Differences between Managing an IT department and a Personnel Department - Research Paper Example

Differences between managing an IT department and a HR/Personnel department Introduction An organization is a place where different people with different talents and skills work together in different departments. It is impossible for an organization to function with the help of a single department because of the complexities involved in dealing with different organizational functions. For convenience, most of the organizations divide their organizational functions in to different categories or departments so that employees will get proper idea about their assigned responsibilities. IT, HRD/Personnel, Sales, Accounts/Finance, Production, Planning, Quality, Technical, Logistics etc are some of the major organizational departments in the organizational world. Each department may have some specific functions assigned to them. For example, IT department always focus more on the IT functions of the company whereas HR department concentrates on recruitment, retention and development of manpower necessary for the organization. Because of the huge differences in the nature of the jobs undertaken, each department may work in a particular manner within the organizational framework. In other words, it is difficult for the HR department to function same way like the IT department. Management styles and work schedules in both these departments could be different even though these departments are functioning in the same organization. This paper briefly analyses the differences between managing an IT department and a HR/Personnel department in an organization. Managing an IT department According to Kahuna (n. d), “an IT department is just like an army, which needs a good and functional command system”. In his opinion, apart from the talented employees, an IT department requires suitable leadership that is capable of completing the job in time. He has also pointed out that “slapping a title on someone and thrusting them into fire is no more effective in leading employees in an IT department (Kahuna, p.1). Many of the IT professionals, working in IT departments may have good technical skills, but many of them don’t have good management skills. It is not necessary that a good computer programmer or a system administrator might be a good manager. Organizations, when they appoint professionals for the IT department, focus only on the technical skills of the person rather than his management skills. But, most of the IT jobs require good management skills also apart from the technical skills. For example, teamwork is encouraged in IT departments nowadays. In order to function effectively in a team, an IT professional needs good communication and management skills. “Just as in war, in an IT shop or any business you want the person watching your back to be someone you trust to do the job” (Kahuna, p.2). Mutual cooperation and trust are necessary for the IT employees of succeed I their endeavors. As mentioned earlier, teamwork is encouraged in IT departments and because of that, strong relationships are necessary in between the IT professionals. If one person tries to dominate or screw another person in a team, the entire team functions could be damaged. Team leader should have the ability to control or streamline the team functioning. Team leaders should also ensure a healthy relationship among the team members. Healthy competition can be allowed in IT departments, but the team leader should make sure that the competition may not cross the limits. “Middle managers in IT departments often become obsessed with their own feelings of power, and refuse to allow freedom to their subordinates” (Kahuna, p.2). Autocracy is followed in most of the IT departments since strict discipline is required for the timely completion of the IT projects. Time has immense value in an IT department than in any other departments. Timely delivery of IT projects is necessary for an organization to gain the confidence of the customers. IT professionals need to work overtimes quiet regularly to complete the projects in time and hence democratic style of management cannot be guaranteed in IT departments. Authority must be delegated. This not only serves to make a more flexible organization, but it allows employees throughout the command structure to experience ownership of their departments or units. Such ownership creates loyalty that money cannot buy. Or at least not cheaply (Kahuna, p.2) Authority is delegated in IT departments in order to ensure safe functioning. For example, if a senior manager in IT firm faces some inconvenience in attending a high level conference, he will delegate somebody to attend it. Subordinates who get the opportunity to delegate will increase their loyalty towards the organization. In short, IT managers should utilize all possibilities in whatever manner they feel is appropriate to achieve their objectives. In IT department, the manager has the authority to train his employees. It is not necessary that he should personally train all the employees in an IT department; but he can decide about the type of training necessary for each employee in the IT department and make arrangements for that. IT sector is one of the rapidly developing fields compared to other departments of an organization. Up to date knowledge is necessary for the IT employees. For example, Microsoft has recently introduced Windows 7 and MS Office 2010. It is necessary for the IT employees to know more about the functioning of these products and hence training is necessary for them. It should be remembered that it was only 3 years before that Microsoft introduced their MS Office 2007. On the other hand such rapid developments are not visible in other organizational departments. In IT we have two customers internal and external. All things that we do should consider the external customer and ensure that we are adding value to the customer process. In order to do that we need to understand what makes the customer tick. We can understand our internal process in some detail but we also need to understand the ‘touch’ points where the customer process interacts with our process. It would be even better if we could go beyond that and get information on the customer’s internal