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Management: New Issues and Paradigms
HR has Come A Long Way
Prof. Meenakshi Gour
“In
the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words:
People, Products and Profits. Unless you have a good team you
can’t do much with the other two.”
- Lee Iacocca
Very well articulated by Lee Iacocca, remember that you could do
everything else right as a manager – lay brilliant plans, set up
modern assembly lines, close major deals with the world’s best
companies and use sophisticated accounting controls, but still
fail as a manager – by hiring the wrong people or by not
instilling team spirit among the peers and subordinates. On the
contrary, many managers at all levels have been successful even
with inadequate plants / organizational controls / resources but
equipped with right skills / attitudes for hiring the right person
for the right job and motivating and developing them. Thus the
role of HR professional has shifted from merely managing a
resource to managing and leveraging the most important resource of
a firm i.e. the human resources by being a “Business
Partner”. Thus
keeping in tune with organizational changes the evolution of HR
during last decade has indeed been phenomenal. Innovative
practices are the essence of this evolution.
A
case in point is some novel HR practices in BPO industry. With a
view to overcome the problems created by separation of family due
to odd working hours, a family atmosphere (in the true sense) has
been created by many BPO players wherein more than one family
members have been accommodated in the company (working in the same
shift) so that the members are not separated physically even while
in the work place! The
retail industry is the other example. In some of the leading
companies HR is truly integrated with the business functions even
in terms of designations. There has often been creation of joint
designations like “Customer Care Associate & HR Manager”.
These types of positions are deliberately created to integrate HR
functions with business processes. Same is the case with
advertising companies. The other innovation has been association
of HR with even the bottom layers of an organization. Therefore,
typical IR positions have given way to HR hierarchies at Plant
level in many manufacturing companies. This is besides the
corporate HR at the central level. This shows the other
discernible development that even HR function is moving towards
decentralization.
Some
of the unique roles played by the HR professionals in this
evolutionary phase of organizational development are:
Role of an Administrator:
This role gives credibility to the HR function.
Administrative function, though mundane, is essential and cannot
be done away with. However, the latest trend has been to outsource
it so that HR can concentrate more on other developmental roles.
Role of a Mechanic: This
is a very important role played by the HR department to ensure
that the organizational machinery is on track. This may also be
defined as trouble shooting or crisis management role. If the
project is falling short of hands, or the employees’ bills are
not paid, or an employee is unable to get tickets to Pandit
Bismillah Khan Show or a member of staff does have some problem
even on the family front, HR steps in and engineers a solution
striking a balance between the needs of the organization and those
of an individual so that the organization operates smoothly
without any hiccups.
Role of a Change Agent: Here
the emphasis is more on managing the internal customers i.e. the
employees. This issue has assumed substantial importance in recent
times as jobs are becoming more demanding and life is increasingly
getting stressful. Innovative HR practices like yoga, meditation,
courses like Art of Living, facility for boxing punches,
compulsory leave policy, informal get-togethers, artistic
competitions and many other similar initiatives are being taken up
by HR departments of various leading corporate all over the world
to infuse fresh energy among the burnt out professionals.
Role of a Business Partner:
The most important event in the last decade in the parlance
of HR has been that HR professionals have started speaking and
understanding the language of business. The formal part of this
element of business partnering is in succession planning, the
development of feedback channels, employee surveys and the
formulation of input to the performance appraisals of the first
line managers. Making the function relevant and capable of
catalyzing or facilitating change is probably at the crux of
achieving the business partner status. Also in this position HR
has a say in taking major strategic decisions like branching out
in new related or unrelated business, or taking up another project
or setting up a factory in a remote location. Here the HR feels
the pulse of the organization and accordingly contributes to the
decision making process.
Role of a Cultural Ambassador: Each organization has
its own unique culture which is a culmination of its resources,
vision, mission, people, leadership and past successes &
failures. It is the culture of an organization that dictates the
end product. A set of core values and beliefs shapes the culture
of an organization. For e.g. the late J.R.D Tata believed in
getting the best out of people by letting them free. It is here
that HR does the role of an ambassador, by identifying the core
values and beliefs of the organization and striving to further
them.
There
are other roles as well that HR plays of and on but the above
stated functions are more used ones and also critical from the
perspective of the organization. The objective is single-fold. A
good HR policy is essential to ensure that the efforts of every
single individual are coordinated and directed towards the
realization of super-ordinate objectives of the organization as a
whole; the synergy so achieved would transcend the sum total of
individual performance. HR definitely has come
a…long way !!!!!!
Author:
Prof.
Meenakshi Gour,
Member of faculty at SIES College of Management Studies (SIESCOMS).
meenakshi@siescoms.edu
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