Don't Ever Manage Facilities, Security or the Front Desk
As a follow up to my previous thoughts on managing the company holiday party, consider this about facilities, security or the front desk:
Just because you are an expert in managing people, that does not make you an expert in managing security or facilities. Unfortunately, however, many human resources professionals gravitate toward the thrill of taking on more responsibility (probably under the guise of feeling like they are appreciated or being duped into a false promotion) by taking on the job that most other people don’t want. Seriously, do you think anyone else in their right mind in your organization would be crazy enough to voluntarily deal with bathroom issues, complaints about the heat or air conditioning, whether someone brought in their identification card today, etc? Not on your life. They usually explain that they are too busy doing real work – this could include making money for the company, solving business problems and the like.
Worse than facilities and security is managing the front desk. This thrusts the human resources professional into a world of insanity – scheduling the answering of phones, managing the receptionist and worse yet, when the receptionist is out sick, guess who ends up answering the phone? Someone in human resources.
So now that the human resources professional has taken on this new responsibility guess who gets all of the nonsensical questions? You guessed it. I once heard of a regional human resources manager who received a complaint from another manager about the fact that the toilet paper in the rest room did not rip on the perforation. Two college degrees, advanced certification and twenty years of experience led to this kind of existence!
So how do you get out of this mess?
- Give it to the CFO. He or she is likely controlling the budget anyway. And when the toilet paper does not rip on the perforation, he or she can increase the budget to buy better toilet paper.
- Delegate to someone in your department and let them manage it. Address only those things that are critical to corporate security, significant issues of safety and the like.
- Hire professionals. If you have to be tasked with these responsibilities manage them professionally.