process. Understanding that may provide an opportunity to add extra value and get ahead of the competition (CIO Blog). Business philosophies and strategies were undergone drastic changes over the last two three decades. Earlier, the sellers enjoyed the upper hand in the market whereas customers attained the dominant spot in the current market. Organizations have realized that ultimately, it is going to be the customers who decide whether an organization needs to be broken or not. Competition is too much in the current markets because of the entry of globalization, liberalization and privatization. It is difficult for an IT organization to sustain its monopoly in a market because of the competition not only from the internal sources, but also from the external sources. It is quite possible that the customers can outsource their works to another country if the domestic organizations fail to meet the expectations of the customers. Because of such variety of options available to the customer, IT departments should maintain a strong relationship with the internal and external customers. IT management typically has two broad responsibilities. They should control the delivery of technology operations and services to the various lines of business. They should also oversee technology-related changes to operational and business processes. Project management addresses the latter responsibility (Management). IT department is not as big as the HR department. In fact, HR department deals with the issues of the entire employees in an organization, IT department focus more on a small section of the employees of that organization. Project management is an important function for the IT departments. In most of the times, the employees in an IT department may be working on different projects. As mentioned earlier, different teams will be formed in the IT department and each team would be assigned a specific project at a particular time. Only after the completion of that project another project will allocated to that team. In short, IT department functions develop thorough projects. Managing a HR/Personnel department Instead of technical skills, good man management skills are necessary for the HR professionals. HRM’s responsibility include; hiring of the people, developing their resources through training, utilizing them by placing them in appropriate places and sustaining their services with respect to needs of the organization. In other words, HR professionals always interact with the employees of an organization rather than other resources like materials, machines or money and hence they should have good people management skills. HR department is one department in which team work is least required. Instead of autocracy, democracy is followed in most of the HR departments. One of the primary responsibilities of HR department is ensuring maximum productivity of employees and thereby ensures maximum production. This is done by the proper allocation of suitable resources and responsibilities to the employees based on their skills and academic qualifications. Even big organizations sometimes fail to adopt right HRM strategies because of the complexity and diversity involved in HR management. Human Resource Management is quiet often affected by parameters like the organizational politics, power, resistance etc and hence the HR professionals should have the ability to deal with the above parameters also. Recruitment, retention and training are the major functions of HR departments. All the organizations may some kind of policy in the selection of the employees. Recruitment methods can be classified generally into two; internal and external recruitments. The internal recruitment means the recruitment of the employees within the existing employees to fill out the vacancies whereas external recruitment focuses on selecting the people from the external sources. It is quite possible that some of the people working in an organization may have less valued positions even though they are capable for better positions. Such people can be benefited while an organization opts for internal recruitment strategies. Internal recruitment methods are cheaper compared to the external recruitment methods. Organizations can avoid expensive advertising, testing and interviews if they opt for internal recruitment. In other words, organizations can save money and time if they go for internal recruitments. At the same time, the major disadvantage of internal recruitment is the limited options available to the recruiters to select the employees. On the other hand, external recruitment even though expensive, can offer a wide range of potential employees and hence recruiters may have more flexibility and diversity in their selection of employees. Retention of the recruited employees is another major management function of the HR department. Employee retention is one of the most difficult aspects of human resource management. Retention process starts at the time of the recruitment itself. “Replacing employee is not only time consuming, but expensive, costing you between 50 to 100 per cent of that positions’ annual salary” (Employee Retention and Recruitment Tips).Experienced and better skilled personnel always have enough demand in the job market and they will always on the look for better career options. Employees who develop negative feelings would seek another organization. Drop outs of employees forces the organization to go for the expensive and lengthy recruitment process more frequently which may not be a good sign for the HR department or the organization. In fact, money is rarely at the top of the loyalty list, when employees assess an organization. Benefits such as educational offerings, opportunity for career advancement, and management style etc are the major factors which can encourage or discourage an employee to stay back in the organization. Continuous training and acquisition of new skills holds the key to success for any retention plan. Building employee networks is another option of retaining the employees. “Making the employee the stakeholder of the organization is another way of retaining them” (Retaining the Employees). The employee must develop a positive feeling towards the organization and for that purpose it is better to make him one of the stakeholders