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Joep Schrijvers

HRM’s power is tied to economic factors

“For the first time in history, the working population in the Netherlands has decreased,” comments successful author Joep Schrijvers. “It’s logical that in a context like this, HRM starts asking itself questions like ‘How do we get second and third generation immigrants on the work floor?’ or ‘How to I keep staff on board and motivated?’” Schrijvers’s hypothesis is that HRM either grows or shrinks depending on the current of economic evolutions.

• Anti-diva course
• One-time jackpot
• HRM as a derivative

Anti-diva course

For those of us who are familiar with the sales figures of his management books, Amsterdamee Joep Schrijvers is to put it simply, a success author. His first book dating back to 2003 has gone over the counter more than 250 000 times and numbers like that qualify it as a bestseller. Schrijvers: “The questions friends and journalists ask me most is then if the book has also made me terribly rich, but that’s definitely not the case. Since the past two years, I no longer combine writing and working but this is mainly possible due to my partner who works fulltime and because I not only write but also give lectures, do some consultancy and write columns. Selling 900 000 copies of a book would perhaps make you rich.” Above all, Schrijvers is a realist who knows what his limits are and won’t blow his own trumpets. “I do however have to admit it is definitely nice having friends around when you’ve written a successful book. One of the stranger things I’ve had happen was a lady asking to touch me after a seminar one day. When something like that happens once, it’s weird, but when it starts happing several 100 times a day, the chance one starts blowing their own horn increases. But no, I already took my anti-diva course.”

One-time jackpot

Just as little as Schrijvers started acting like a diva, he decided not to milk dry the success of ‘The Rat’: “Naturally there is the temptation of writing a sequel but then I’d be inconsistent with myself. I started writing in search of new topics and not to endlessly repeat myself. I accept the fact that ‘Hoe word ik een rat’ (How to a become a rat) is a one-time jackpot but I am also not saying I’ll never touch the subject again.”  

For his new book, in which he looks at how to get people back to work after economic and social disaster, the author visited Detroit where talked with, amongst others, a vicar, a company manager, an artist and candidate for presidency for the green party. Schrijvers: “Al those large automobile plants who have had to shut their doors, leave behind indescribable devastation. It is incredibly interesting to explore what initiatives are being taken to get a town like that back on track.”

HRM as a derivative

In light of that type of evolution, Schrijvers assigns HRM a secondary role: “None-administrative HRM is constantly talking about keeping people motivated, about letting people work in teams, etc., but what do those terms and efforts amount to when a company shuts down all or part of its activities?” To Joep Schrijvers, HRM is useful and meaningful, but its role is overestimated. Facetiously he described the recently discovered Personnel Development Plans as ‘kindergarting.’ “ Don’t get me wrong: HRM is necessary, but we also need to dare admit that HRM gets sucked into the whirlpool of economic circumstances. When Ford’s US automobile plants ascertained in 1910 that they needed to hire 40 000 people a year to answer the needs of 10 000, they understood that something needed to be done about their staff policy. With this example I want to show that HRM is a derivative of economic questions. It is according to this principle that unions have found answers to many HR-issues. Today we are coming across more and more Ford-type circumstances: there are demographic questions, globalisation, restructuring and so on. These are the key problems HRM is faced with.”