What next for Human Resource Professionals?

Introduction: In today’s context of extreme competition, role of HR in today’s businesses is changing. It is becoming tough for most of the HR professionals to keep abreast of latest developments. Human Resource professionals have to quickly adapt and invest in learning.

As we are aware, Human resources management has been ever evolving, read my blog on “The ever changing role of HR" http://sureshamara.blogspot.in/2013/09/the-ever-changing-role-of-hr.html . While HR professionals are playing an active role in today’s work place, read my blog on “Role of HR in today’s work place” http://sureshamara.blogspot.in/2013/09/role-of-hr-in-todays-work-place.html by fulfilling organizational goals, read my blog on “How does HR fulfill organizational goals” http://sureshamara.blogspot.in/2013/09/how-does-hr-fulfill-organizational-goals.html, HR professionals still need to acquire few more competencies to cater in this competitive market.

Here are few trends and competencies that will shape HR in the future:

Business Acumen: Business acumen is keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with a business situation in a manner that is likely to lead to a good outcome. HR needs to develop their knowledge and understanding of the financial, accounting, marketing and operational functions of an organization.

Organization Design: Organization design will be a focus with the current pace of change happening.  Organization design is the deliberate process of configuring structures, processes, reward systems, and people practices to create an effective organization capable of achieving the business strategy.

Change Management: With an increase in competition, organizations frequently adopt changes in the organizations. Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organization will minimize employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change. HR professionals have to enhance their knowledge on change practices and strategies.

Employer Branding: Employer branding is communicating and shaping an organization’s reputation as an “employer of choice” or “best place to work”. Employer branding is nothing but differentiating the organization from its competitors. HR is already active on it. HR professionals need to develop their skills and become a champion of employer branding.  HR professionals need to develop the skill of anchoring the branding activities at various places – both internal and external.

Technology & Networking: HR professionals have to be hands-on and abreast of the latest technology, especially the social media networking sites. Networking plays an important role. There is an increase trend of usage of social media networking sites for recruitment. It is not just social media for recruitment. HR professionals need to improve their network with academic colleges and various institutions providing certifications courses. This would help them to reach the talent easily and reduce the recruitment costs.

Cost reduction: With the increase in competition and available of similar products in the market, organizations are facing lots of challenges for to sell the products and services. Organizations are already in search of ways to reduce cost at various stages and phases of organization. HR professionals will play a key role and have to reduce the costs by advising management on recruitment, retention, employee engagement.  

Retention Management: Retention management is becoming an upcoming trend rather than talking about attrition management. Retention is all about retaining talent by creating a work place as best place to work - communication, procedures, benefits, compensation, skill development and etc.

Better employee engagement: Engaging an employee is becoming more an importance tool to retain the best talent. HR focus would be on

• Enabling employees with the right set of tools, resources and support;
• Creating work place that is energizing to work for better productivity.

Capability building programs: Gone are the days for providing a training programme for improving employee technical or soft skills. HR focus should be on the overall development of the individual employee which leads to individual capability building resulting to organization capability.

Corporate social responsibility: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the responsiveness of businesses to stakeholders’ legal, ethical, social and environmental expectations. HR has to be proactive and take appropriate initiatives.

Analytics: Data plays a key role in any organization. HR has to create lot more analytics like cost per hire, cost per employee, mean time to close an open position, diversity, cost of various benefits and many more.

How does HR fulfill organizational goals?

The term “Human Resources” refers to all employees in an organization. They are the key ingredients to achieving organizational goals.HR professional plays a vital role by adopting some of the best practices in the activities handled by them as below:

Manpower Planning, recruitment and selection: HR professionals assist managers in proper recruitment strategies and staffing. They provide their technical assistance in writing job description, placing of right people at right place, sourcing, screening, interviewing applicants. Sourcing of resume is done through multiple channels – employee referral programs, staffing firms, job portals and the upcoming trend of sourcing resumes through social media. Sourcing resumes from various sources increases the talent pool and increases the chances of recruitment of right talent for the available job. 