of the organization. They should be able to derive proud out of the growth of their organization in order to exhibit more loyalty to the organization. Training is another major management function of the HR department. It is the duty of the HR professionals to make the hired employees suitable for to the organization. Induction training is essential for the new employees in order to make them aware of the organizational culture and environment. It is impossible to have two organizations with similar culture or environment even if they are of same size, operating in same field and location. Some organizations may adopt some specific business strategies and it is necessary for the employees to be accustomed in it. For example, some tire manufacturers make steel radial tires whereas some others make radial tires using the fibers. Even though both of them are engaged in tire manufacturing, the process or the technology involved are extremely different and training is the only way to educate the new employees about the new technology or process. Moreover, organizational culture and the employment rules might be different in different organizations and the employees get proper awareness about the work philosophy, norms and their responsibilities in the new organization only through induction training. Even an experienced employee may struggle in a new organization if the employer fails to define his job responsibilities before inducting him in a department. A new employee to an organization is just like a person visiting a foreign country. The visitor may not have the awareness about the do’s and don’ts of the visiting country because of the immense differences in culture, politics, legal frameworks etc between his mother country and the visiting country. Only a tourist guide would be able to assist the visitor under such circumstances. Induction training is also just like that. Here the new employee is the visitor to the foreign country and induction training is the tourist guide. HRM functions are generally classified into two categories; soft and hard approaches. Hard and soft approaches to HRM were academically developed by Harvard University in its MBA program by Beer and others in 1985 and Michigan University by Fombrun and others in 1984. The Harvard model, drawing on human relations school emphasized communications, team work and the utilization of individual talents. The Michigan school is a more strategic approach with a unitarist outlook, which endorses managements views. Harvard model is associated with soft HRM and the Michigan model proposes the hard HRM approach (Gill, p.4) Soft and hard approaches are entirely different. The Soft approach is democratic in nature whereas the hard approach is somewhat autocratic. For the smooth functioning of the HR Department, both soft and hard approaches are necessary at the same time in an organization. Employees of an organization come from different social, cultural and economical backgrounds. Moreover, the intellectual levels, attitude towards work, educational level, skill level, etc of the employees could be different. Because of the above differences in the character and nature of the employees, it is impossible for the HR department to adopt a single management style. The HR management styles should be employee based. For hardworking employees, soft approach could be the effective one whereas for the underperformers, hard approach should be adopted. The soft model focuses on treating employees as valued assets and a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high quality skill and performance. Employees are proactive rather than passive inputs into productive processes, capable of development, worthy of trust and collaboration which is achieved through participation (Gill, p.6) The Soft approach demands more involvement of the employees in the organizational matters like policy making and implementation. Relationship building is accepted as the core of every business activity at present and soft approaches to HRM is one way of making a strong relationship between the employees and the organization. Soft approach gives more importance to team work and the performances of an employee. Each employee would be considered as an active entity while adopting soft approach. Moreover, the emotional and psychological needs of the workers will get more prominence while HR department opt for the soft approach. The performances of each employee hired by the organization are measured against the individual skills and performance levels, while adopting hard approach. Utility of each employee to the organization is better analyzed while implementing hard approach. Instead of considering Human resources humanly, the hard approach considers the human mechanically. While implementing hard approach, an organization may not see many differences between manpower and other resources like materials, money, machines etc in this approach. This approach is very tough and it communicates using tough languages. Conclusions Management of IT and HR department are entirely different processes. HR manages the entire employees of an organization whereas IT manages only a small portion of the employees. HR manages only the manpower whereas IT manages manpower and technology at the same time. HR management functions are closer to democratic approach whereas IT management functions are somewhat autocratic in nature. Rapid development is happening in IT management compared to the HR management area. IT department values technical skills more whereas HR department values people management skills more. Works Cited 1. CIO Blog. 2007. “Top Things in Managing an IT Department - Part 5”. 20 October 2010. 2. “Employee Retention and Recruitment Tips”. 2009. 20 October 2010. 3. Gill, Carol. 1999. “Use of Hard and Soft Models of HRM to Illustrate the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality in Workforce Management”. 20 October 2010. http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:bCmAoKxezFIJ:mams.rmit.edu.au/d4lhtsmk45c.pdf+Hard+and+soft+approaches+to+HRM&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk 4. Kahuna, Big. “The Art of Managing an IT Department”. 20 October 2010. 5. “Management”. 20 October 2010. 6. “Retaining the Employees”.2006. 20 October 2010. Read More