Human Resources Management. Basic knowledge - Essay Example

The process of globalization influences both public and private sectors of economy. It does not influence business under the conditions of competition produced by adding new participants to the market; this process promotes benchmarking as the best mean of developing business. For instance, the experts in UK are worried with the fact that specialists from the USA and the rest of Europe occupy leading positions in various companies or institutions of public sector. (Hunter et al.) These changes that affect competitive environment and working background forced human resource management reconsider its significance and roles, and adopt its functions to the demands of the present day.

The process of reconsidering and revaluation of the HR role shows that the changes have already started, and this process slowly goes on. There are no investigations, reflecting the stages of the process, but the specialists speak about some significant points that indicate progressive nature of the process. In the middle of 90s HR professionals defined the process of changes that in the sphere of HR. Dave Ulrich is one of them. Some of his writings are devoted to this question and the nature of evolution that occurred in the sphere of HR during last fifteen years.

He draws new roles in the sphere of HR. . This function also includes watching relations among employees and establishing a new role to keep performance on high level - the role of employee champion. One more significant role is given to change agent, who should be occupied with the obstacles that may disturb successful business development and with the ways of keeping the business course on right direction. (Ulrich, 2005)In the article "Role Call" Ulrich provides a comparison of the roles in the process of changes, examining how the nature and purpose of each role changed within recent years.

He enumerates the following roles that were relevant to the sphere of HR at the beginning of the 90s: "coach, enabler, advocate, change agent, initiative leader, employee champion, business partner, HR leader, strategist, rapid deployment specialist, internal consultant, operational supporter, knowledge facilitator, thought leader, competency professional, client relationship manager and even human capital steward and manager of firm infrastructure." (Ulrich, 2005) At first, he suggested changing the terms defining the specialists, as the essence of their work and functions changed.

Employee champion - employee advocate and human capital developerAs it has been said above, he provided a framework showing the changes that occurred within these roles. The first of them is shift from the role of employee champion to employee advocate and human capital developer. To say more precisely, this role divided into two separate roles. Here is the definition of "employee champion" provided by Ulrich in one of his previous works: "Employee champions listen and respond to employees and find the right balance between demands on employees and resources available