same manner.

績效管理並非唯一一個越來越多地由團隊領導者負責的活動。許多公司也在用相同的方式處理目標設定、員工調查、培訓甚至招聘等任務。

“There’s definitely a shift happening,” says David Hassell, the CEO of 15Five, a company that makes web-based software to improve communication between employees and their managers.

戴維o哈塞爾表示：“改變確實在發生。”哈塞爾是web軟件開發商15Five公司的CEO，該公司的軟件旨在改善員工與上司的溝通。

Two factors are fueling this transformation. First, pressure is rising for companies to move much faster than the typical corporate bureaucracy can facilitate.

有兩個因素正在推動這種轉變。首先，日益增加的壓力迫使公司更快行動，而典型的公司官僚組織根本無法做到做到這一點。

For instance, athletic-gear maker Under Armour has turned to HireVue, an interactive platform for recruiting, screening, and hiring job candidates, to bring on staff as it opens new retail stores. But it’s the store managers themselves—with HR’s backing—who are making these selections. Through this decentralized arrangement, Under Armour has opened a new store in as little as two days, according to HireVue, and it has cut the time to fill jobs by 35%.

例如，運動設備製造商Under Armour在開設新店鋪時，會藉助互動平臺HireVue進行招聘、篩選和錄用求職者以及培訓員工。但最終將由店鋪經理，在人力資源的支持下做出選擇。據HireVue披露，通過這種分散化的管理，Under Armour在短短兩天內便開設了一家新店鋪，將填補工作崗位的時間縮短了35%。

The second factor is a proliferation of technology. Indeed, while “there is no I in team,” there is ever more IT being deployed at the team level—some of it so cheap that managers can buy the stuff themselves without any corporate rigmarole. For example, 15Five costs $49 a month for the first 10 people, and $5 for each additional person.

第二個因素則是技術的擴散。事實上，雖然說“團隊中沒有小我”，但在團隊層面確實部署了更多IT技術——有些技術非常低廉，管理者甚至不需要通過公司繁瑣的手續便可以爲團隊成員購買。例如，15Five軟件前10個人的價格爲每月49美元，之後每增加一個人的價格爲5美元。

The goal-setting application BetterWorks goes for only $15 per user per month. Kris Duggan, co-founder of BetterWorks, recalls the CEO of a financial services firm who at first saw little point in rolling out the product. But so many of his managers started using BetterWorks on their own that he eventually had no choice but to input his own objectives to keep them in line with everyone else’s. “It was definitely the lower ranks of the organization that was pulling the CEO in this direction,” Duggan says.

目標設定應用BetterWorks的價格爲每月每名用戶15美元。BetterWorks聯合創始人克里斯o達根回憶說，有一家金融服務公司的CEO最初認爲部署這款產品沒有任何意義。但後來許多管理者開始自己使用BetterWorks，他也別無選擇，開始在應用中輸入自己的目標，以便與其他人的目標保持一致。達根說道：“這就是底層員工迫使CEO做出改變的最佳例子。”

Of course, not every company is ready for their team leaders to assume such an assertive role; a top-down philosophy still prevails inside most large organizations. Nor does every team leader have the skills and mindset to successfully manage this way.

當然，並非每一家公司都做好了讓團隊領導者承擔這一獨斷職責的準備；自上而下的管理思維在大多數大公司內依舊大行其道。而且，並非每一位團隊領導者都具備按這種方式進行成功管理的能力和思維。

“You have these really fancy, awesome tools,” says Dan Pontefract, a longtime TELUS executive and the author ofFlat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization. “But the culture has to be there first.”

科技公司TELUS的資深高管、《扁平化的員工隊伍》（Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization）一書的作者丹o龐蒂弗拉克特表示：“雖然有這些非常出色的工具。但文化纔是第一位的。”

It is also hard to imagine that some HR executives—afraid of losing their authority—won’t resist these changes.

此外，我們很難想象，擔心失去權力的人力資源高管不會抵制這種改變。

But Buckingham believes that with team-leader-driven companies, HR officials will have the chance to be more valuable than ever. “Tim Cook recently commented that ‘the most important data points are people,’” Buckingham says. With team leaders tuned in as never before, “HR will finally be in position to have real-time and reliable people data,” as opposed to serving up figures that are “stale and untrustworthy.”

但白金漢相信，在團隊領導者驅動的公司內，人力資源部的管理者會變得比以往更有價值。白金漢表示：“蘋果CEO蒂姆o庫克最近聲稱，‘最重要的數據點在於人。’隨着團隊領導者的職責發生前所未有的變化，人力資源部將擁有實時的、可靠的人力數據，”而不是提供“過時的、不值得信任的” 數據。

They’ll also be able to spot pockets of true excellence throughout the organization and try to replicate those. “Rather than having things centrally launched and cascaded down,” Buckingham says, “you’ll have them locally launched and aggregated up.”

此外，他們還可以發現公司內真正卓越的做法，並儘量將其複製到其他部門。白金漢說道：“公司將擯棄從核心管理層開始，逐級傳達的方式；取而代之的是從局部開始，然後匯聚並推廣。”

Slowly but inexorably, the world of work is being turned upside down.

我們的工作方式必將發生顛覆性地變化，這個過程雖然緩慢，但將不可阻擋。