A New Mandate for Human Resources

Summary and Critique

SUMMARY
HR department is often perceived to be ineffective, incompetent and costly. The primary work of HR is to achieve organizational excellence through a focus on learning, quality, teamwork, and reengineering. The focus should shift from traditional HR activities towards its deliverables to the organizations stakeholders. The various ways in which this can be done is through partnering with senior and line managers in strategy execution, becoming expert in organization and execution of work, representing the employees vociferously and improving their commitment and by becoming an agent of transformation. The primary role of transforming the HR role lies on the CEO and all line managers who have the main responsibility of achieving the business goals. Thus the line and the HR should form a partnership to make it focused on outcomes rather than activities. Current scenario HR Plays the role of policy police and regulatory watchdog Handles the paper work involved in hiring and firing, manages the bureaucratic aspects of benefits and administers compensation decisions.

Disconnected from the real work of the organization

Why is HR more significant today? HR has an opportunity to play a leadership role in enabling organizations to meet the following challenges: Globalization With the rapid expansion of global markets, managers are finding it difficult to balance the demand by thinking globally but acting locally. This requires them to move the products, people, ideas and information around the world to meet local needs. Hence many factors such as political situations, global trade issues and fluctuating exchange rates must be taken into account before forming the proper strategies. Globalization requires that the organizations increase their ability to learn and manage diversity, complexity and ambiguity. Profitability through growth Companies should look into increasing their revenue growth for higher profits rather than using downsizing, reengineering, delayering and consolidation to cut costs. For increasing the revenue growth companies should acquire more customers, develop new products, and incorporate innovative ideas which require free flow of information and shared learning among employees. Technology Technology has been changing at a rapid pace and there is a need to continuously adapt and better utilize the technological advances. Managers should be able to make use of them to gain a competitive advantage. Intellectual capital Knowledge has become a major competitive advantage for most companies. It is important to have rightly skilled individuals in the company to guarantee responsiveness to both customers and technology. Hence, it is important to find, assimilate, develop, compensate and retain such individuals. Change, change and more change Companies today find it difficult to adjust to changes both internally and externally. This resistance to change should be overcome by adapting an attitude to learn rapidly and continuously, innovate ceaselessly and embrace new strategic imperatives faster in order to gain competitive advantage. There must be a drive to continuously transform the organization, to make rapid decisions and to continuously stay ahead of the competition.

The challenges described above have moulded new roles for HR. Successful organisations are the ones which can quickly turn strategy into action, to manage processes intelligently and efficiently, to maximise employee contribution and commitment and to create conditions for seamless change. HR Imperatives Becoming a Partner in Strategy Execution HR executives should guide and create conditions for carrying out serious discussions about the organization of the company to carry out its strategy. It involves steps such as defining an organization structure and articulating it, holding the HR accountable for conducting an

organizational audit, identifying methods which involve renovating the parts of organizational architecture and setting clear priorities by correctly accessing the impact and importance of all the initiatives taken. Becoming an Administrative Expert Finding and fixing processes which can be done faster, better and cheaper is a part of work assigned to the new HR role. This not only helps in decreasing the costs but also builds the HRs credibility. Creating centres of expertise that gather, coordinate and disseminate vital information about market trends are also what a HR can do. Becoming an employee champion It is the HR manager who has to look into the duties of the employees and check if they are fully engaged and committed to their work and help the organization in achieving its goals. They should also take the responsibility of conducting orientation programmes and training of line management staff about the importance and ways of achieving high employee morale. This can be done through workshops, written reports and employee surveys. HR managers should also educate the line managers about the causes of low employee morale so that remedial actions can be taken. HR staff should also be the voice of the employees while involving in management discussions. Becoming a Change Agent The HR should capitalize on the changes and work towards building organizations capacity. The focus was mainly on creating high performance teams, reducing the innovation cycle time and defining of new technology implementation. HR should also make sure that broad vision statements are transformed into specific behaviours by helping employees figure out as to when they can start, stop or continue with their work. He should also replace resistance with resolve, planning with results and fear of change with excitement about its possibilities. The four-step process to be followed by a HR: 1. Defining and clarifying the concept of culture change. 2. Articulating why culture change is central to the success of the business. 3. Defining a process for assigning the current and desired new cultures and the gap between the two. 4. Identification of the alternative approaches to creating culture change

Four Changes for the Line It is required that the senior operating managers change what they expect from HR and how they behave towards them. Four ways in which the focus can be shifted to outcomes instead of activities: Communicate to the organization that the soft stuff matters: They should demonstrate that HR issues like cultural change and intellectual capital are critical and do create value. HR professionals can be included in strategic discussions. Explicitly define the deliverables from HR, and make them accountable for their results:

This should be done by setting specific goals for them and holding them accountable for the same. Their performance should be tracked, measured and appropriate reward system should be set in place. Invest in innovative HR practices: Investment should be made to bring innovations to the HR practices by ways of conferences, literature, getting to know what other companies are doing. HR should be expected not to adopt, but adapt to them. Practices should be focused on learning how to adapt to them while considering the companys unique competitive situation at the same time. Upgrade HR professionals: Finally, improve the quality of HR professionals by bringing in people who understand the theory and practices of HR, can manage culture and make change happen and have personal credibility. They may exist within HR but need additional training, exist in other parts of company or must be hired from outside. They must have the requisite expertise about the strategy, markets, economy, reengineering to bring about effective change.

CRITIQUE
In the debate surrounding the importance of HR to an organization in terms of organizational performance, Dave Ulrichs article A New Mandate for Human Resources presents a different perspective as to how HR can effectively contribute in this challenging environment. Although he acknowledges that HR, as it is configured today in many companies, is indeed ineffective, incompetent, and costly, he contends that it has never been more necessary. Dave Ulrich believes that the solution is to create an entirely new role for the field that focuses it not on traditional HR activities, such as staffing and compensation, but on business results that enrich the company's value to customers, investors, and employees. To explain this further, Ulrich first elaborates on the challenges faced by HR in the current environment like Globalization, Technology, Rapid Changes and the quest for Profitability through growth. He then goes on to explain how HR can realign itself in the midst of these challenges by looking at four broad tasks for HR that would allow it to help deliver organizational excellence. The first task as per Ulrich is that HR should become a partner in strategy execution. Second, he goes on and says it should become an expert in the way work is organized and executed. The third task of HR should become a champion for employees. And fourth task as he puts it is that it should become an agent of continual change. Ulrich says that performing these four tasks would mean that every one of HR's activities would in some way help a company better serve its customers or otherwise increase shareholder value. Ulrich then goes on explain the role of HR in changing the culture of an organization. He finally ends the article with 4 ways which HRs can focus on outcomes rather than activities. This excellent article though doesnt address a few critical points. The first point of concern is that it does not give a proper description of the process to integrate HR effectively with the organizations core work and, therefore, leaves the readers with less information as to how to attain the desired objective. Another point it fails to address is the need for a change in the employees attitude towards the HR. Most employees dont regard the HR favourably. Unless this attitude changes, it is very difficult for the HR to move to a more strategic and significant role in the

organization. Overall the article does address a lot of relevant issues concerning the importance of HR if employed in the right way and gives significant insights into how HR can play a significant role in contributing to organisational performance.