What is "Radical Human Resources"?
Egret crossing boundaries
I’m a member of the RoadMap consulting network’s human resources/racial justice (HR/RJ) working group. One of my most trusted and respected colleagues in that group recently posed the question, “What is traditional human resource management (HR), and what is radical human resources (radical HR)? I just don’t understand what radical HR means.” I could only assume that her question was meant for me. I mean, as far as I knew, I was the only one in our group who used that term. And others have definitely referred to my work that way.
I quickly—or, if I’m being honest, not so quickly, maybe more like … eventually—turned my gaze away from my own navel and toward the question she asked. What is radical HR? What differentiates it from traditional HR? Here we have someone with decades of HR experience asking a question about a term I throw around constantly. How would I want her to understand radical HR?
I started where I always do: with a web search. Here are the top ten search results I found (well, the top 11 results, because #10 does. Not. Count):
Radical HR Club - Human Resources Training, HR Professionals
My article referenced above Investing in Community: Why Radical Human Resources Is Critical for Movement Organizations | Borealis Philanthropy
Agile People: A Radical Approach for HR & Managers (That Leads to Motivated Employees)
H.R.7684 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): No Tax Breaks for Radical Corporate Activism Act
Why HR Departments Need a Radical Transformation - HR Daily Advisor
The list went on for a few pages, too!
I was quite surprised to see as many entries as I did, given how little I myself had heard the term used. It’s almost like radical HR has hit the mainstream?! Or has it?
Before I reflect on those search hits, let me take a step back and say that an early and important mainstream shift in conceptualizing HR began happening at least 25 years ago. This shift was from considering HR as a purely administrative enterprise to seeing HR as a strategic and key component of an effective and mission-driven organization. Consider this 1998 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that talked about HR’s “radical departure:”
“Make no mistake: this new agenda for HR is a radical departure from the status quo. In most companies today, HR is sanctioned mainly to play policy police and regulatory watchdog. The new agenda, however, would mean that every one of HR’s activities would in some concrete way help the company better serve its customers or otherwise increase shareholder value.”
OK, I get that for some of us, the terms “customers” and “increase shareholder value” are cringe-worthy. But it’s still deeply significant that HBR, neoliberal as it is, was describing a (radical at the time) transformation from HR as personnel administration to HR as a strategic investment in people who are intrinsically connected with the mission.
Did this indicate a sea change in traditional HR? Yes. Do I consider it “radical HR,” though? No.
I wonder if this disconnect—between mainstream publication descriptions of “radical” and my colleague’s and my internal barometer of “radical”—is what animates her question.
The reality is that, regardless of the sea change in traditional HR, the change is still cosmetic. The employer-employee contract remains the same. Mainstream HR still sees its role as maintaining the organization’s bottom line and still sees workers as necessary but unfortunate cost centers. It still tries, as if wishing workers could be robots, to optimize production and productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency.
Radical HR, on the other hand, redefines the employer-employee contract through a social justice lens (we suggest developing an employer philosophy, a clear statement of how the employer seeks to treat people who perform work in the organization). Radical HR begins by assuming that if organizations were centering their missions, they also would be embodying a fundamental social justice principle that a mission-centered organization would center the voices and leadership of the communities it serves. Therefore, workers would, optimally, come from the communities the organization serves. Therefore, serving the workers and serving the communities (or in HBR’s words, “customers”) are one and the same.
Another tenet of radical HR, as far as I’m concerned, is that it breaks open the boundaries of a single organization and sees people- and culture-development as servicing liberatory movements, not organizations. It embraces the broader frame of a dynamic, interdependent ecosystem of anti-oppressive movement organizations, together moving toward a larger vision in which workers move fluidly between organizations as their strengths develop and change. Whereas traditional HR sees other organizations in its ecosystem as its “competitors,” radical HR sees other organizations in its ecosystem as its natural (and reciprocal) collaborators, catalytic changemakers, and stepping stones for the career development of their own workers.
Enrique Rubio, in his International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) blog “The Essential Role of HR in Unleashing Radical Global Innovation” talks about radical HR in this way:
“If we want to go at all, we must go together.” If we want to survive and thrive as humanity we are going to have to come together as a global community, put our differences aside, and tap into the massive power of our collective intelligence, creativity, imagination, resourcefulness, and grit to find solutions to these global challenges while we endure the short-term consequences of not having come together sooner. That’s the only way to think and implement deep, wide, far-reaching, and quickly implemented solutions.
Coming together, building bridges across countries, cultures, and communities, and tearing down the mental walls that separate us, isn’t just wishful thinking promoted by hippies, it is becoming a human survival imperative if we want to preserve our existence in the years to come.”
Yes! I can get behind that. Radical HR is a fundamental shift. It’s about building a consent-based workplace, deepening trust and accountability through generative conflict, and using choice points to move toward equity even when the road toward equity is not fully visible. It’s about advancing transparency, shining a light on, and if possible undoing (or at least reducing the harm of) the inequities built into most standard organizational policies and procedures. It’s about understanding that all risks do not have the same consequences. It’s about providing a framework across our movement organizations for liberatory practices to flourish. And to quote my friend and colleague who got me started on this search: It’s about putting the “Human” back in human resources.