Compensation and Benefits: HR provides their knowledge by fixing the right pay for any particular job based on the availability of the skill in the market, roles and responsibilities. One value addition in this done by HR is mapping of compensation as per the market conditions like skill availability and the compensation paid by other competitors in the same market. HR also suggests on the benefits to be provided by the organization. Benefits may or may not be a part of total compensation but these benefits can increase the employee morale. 

Learning & Development: Employees are in need of sharpening their skills in today’s competitive market. HR focuses on developing the skills in employees which are either lacked by them or which are required by organization. It is not just about skill development but HR is focusing on the overall development of the employee. 

Performance Management: This helps the employee to understand their level of competencies required for them to perform their job. This would help in understanding their skill gap and once they are up to the mark this in turn increases their productivity. HR devises performance management tool to measure individual employee performance. HR is inventing more strategies in motivating an employee or boosting employee morale by profit sharing, performance incentives and rewarding and recognizing the achievements.

Employee Engagement: Engaging an employee is becoming more an importance tool to retain the best talent. HR is engaging employees in conducting variety of events, assisting employees in developing their skills not just limiting the skills required to perform their job.

Employee Welfare: HR is playing a key role by suggesting various welfare measures like costs covering medical expenses, gym bills, vacation packages and many more. 

Employee Advocate: HR plays a vital role in organizational success with expertise on creating a best work environment in which people will choose to be motivated, contributing and happy. In this, the focus is on overall development of an employee. HR is focusing on employee assistance programs, organization development strategies, regularly schedule communication channels with employees and profit-sharing strategies.

Change Management: With an increase in competition, organizations frequently adopt changes in the organizations. Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organization will minimize employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change. HR professionals are contributing by their knowledge and ability to execute successful change strategies. 

Employer branding: Employer branding is communicating and shaping an organization’s reputation as an “employer of choice” or “best place to work”. Employer branding is nothing but differentiating the organization from its competitors. HR Plays a vital role in this and brands the organization at various places. HR is becoming a champion in employer branding by taking lot of initiatives in improvising the employee experience at various levels and anchoring the branding activities at various places. HR is taking an active role in social media websites to promote the organization’s culture.

Analytics: Data plays a key role in any organization. HR is providing all sorts of analytics like cost per hire, cost per employee, mean time to close an open position and many more.

Role of HR in today’s work place

Introduction: Traditionally, the role of human resource professional in many organizations has been to administrating or monitoring the policies. Their role was limited to personnel and administrative functions that were viewed by the organizations as paperwork.

In today’s context of extreme competition, role of HR in today’s businesses is changing. HR is becoming more a part of team and is also getting involved in decision making and making a contribution to the organization as a whole. HR is becoming a strategic business partner and advisor to the management. The focus is on actions that differentiate the organization from its competitors and aims to make long term impact on the success of organization. The focus is on attracting and retaining talent through engagement.

Roles handled by HR in today’s work place:

While HR still handles the regular and traditional activities like

• Manpower planning, recruitment and selection;
• Learning and development;
• Compensation, benefits and welfare;
• Employee engagement;
• Performance appraisals;
• Designing of policies;
• Statutory compliances;
• Corporate social responsibility;
• Handling employee grievance and etc.  

HR is making their contributions by handling activities like

Strategic Partner: In this role, HR contributes to the development of and the accomplishment of organization wide business plan and objectives. To be a successful business partners, HR representatives are developing their knowledge in various systems of business like finance and accounting, market conditions, competitors, production and cost reduction strategies. HR representatives are contributing with their knowledge about the design of work systems in which people succeed and contribute. 

Employee Advocate: HR plays a vital role in organizational success with his expertise on creating a best work environment in which people will choose to be motivated, contributing and happy. In this, the focus is on overall development of an employee. HR is focusing on employee assistance programs, organization development strategies, regularly schedule communication channels with employees and profit-sharing strategies.

Change Management: With an increase in competition, organizations frequently adopt changes in the organizations. Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organization will minimize employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change. HR professional are contributing by their knowledge and ability to execute successful change strategies. 

Employer branding: Employer branding is communicating and shaping an organization’s reputation as an “employer of choice” or “best place to work”. HR Plays a vital role in this and brands the organization at various places. HR is becoming a champion in employer branding by taking lot of initiatives in improvising the employee experience at various levels and anchoring the branding activities at various places. HR is taking an active role in social media websites to promote the organization’s culture.

