HR Function and Its Strategic Role in the Organisation - Essay Example

? Critical evaluation of the ways that HR function could play a more strategic role in the organisation BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Critical evaluation of the ways that HR function could play a more strategic role in the organisation Introduction The human resources practitioner must be concerned with human capital development, developing motivational strategies to maximise performance in employee groups and generally secure a positive organisational culture that is focused on meeting performance expectations mandated by policy and procedure. Most HR managers focus on career development and practices that appeal to the inherent psychological needs of employees through construction of reward schemes or routine employee appraisals. In most cases, the HR manager remains focused on scenarios involving lower-level subordinates for relationship development. By stepping away from subordinate-based practices and theories, the human resources manager develops practices that are geared for long-term success as it relates to the tactical side of objective fulfilment and long-run market orientation. The HR manager can take a more strategic role in the organisation by focusing on line management, executive leadership, new training development, and involvement in change management principles in an effort to expand their presence in the organisation as an HR leader. The strategy angle “The overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the organisation is able to achieve success through people” (Armstrong 2006: 11). Success does not necessarily pertain to human capital needs and motivational practice development, it involves market orientation, market position of the business, operational efficiency, general staff productivity, and development of competitive strategies to gain cost and human capital advantages. Therefore, to become more strategically oriented, the HR manager needs to expand their organisational presence to include executive management involvement and line management education to achieve competitive success using people as resources. In most organisations, change is a constant scenario. New technology implementation or procedures that relate to attaining market profitability (as two examples) dictate a need for improving change leadership and gaining employee/management support. In a situation where the business requires new information technology, changes to how employees conduct their job roles is inevitable, usually on the back of workflow redesign or complete changes to job responsibility. Kappelman, McKeeman and Zhang (2009) identify that when IT projects are part of change management, failures occur due to weak team commitment, lack of senior executive support, or team members who lack the requisite skills and competencies needed to complete the project effectively. In most cases, large-scale implementation of new technologies consist of months if not years of labour investment and contribute significantly to cost reduction activities or improving process flow related to meeting customer demands. This is where the HR manager can take a more strategic role in the business in promoting change management principles to meet strategic goals. When change is required, management is described as “undeserving victims of irrational and dysfunctional responses of employees” (Ford, Ford and D’Amelio 2008: 362). The human resources manager can become more involved with the team functioning during the implementation phases of the new technology launch, promoting more effective interpersonal relationship development and team functioning. Weak team commitment may be stemming from employees, executives or mid-tier management due to the illogical and dysfunctional inherent psychology of the team members. By applying subordinate-based practices to higher-level individuals involved in project teams, the HR manager is promoting a more strategic angle that leads to more positive information technology and process improvement outcomes. Outside of technology scenarios, the HR manager can promote more empowerment of employees as a strategic goal. According to Reis and Pena (2008), when an organisation is still functioning in vertical top-down hierarchies, it is not ready to embrace change practices. Reis and Pena suggest promoting a 360-degree communication channel rather than flowing downward from executive leadership in a centralized hierarchy. Since change is a vital scenario in achieving strategic success, the HR manager can be more actively involved in restructuring the organisation to accept more input from subordinates and empower them to become active decision-makers in the organisation. In order to accomplish this, more interaction with executive leadership is required to gain their support and offer training that provides them with the human resources tools needed to improve their management performance. “Evidence shows that when employees are engaged and understand the business strategy, the organisation is more likely to succeed” (Adams 2010: 46). Therefore, HR managers can take benchmarking lessons from General Electric, a company that invites input from all levels of the organisation and where the CEO is highly visible in reinforcing business purposes and vision. This organisation is highly renowned for utilising knowledge management practices where tacit knowledge (knowledge retained within the individual) can be transformed to implicit information for use as collective knowledge to be disseminated organisation-wide (Dinur 2011). This is accomplished through the actions of a people-centred executive team that builds a successful culture of cooperation and knowledge transfer in order to achieve long-term results through people. In most organisations, senior management knowledge associated with training and development of teams is much more limited than that of mid-tier line management (Watson, Maxwell and Farquharson 2007). The HR manager should be active in providing knowledge of HR concepts to the senior management team and supporting