Back to school time always makes me a little nostalgic for elementary school: the possibility of a new year, brand new school supplies, plus, recess and snack time. But it also reminds me of a little book series I enjoyed, called Harry Potter. Looking back, I’ve come to the conclusion that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry could have benefited greatly from a human resources professional (or a PEO, in some cases!). The School was seriously lacking in a couple rather important areas.

Recruiting:

The school had a terrible time retaining professors to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts; the school went through seven! If you’re counting, and familiar with Hogwarts, there’s only seven years in the program—meaning Harry, Hermione, and Ron never had the same professor from year to year, and Dumbledore was constantly recruiting. Chances are if you have a retention problem, you also have a recruiting problem.

Hogwarts should have developed a formal process for recruiting and should have developed concrete interview questions to highlight an individual’s fit with the organization. Had this been in place, the person with the right qualifications likely would have been chosen, and turnover reduced dramatically. The right process probably would have weeded out Professor Quirrell who was harboring an incredibly dangerous criminal (he-who-shall-not-be-named) who wanted to harm a particular student (Harry), and Delores Umbridge, who was in no way qualified to interact with children and certainly wasn’t committed to teaching—not a great mix for a teacher.

Performance Management:

The professors Hogwarts were able to retain had very limited or, at best, varied success with carrying out the functions of their jobs. Snape held grudges over his students, directly impacting his ability to teach them; Sybill Trelawney would notify students that she predicted their deaths, to the students, which is a terrible habit in the first place, but likely impacted her effectiveness; Delores Umbridge was a downright awful hire who regularly abused her students; and Cuthbert Binns was an incredibly dry lecturer, regularly causing his students to fall asleep.

With a structured performance management system, Dumbledore would have been able to identify these less-than-ideal behaviors, set expectations, and increase the effectiveness of his staff to achieve the mission of the School. And, if anything, Dumbledore could have used these mechanisms to relieve the professors of their duties (*cough* Umbridge). The best idea for the school would probably have been a 360-degree review system, to see how effective students thought the teachers were at their job, how effective the professors thought they were, and how their supervisors saw them.

Just think of how effective the professors and administrators would have been had there been HR experts like The Employer Group helping them along the way to develop and implement these processes and make Hogwarts a more effective and successful organization…