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How Netflix Reinvented H.R.

17 November, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Harvard Business Review

Patty McCord

It would be wrong to hold one group totally accountable for an organisation’s culture, but I think the good people in H.R. have a big part to play.  They set the rules that employees live by.

If I am right and H.R. has such a powerful role, why do most organisations trot out the same old best practice in H.R. Management?  Where is the competitive advantage in copying what everybody else does?

Another way

In 2009 Reed Hastings and Patty McCord (The Chief Executive Officer and Chief Talent Officer at Netflix) published this 125 page SlideShare…

It went viral and has had more the 5 million views.  Sheryl Sandberg called it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley.  It is all about culture, and what H.R. chose to do about it.

I’d be lying if I said I agreed with everything, but what do I know?  I’ve never been the H.R. director for a multi million dollar organisation.  It is certainly much more proactive than regurgitating the same old H.R. guff that everybody else does.

So, depending on how much time you have it is worth either:

  1. Flicking through the slides.
  2. Reading a summary article on the Harvard Business Review site.
  3. Or if you are part of the internet generation and woefully short on attention just watch the video.

Maybe you could reinvent your organisation’s H.R. as well.

At Netflix I worked with colleagues who were changing the way people consume filmed entertainment, which is an incredibly innovative pursuit—yet when I started there, the expectation was that I would default to mimicking other companies’ best practices (many of them antiquated), which is how almost everyone seems to approach HR. I rejected those constraints. There’s no reason the HR team can’t be innovative too.

Click here to view the original web page at hbr.org

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Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: best practice, culture, human resources, sacred cows, SlideShare, video

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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