HR on TV

Do you want to add references to your assignments that are easy and fun to digest? Do you want some straightforward routes to best practice? Do you like television?

If your answer to all these questions is ‘Yes’ then here’s what you can do: watch your favourite workplace-set TV shows, not for the plot, characterisation, stunts or set dressing, but rather for the human resources issues on display. Reality shows such as The Apprentice are the obvious place to start. But there are also documentaries and many fictional dramas and comedies set in organisations.

In The West Wing and Yes Minister we see the inner workings of government. In 30 Rock, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Frazier we see inside broadcast media companies. Boston Legal and Ally McBeal showed us legal practices. And there are more police procedural and hospital dramas than anyone can ever watch. All regularly feature HR issues underlying the foreground stories.

Best of all is probably The Office: an American Workplace, where the regular character Toby is a busy HR Business Partner in a small business unit of a larger organisation. And of course, this programme is the US spin-off of the UK comedy The Office.

None of these programmes show us best practice. Often the organisations will not be depicted realistically and the issues will be handled quickly and at low levels of detail. But that’s a good thing: they can certainly show us what NOT to do, which can lead us toward best practice.

And working out HR issues in these fictional worlds can be involving and challenging, with none of the risks of doing it for real in our own organisations.

I know what I’m doing tonight. Why don’t you join in: put your feet up, get your notebook out, put your ‘HR goggles’ on and watch your favourite workplace-set TV show.