While reading my LinkedIn updates, a discussion grabbed my attention. An HR professional (15 years of experience) was asking peers for ideas on how to offer preferred parking spots to employees via a lottery.
Really? My immediate thought was I couldn’t believe someone was spending time crowdsourcing this and that they actually needed help figuring this out! This is exactly the stuff that keeps the negative stigma about the uselessness of HR sticking.
So I threw it up on Facebook for some opinions.
Several colleagues and of course there were a few funnies — like maybe she should bring in a third-party lottery expert or do an employee survey on parking.
There were a few comments that led to a consensus that perhaps “perk management” was a part of her role. If that’s the case, why isn’t it incorporated into the company’s total rewards program and handled once a year?
The troubling part of this was that an HR veteran is spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out a process for “perk management.” This is exactly the stuff that sets HR back 20 years to the days of being a taskmaster for “fluff management”.
What do you think?
As long as it is a minor part of the position or department, I don’t see tons wrong with it. I kind of look at it along the lines of running an “employee of the month” program. Just something that is nice for the employees, as long as management doesn’t look at it as a reason to have an HR department (as some do).
My ‘system’ would be to get the employees to manage the lottery.