What Exactly Do You Do?

My husband, an Accountant by training and Controller by trade, asked me "What exactly do you do anyways?" As I explained that HR hires people, helps managers address performance, manages/explains benefits, addresses employee complaints, works out strategies for improving people performance, and advises on HR legal compliance. As I covered each topic he characterized each one as work that managers should be doing until the legal piece. To this day, I think he believes I should have become a lawyer. Today, the question came up in a different way. I respect the Operator that I was talking with and understand that his question was meant to understand and then to make a point. Recently, employee relations was directed back through the chain of command with HR as an outside resource once the chain was exhausted. The Operator was used to HR talking all of the employee relations items off of his hands and did not understand what HR was going to do for him if that main function was not part of the mix. I explained that the current direction is for HR to focus on talent acquisition, talent development and succession planning. I also let hime know that there is an HR Compliance component, employee satisfaction component and customer experience component. I even threw in that my experience in previous companies was that the operators manage employee complaints and I advise on compliance and handle escalations. My main functions were usually recruiting, training, HR legal, performance management and succession planning as the talent functions were called before buzz work bingo took over. The Operator is going to take it up the food chain becuase he is not the only Operator wondering why the structure put this back on their shoulders. I suggested that there was much abuse of the process and the expectation that employee relations be handled at store level was not happening under the old system. We'll see how it goes with the whole responsibilities gig works out. I have worked for more large companies than not and find my role in middle management is execution of company programs. Here strategy is a process of innovating how to get the corporate direction done better, faster, more. What do I do? I do my job and my job is what the company needs it to be.