This is the season of hope and joy—unless you work in HR.

Or to put it another way, are there no end to the number of surveys, studies and published reports that seem to be full of bad news for people in the human resource profession?

The latest one comes this week from Deloitte Consulting, and it is titled “HR Transformation Survey: A Case for Business Driven HR.” It would be unfair to say that the report bashes HR, because that was clearly not the intent of the Deloitte survey of HR and business leaders from 150 global companies. The participating companies are large–they have more than $2 billion in revenue—and all are Deloitte Consulting clients.
But, the findings seem to touch on a lot of the troubling trends I’ve written about here in the past.

For example, the press release touting the survey says that “more than 84 percent of 150 global companies surveyed in a new Deloitte Consulting LLP study say they are revamping their HR functions, but many are missing an opportunity to build long-term value and make HR an integral part of the company’s business strategy.”

It goes on to say, “In fact, the survey results found that revamping HR is still mostly about savings, systems and processes, despite rising demands from the C-suite for the HR function to support overall business objectives to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive business environment.”

“We believe companies lose out on the true value-add when HR improvements focus almost exclusively on improving HR operations,” says Robin Lissak, principal in Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Service Area and director of the survey. “That’s merely a solution in a vacuum—not a long-term strategy that will have a significant impact on the bottom line and help a company achieve its business goals.”

According to the survey, “the key drivers behind HR improvements continue to be cost savings or efficiency (85 percent) and effectiveness of service (75 percent). Only one-third of survey respondents cite building HR capability as a driver … and even fewer (30 percent) responded that they were making improvements to free HR to undertake a more strategic role.

“More promising, the survey results show that some respondents are moving toward business-HR alignment and are identifying a number of key business issues that are driving future HR improvements—training the next generation of leaders (40 percent); building and managing a global workforce (33 percent); mergers and acquisitions (31 percent); and an aging workforce (27 percent). However, only 40 percent of respondents have structured processes for future HR planning. This is clearly an area that needs improvement as HR will likely find it difficult to support business strategy without a formal mechanism to solidify this alignment.”

The study also found that outsourcing administrative duties is one strategy many companies are still using to improve their HR functions while retaining HR’s strategic capabilities in house. Approximately 40 percent of surveyed companies that are transforming HR “have already outsourced or plan to outsource some routine, administrative operations.” It adds, however, that, “Surprising to us, some companies are now looking to outsource more strategic HR activities, such as training & development (42 percent), recruiting and staffing (36 percent), compliance (36 percent), talent management (27 percent) and global mobility (21 percent).”

I get just as tired writing this stuff as you probably do reading it, but why is it that year after year, survey after survey seems to find the same thing—that HR is too focused on procedure and not enough on high-level activities that add value to the organization? One reader seemed to say it all when he responded to my last blog post on this subject by writing: “HR professionals need to find the means and the spine to make their contributions difficult to live without. And this doesn’t come from getting an ‘A+’ in compliance—unless of course that’s your only responsibility. Open your eyes, get in the fray, don’t be afraid to muscle in and if you get your nose bloodied, take note of how and why that happened (and who did it), and stay in the game. That’s what they (the bosses and customers) want—an HR function that gets on the field and competes.” Not one, as the writer said, “passing out towels on the bench.”