As a football fan, thankfully not of the Oakland Raiders, I have had a lot of fun at the Raiders expense due to their incompetency on the football field. On any given Sunday, there is the possibility that the Raiders may get absolutely crushed 52-0. Sometimes, they will even get beaten this badly by a team such as the St. Louis Rams who have not been to the playoffs themselves since 2004. Even with the Raiders winning three of their last five games, they are still 3-12 and one of the laughingstocks of the NFL.
It is not all fun and games as there is one important lesson to be learned from the Oakland Raiders repeated failures. If the Raiders had better HR, they would win more games.
The terrible personnel decisions that the Raiders have made over the years are similar to the type of catastrophic decisions that a strong HR department can help prevent a team from making. Now let’s take a look back at some of their personnel failures over the years that have helped turn them into perennial losers on and off the field.
Recruitment/Hiring:
Just as it is crucial for your business to hire the right people, it is crucial for football teams, and organizations like the Raiders that impersonate a professional football team, to pick the right players to help improve their organization. For football teams, one way to replenish their personnel is the NFL Draft.
The NFL Draft is typically an opportunity for terrible teams like the Raiders to become less terrible. Instead, the Raiders have used this opportunity to make several horrible hiring decisions.
For example, in 2005 the Raiders selected Fabian Washington with the 23rd pick in the NFL Draft. Washington was a disappointment on and off the field (he was arrested for domestic violence in 2008). The very next pick of the 2005 draft was used on Aaron Rodgers for the Green Bay Packers. Yes, this is the same Aaron Rodgers that has won a Super Bowl & is regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation.
If the Raiders had a better Recruiting/Hiring process, they could have saved themselves from the PR disaster of one of their players getting arrested and instead hired someone that could have given people the opportunity to use the words Raiders & playoffs in the same sentence without it being the punch line to a joke.
Reference Checks:
Another aspect of a strong HR Department is taking the due diligence to see that you are hiring someone that is both willing and able to do their assigned job.
In 2007, the Raiders failed miserably in both of these areas, which turned out to be a costly mistake. That year, they had the first pick in the NFL Draft (due to being the worst team the year before) and they drafted JaMarcus Russell. This article from therichest.com sums up quite nicely why this was an absolute disaster (bolded points of emphasis are mine):
“Multiple sources cited his horrible work ethic, his laziness, his lack of knowledge of the playbook, his poor attitude, and to hear some sources tell it, his limited intelligence were all factors that contributed to his undoing.”
Literally, the Raiders could have picked ANY COLLEGE PLAYER they wanted. It’s safe to say that many of these available players were both willing AND able to put in the time to help the Raiders become respectable. Instead, the Raiders went the opposite direction and picked someone with the following traits:
–Poor Work Ethic
–Lazy
–Incompetent
–Unintelligent
This absolute disaster of a personnel decision came at the cost of $68 million (although they ended up actually paying “only” $36.4 million).
If the Raiders had a better HR department, they would have had a stronger reference check system in place in which they could have warned them that Russell would be terrible fit and that drafting him would be a catastrophic mistake.
Criminal Record/Drug Testing:
Another thing that is essential in HR is making sure your next hire doesn’t embarrass you by ending up on the police blotter and turning your company into a PR disaster. In all fairness, this problem is not exclusive to the Raiders.
Since 2007, 13 players from the Raiders have gotten arrested. In looking at the details, several of these incidents happened when these players where under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. In one case, a player was arrested in a bar fight four days after the Raiders signed him to a $6 million contract. In another incident, a Raiders player “held a gun beside a man’s head during an altercation and the man begged him not to shoot”.
If the Raiders had a better HR department, they would have had better systems in place to see if any of these players had prior arrests and a more extensive system in place to screen out people who have problems with drugs and alcohol. If these systems were in place, it would have reduced the likelihood of one of their players getting caught driving drunk at 3:47 am.
Bottom line is that many of the elements of having a strong HR department are the same aspects that determine the success and failure of professional sports teams and your businesses. Regardless of the industry, having a weak HR department may make your company the laughingstock of your industry, just like the Raiders.
Pay Your Workers:
The Raiders players aren’t the only ones within their organization who fall on their face when it comes to off-the field conduct. Another PR disaster that the Raiders have had is that whole thing about not paying their cheerleaders and in the process break the following:
“a raft of state labor laws, including failing to pay minimum wage, withholding wages for months and refusing to reimburse cheerleaders for their business expenses”
If the Oakland Raiders had a better HR department, the idea of breaking all of these laws at once would be a thought that if it was ever raised, would be shot down immediately. In this instance, if the Oakland Raiders had a better HR department, they would have avoided yet ANOTHER HR Blunder and saved themselves about $1.25 million in the process.
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