In brief
- Every company already has an HR system people experience: recruiting, onboarding, performance, training and development, succession and employee relations.
- When nobody designs that experience, the law designs it, or whoever happens to be in the room does.
- The goal is an experience designed from your company’s identity, and that starts with naming who you are.
Spend enough time on LinkedIn and someone will tell you HR needs a system. Better processes. A clearer operating model. The right technology. Josh Bersin calls one version of this idea Systemic HR™: HR seeing the workplace as a system instead of a set of disconnected parts.
I agree HR should run well. But I think that conversation skips something. HR already has a system. Every company has one, whether anyone calls it that or not. What most companies don’t have is a system anyone designed.
The system that runs whether you name it or not
Think about what happens in any organization with people in it. Someone gets recruited. Someone has a first day. A manager has a conversation about performance, or avoids having it. Someone gets trained, or figures it out alone. Someone gets promoted, and someone else wonders why it wasn’t them. A conflict gets handled, or it doesn’t.
Recruiting, onboarding, performance, training and development, succession, employee relations. Those six areas run in every company. A 12-person startup with no HR department still has all six. They’re the cogs in the wheel, and the wheel is already turning.
So when we say HR needs a system, I want to ask which one we mean.
Two systems, two different questions
There’s the system HR uses to run itself: how requests come in, who owns what, which software holds the records, how the team is structured. That’s the system most of the “HR needs a system” conversation is about, and it matters. In HR Service Delivery Model vs. System, I break that side into the model and the technology.
Then there’s the system people experience. What it’s like to apply here. What the first week feels like. Whether a review feels like a conversation or a verdict. Whether a promotion decision makes sense to the people who watched it happen.
The first system answers “how does HR work?” The second answers “what is it like to be on the other side of HR?” Candidates, employees, managers and leaders rarely see the first system. They live in the second one every day.
That second system is the one I want companies paying attention to, because it’s where your culture actually shows up.
When nobody designs it, something else does
If nobody decides what the experience should be, it still gets decided. Just not on purpose. I use the Toxic Culture Pyramid™ to describe what fills the gap.
Level 1: The law designs the experience. Onboarding is the I-9, the handbook and a laptop. The performance review exists to build a file in case someone has to be let go. Everything is shaped by what the company is required to do, so the experience is compliant and empty.
Level 2: Whoever is in the room designs the experience. Your onboarding depends on which manager you got. Your review depends on who wrote it and what kind of week they were having. Two people in the same role at the same company have completely different experiences, and both are told that’s just how it is here.
Level 3: The company’s identity designs the experience. The company has named who it is, and that personality shapes what recruiting, onboarding, reviews and development feel like. A candidate gets a real preview of the culture in the interview. A new hire is onboarded to the culture along with the job. A review becomes a conversation about how the work gets done here.
| Who designs the experience | What people get |
|---|
| Level 1 | The law | Compliant and empty |
| Level 2 | Whoever is in the room | Depends on who you got |
| Level 3 | The company’s identity | An experience that feels like the company |
Most organizations sit at Level 1 or Level 2. That has very little to do with HR’s effort. Most of the time, nobody ever asked HR to design the experience. When a company hasn’t seen HR as an extension of the experience it wants to give its customers, the law or the loudest person in the room fills in.
Why another process fix won’t change it
A company can reorganize HR, buy new software and rewrite every policy, and the experience can stay exactly the same. The internal system improved. Nobody on the other side of HR could tell.
Meanwhile, the experience system keeps making the most expensive decisions in the building. It decides whether people want to join, whether they settle in, whether they grow, whether they stay engaged, whether they’re ready to step up and whether they stay at all. Each of those six areas is a place where the culture you describe to the outside world either holds up inside or falls apart.
Your customers already have an experience of your company, and someone designed it on purpose. The people who serve those customers deserve the same intention. I make that case in full in HRX Is the New EX for CX.
Where to start
Designing the experience starts with knowing who you are. You can’t make onboarding feel like your company until your company has named its personality. That’s why my work starts with the Culture Code™. It names the personality, so the six areas finally have something to be designed from.
From there, the work can go two directions. The Culture Code™ Readiness System puts your culture’s behaviors into the HR system you already have: your job descriptions, interview guides and review forms. HRX™ goes further and designs how HR itself is experienced, so working with HR feels like working with your company.
Either way, the question changes. Stop asking whether HR has a system. Ask who designed the one you already have.
Questions worth asking
- If two people started in the same role on the same day, would they have the same first week?
- Which of the six areas in your company is shaped mostly by what the law requires?
- Which one depends most on which manager someone happens to get?
Read next: HR Service Delivery Model vs. System: Why Only One Creates Great Experiences
Frequently asked questions
What is an HR system?
Most people mean the setup HR uses to run itself: its structure, processes and software. Every company also has a second HR system, the one people experience across recruiting, onboarding, performance, training and development, succession and employee relations.
Does a small company without an HR department still have an HR system?
Yes. Even a 12-person company recruits, onboards, gives feedback, trains, promotes and handles conflict. Those six areas run whether anyone owns them or not.
What happens when nobody designs the HR experience?
Something else designs it. Usually it’s the law, which leaves people with an experience that’s compliant and empty, or whoever happens to be in the room, which makes the experience depend on which manager someone gets.
How do you design the HR experience?
Start by naming your company’s personality. Once you know who you are, each of the six areas can be designed to feel like your company.