Analytics: Data plays a key role in any organization. HR is geared with a detailed analytics for it's various activities.

To conclude, the focus is on making the work place better and enhancing the employee experience at work place by understanding the various concepts of business and people.

The ever changing role of HR

Introduction: Human resource management (HRM or simply HR) is the management of an organization's workforce, or human resources. There is still many organizations’ operating under the traditional approach – HR is being seen only as an administrator of policies and procedures. With the increase in opportunities and competition, Organizations started looking HR as a Strategic Business Partner.

To understand the ever changing role of HR, let us have a look into how the HR evolved and is evolving over a period of time or the ever changing role of HR starting from the period of before industrialization.

18^th & 19^th Century: This period can be classified into three – Period before industrial revolution, period of industrial revolution and post industrialization.

Period before industrial revolution – The society was primarily an agriculture economy. Number of specialized crafts was limited and was usually carried out within a village or community with apprentices assisting the master craftsmen.

Period of industrial revolution – Industrial revolution marked the conversion of economy from agriculture based to industry based. Modernization and increased means gave way to industrial setup. A department was set up to look into workers wages, welfare and other related issues. This led to emergence of personnel management with the major task as

• Workers wages
• Workers record maintenance
• Workers housing facilities and health care

An important event in industrial revolution was growth of Labour Union.

Post Industrial revolution – The term Human resource Management saw a major evolution after 1850. Various studies were conducted during this period which gave HRM altogether a new meaning and importance.

20^th Century (until late 1980’s): The post industrialization period continued until late 1980’s. Evolution of scientific human resource management was emerged. This period was known for traditional Human Resource Management. As a result, HR started handling activities like

• Recruitment and selection of skilled workforce;
• Motivation and employee benefits;
• Training and development of workforce;
• Performance related salaries and appraisals;
• Wage uniformity;
• Statutory compliances.

20^th Century (post late 1980’s): This is the continuation of traditional human Resource Management period. This is the period where globalization was evolving in many ways and many organizations started adopting the practice of operating from various parts of the world – this is in search of skilled employees and to decrease the expenditure. The focus started shifting towards employee development. HR started handling activities like

• Recruitment and selection;
• Training and development;
• Performance appraisals;
• Compensation and benefits management;
• Employee Motivation through engagement activities, rewards and recognition;
• Attrition Management;
• Statutory compliance;
• Designing of policies.

An important event in this period is the improvement in communication systems.

21^st Century: With multiple organizations entering into different countries, there are numerous brands of similar products available in the market. And also there is a revolution in communication system, transportation and in many other sectors. In terms of communication, internet and mobile phones have become a part and parcel of everyone’s life.

Today, organizations have an enormous competition in terms of people, products, services and etc. In order to meet this, the traditional human resource management approach faded and human resources started becoming a strategic human resource management.  Strategic HRM focuses on actions that differentiate the organization from its competitors and aims to make long term impact on the success of organization. HR started and continuing playing as a strategic advisor to the management. The focus is on attracting and retaining talent through engagement.

Activities handled are like

• Manpower planning, recruitment and selection;
• Learning and development;
• Organizational design, development and capability programs;
• Leadership development;
• Employee advocate;
• Change Management;
• Employer branding;
• Increase in the focus of the wellness of employee with more focus on work-life balance;
• Compensation, benefits and welfare
• Employee engagement;
• Performance appraisals focusing on overall development of employees;
• Designing of policies which focus on enhancing employee experience at work place;
• Statutory compliances;
• Corporate social responsibility;
• Employee Grievance handling and etc.

Saying all these, HR is still evolving, emerging and is becoming as a true business partner. HR plays a key role in organization’s success by taking the role of an advisor to the management in terms of attracting talent, retaining talent, differentiating an organization from its competitors. HR is partnering with the management to reach the organizational goals. There are an increased number of HR professionals understanding the concepts of business, finance, production, marketing, sales and other functions of business.

The focus of HR has been shifted and shifting towards individual employee satisfaction, making the organization as “Best Place to Work” or “Employer of Choice” remembering the fact that a happy employee always gives his/her best in reaching organization goals.