their increased visibility within the firm in order to assist in building a culture of success that is more willing to achieve strategic outcomes. The HR manager must also increase their own visibility by working with line management to provide them with human resources-based knowledge for better management of employees. Yusoff and Abdullah (2008) believe that line management should be trained with principles of empowerment, which is linked to decentralization efforts, in order to gain control over their employees. Line management is responsible for ensuring cost control and productivity as it relates to achieving strategic objectives, thus the HR manager should be providing support for educating managers on motivational strategies for employee management and more effective disciplinary systems or reward methodology. By teaching mid-tier management the fundamentals of human motivation, they can gain better interpersonal relationships with employee groups and achieve productivity gains. It is not only promotion of principles associated with employee empowerment and improved visibility with operational and executive management teams that contribute to a more strategic role in the organisation. Redevelopment of training and appraisal formats can build more motivation and productivity for competitive advantage. Bambacas and Bordia (2009, p.225) offers that when an HR manager offers training that employees perceive as being non-transferrable to another organisation, it makes it too costly for employees to seek other employment. Line and executive managers are concerned with turnover ratios as many financial costs are associated with training new employees, thus retention is always a strategic concern as it relates to capital availability. The HR manager becomes a strategist by developing training packages that are highly customized to the specific organisational environment and then utilises internal marketing strategies to reinforce the exclusivity of the training as a retention tool. They are serving a more strategic role in this fashion by focusing on improving profitability. Morgeson, Mumford and Campion (2005) also reinforce that changing the premise of the employee appraisal maintains a strategic focus. Rather than having mid-tier managers perform assessments of employee weaknesses and strengths, this process should include a 360 degree feedback mechanism that includes more members of the organisational environment. The HR manager can include executive leadership, line management and even external customers in these assessments to fully capture the successes or failures of employees under this system of appraisal. By promoting feedback with customers, it puts the HR manager into the role of strategist for customer relationship management, thus improving the long-term relationships with customers to illustrate the organisation’s serious commitment to total service and satisfaction. For an organisation that relies on customer-driven revenues in order to sustain its market position, the HR taking a lead in external interaction puts them into a strategist role and also improves knowledge about worker competencies in the process for internal productivity gains. Service and Carson (2008, p.65) offer results of a study involving 1,000 workers that showed over 80 percent believed individual appraisals were “a joke” and rarely done properly. Conclusion In order for the HR manager to become a strategist, they must expand their presence in the organisation to include executives, line managers and customers to be focused on issues such as cost control, productivity and cultural development. The HR manager must break away from focusing solely on subordinate motivational strategy development and include more higher-ranking members of the organisation. Involvement in creating a decentralized organisation with more employee input not only improves interaction between executives and the employee population, but also improves knowledge transfer as an educational tool as human capital competitive advantage. If the foundations of new procedures involving the human resources manager consider issues of finance, team-working, knowledge management and effective change management efforts, they become a business strategist that builds a culture dedicated to meeting long-term objectives cooperatively. Otherwise, they are simply a soft HRM practitioner with no strategic influence. References Adams, A. (2010) Changing role of HR, Human Resources, London. June, 45-49. Armstrong, M. (2006) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th ed. London: Kogan Page. Bambacas, M. and Bordia, P. (2009) Predicting different commitment components: the relative effects of how career development HRM practices are perceived, Journal of Management and Organization 15(2), 224-241. Dinur, A. (2011) Tacit knowledge taxonomy and transfer: case-based research, Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management 12(3), 246-281. Ford, J., Ford, L. and D’Amelio, A. (2008) Resistance to change: the rest of the story, Academy of Management Review 33(2), 362. Kappelman, L., McKeeman, R. and Zhang, L. (2009) Early warning signs of IT project failure: the dangerous dozen, EDPACS 40(6), 17. Morgeson, F., Mumford, T. and Campion, M.A. (2005) Coming full circle using research and practice to address 27 questions about 360 degree feedback programs, Consulting Psychology Journal 57(3), 196-209. Reis, D. and Pena, L. (2008) Focus on management theory: reengineering the motivation to work, Management Decision 39(8), 666-675. Service, R.W. and Carson, C.M. (2008) How to lead: try managing first, Proceedings of 2008 Academic Business World International Conference, May. Available online at: www.emerald.com [accessed 12 November 2011] Watson, S., Maxwell, G. and Farquharson, L. (2007) Line managers’ views on adopting human resource roles: the case of Hilton hotels, Employee Relations 29(1), 30-49. Yusoff, Y. and Abdullah, H. (2008) HR roles and empowering the line in human resource activities: a review and a proposed model, International Journal of Business and Society 9(2), 9-19. Read More