![]() HR leaders very rarely hold veto power over hiring decisions. In any organization with more than a few hundred employees, it is unlikely that HR leadership can be intimately involved in every new hire.Ģ. Let’s start with two things we know are true:ġ. So, if our most sacred role is to ensure excellence in every hire we make - how do we translate this into actuality, given the context of our current organization? Given this, they are often more apt to make a mediocre hire than to not make one at all. And sometimes food services managers, custodial coordinators, and special education directors, to name a few, are stymied by a lack of quality candidates applying for their vacancies. Indeed, some of the most otherwise-capable principals I know are not particularly strong when it comes to hiring. Those of us in HR recognize that this is problematic even a gifted principal is fallible when it comes to making a hire. Why? Because in far too many organizations (not limited to K-12 by any means) hiring decisions are fully decentralized - meaning that once minimum qualifications are met, a hiring manager (rather than HR) makes the ultimate decision as to whether or not a candidate gets an offer. Most of us, if we answer those questions honestly, will find that our response is wanting. And what systems are in place to ensure that a marginal candidate is not hired into any position in your school district? What steps do you take, as an HR professional, to ensure that every new hire is top-drawer?Ģ. Many superintendents are not clear on what the purpose of HR is, beyond ensuring compliance and position control.Īsk yourself these two important questions:ġ. In other words, while we’re tacitly held accountable for the quality of the workforce, we’re not always authorized to do much about it. We also face moral issues around pay and workload, hiring challenges when leadership vacancies occur, and the need to deepen our commitment to diversity and equity with a changing workforce and a changing student population.īut for many HR leaders, the greatest challenge faced in ensuring an outstanding workforce is far more basic: it is that district leadership often does not equate our role with this mission. ![]() ![]() All of us are tackling far more legislative mandates and numerous new initiatives than ever before. Few HR departments are seeing an increase in staffing unless it’s correlated to an increase in enrollment, and even in those rapidly growing school districts, the HR office all-too-frequently still falls behind. Given the reality of lean HR departments, we all struggle to make time for this. Let’s talk today about the first of these two important callings: to ensure that each hire we make is a quality hire. And because each school district employee is, at any given moment, an educator - we must not lose sight that our most important responsibility is to ensure excellence in every single hire we make and to unabashedly address performance concerns when they arise. But there is a deeper ideal, a more salient reason why we exist - and that is to ensure that every child has an outstanding educator in front of them, every day. There is no shortage of tasks that the HR office must do to ensure that it meets its two most basic functions - which are to ensure the district’s compliance with employment law and to ensure that positions are filled. Originally written for the AppliTrack “Hire Greatness Today” publicationĪs we get into the swing of another school year, it is useful to ask ourselves: what is our true work as K-12 HR Leaders? Is it to process I-9s? To ensure compliance with FLSA? To attend job fairs, manage position control, and ensure there’s a substitute in every classroom every day?Īs you all know, the answer is “Yes.” Yes, to all of the above, and yes to so much more.
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