Why HR Will Not Fix Your Turnover

You hired an HR manager to fix your turnover. Eighteen months later your paperwork is spotless and your people still leave. That's not a bad hire. That's a misunderstanding of what human resources actually does.

I watched an owner spend a year and a half solving the wrong problem

An owner I knew brought in an HR generalist. Compliance, reporting, documentation, all of it. What he really wanted was for someone to stop the bleeding on turnover. A year and a half later, his files were clean. His compliance was exactly where it needed to be. His turnover was the same. In some areas it got worse.

Here's why. HR ran everything by the book. Sterile, policy-driven, compliance-first decisions. That approach turned people off. And field leadership was drowning, because in order to get bodies into seats, HR made promises nobody on the crew could keep. They cashed checks that bounced the second the new hire hit the job site.

I will tell you this is common. Recruiters and HR people who've been doing this a long time learn to do whatever it takes to fill the position. Nobody asks whether this person lasts. Nobody asks whether this is the right decision. Nobody asks whether the team gets excited about it. If you don't take the time to define who you're really looking for, every HR professional on earth won't fix your problem.

I am not an HR person and that distinction matters

People get confused about what I do at Core Matters. I have some education in the HR space. I know just enough to be dangerous. I'm not an HR person. Every behavioral assessment I've ever taken says the same thing. This guy breaks rules. He challenges the status quo. He wants to do things differently. I don't break laws. I break conventions.

There's a line between human resources and what I call employee experience. When you hand your employee experience problems to HR, it's like asking your technician to come in and do the books. It isn't their skill set. It isn't their superpower.

HR exists for compliance, administration, and process. They keep you out of trouble. They balance the relationship between employee and employer and protect both sides. That's a real and important job. But they protect from a legal standpoint, not from an emotional or empathetic one. And emotional and empathetic is exactly what the turnover conversation demands.

HR reports the problem. HR cannot fix the problem.

HR runs turnover reports. HR conducts exit interviews. HR tells you why people leave and tightens your logistics. Good.

HR cannot make your managers lead better. HR cannot define who the right hire is. HR cannot have the hard conversations you've been avoiding.

By the time HR enters a difficult conversation, it's a performance improvement plan, a write-up, or a termination. Those are compliance conversations. We have them because the process says to have them. HR doesn't walk up to your supervisor and ask why he isn't leading better. That's not their expertise and it never was.

Some of you are thinking HR does all your training. Does HR run your safety training? I've never seen it. Does HR run your technical training? No. So what do we actually give them? Systems training and software. Maybe some leadership training. That's the slice.

We're talking about something bigger. We're talking about better people leading better people, which makes better teams, which makes a better company. Defining who the right hire is belongs to you and your leadership team. I built the Core Fit Profile for exactly this reason, because the definition of a rockstar in your specific role comes from studying your best people, not from a job description template sitting in a compliance folder. I go deeper on that in Know Who You Are Hiring Before the Seat Opens.

The one role people only call when something is wrong

About a year ago I was on a podcast with an HR consultant who works with Fortune 500 companies. I asked him why most HR people don't seem to like people. He started laughing and said I was right.

Think about your HR person. When the team goes to lunch, are they asking to come, or are they relieved everyone finally left them alone so they can put their head down and work?

He explained it to me. Out of every position in your company, HR is the one role people only call when there's a problem. Nobody calls HR to say they're doing an amazing job. Nobody calls HR because they want help building something fun. HR gets called for performance issues, safety issues, compliance issues, terminations, and exit interviews. Then we ask them to document all of it. If that were my job, I'd be exhausted too.

Owners write the check so they never have to look in the mirror

Here's what occurred to me in that same conversation. Owners redirect me to their HR team constantly. You hire someone, you write the check, and you transfer the responsibility off your plate. Hands wiped. Done.

And once you've handed it over, you don't want back in. People problems are rough. They're not fun. You pay somebody good money so you never have to touch them again.

The problem is we often write that check so we don't have to look in the mirror. So we don't have to face how we're leading. Or the authority we refuse to give our people. Or the lack of trust on the team. Or the cultural misalignment where one group runs one direction while another runs the opposite and everyone pulls against each other. HR doesn't solve that. Only you solve that.

And I get it. You got where you are because of a skill set, and for most owners that skill set isn't fixing people problems. So you look for an expert. People equals HR in your head, so that's where you go. That's not the fix.

The fix is a leadership system the owner builds and runs

The fix is a system the owner puts in place and the leadership team commits to. A system that builds better leaders. A system that develops trust among those leaders. A system that makes people excited about who they follow. HR runs the paperwork. HR never becomes that system.

This is why owners stay stuck. You thought you solved it when you hired HR. The supervisors still say nobody good is out there. The problems still land on your desk. Turnover never resolves without the system. Without the system you don't change how you think. Without changing how you think you don't change how you behave. And without changing how you behave, you keep getting exactly what you've always gotten. I unpack the same trap from a different angle in "We Do Not Have People Problems" And What That Really Means.

Your Monday move

List the three people issues bothering you most. An individual, a group, something systemic across the whole company. Next to each one, write who actually owns fixing it.

If you wrote HR three times, watch this episode again. It isn't them. Keep HR in their lane and stop handing them work they were never the expert in. Then take that list to your team and get to work. For more on the leadership side of this, start with Caring About Your Employees Is a Business Advantage, Not a Soft Skill.

Find out whether you're the bottleneck in your own company. Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com.

New episodes every Wednesday.