Senior executives who understand the value and the benefit of intellectual capital and organizational capability need to demand more and invest in the HR function and permit it to show its full potential to every level. To meet the growing expectations, HR professionals must focus more on the deliverables of work and less on just getting their work done.
Their role would be in terms of the value creation and find the mechanisms that ensures good results promptly. “They must measure their effectiveness in terms of business competitiveness rather than employee comfort.
A View into the Future
Nowadays, the HR function has increased its influence in the executive functions and its dimension. Reported by most companies, senior management is committed to having a strong HR functional activities, that top HR executives have regular access to CEO and boardroom, and that senior line executives view HR as growing in importance relative to other staff specialties. Firms are using downsizing and re-engineering not just to reduce the number of staff members, but to allow HR to focus on higher-value activities such as change management, organizational development, communications and information management and succession planning as a whole.
James Down, an expert states ” that HR is shifting from a ‘micro’ to a ‘macro’ view of its managerial mission and that the function now focuses on company wide issues such as change management, leadership development and culture building, rather that on individual case management. Line managers and employees usually take responsibility for routine HR issues, while various administrative tasks are handled by a centralized service unit or outsourcing vendor.
The result is that HR functions are concentrating their intellectual and organizational strength on a few components with priorities. They want to enrich the depth of knowledge in HR function, practice and work closely to the corporate strategy and communicate their enhanced capability to top management. This approach is considered as the future for the HR function in the organizational setting.
In this connection Les Pickett in his article “Human Resources: A Focus into the Future” presented extracts from a paper presented during the Annual National Conference of the Australian HR Institute held in Canberra in 1998: the extract highlighted the following:
“The successful companies of the twenty first century will have a clear vision and create a culture and organization structure that motivates and develops people and encourages them to achieve. They will possess values, behaviors and standards that put the words into action. They will identify and develop core competencies and work towards the creation of an environment which encourages their people to share knowledge and recognize learning as a personal responsibility and a lifelong process.
They will value reciprocal relationships and recognize that by focusing on and learning from all those who contribute to the business, it will be best able to improve returns to shareholders. They will recognize that resistance to change has been identified as one of the leading causes of business failure over the past decade and that managers who do not embrace change within every level of their organization will not survive in the increasingly competitive global economy.
This is why the tendency towards a strategic dimension of HR is so important and should be embraced by every company, where people management – a key responsibility of HR – makes all the difference when delivering a high standard of service.
Considering the above views, it is important to understand that attitudes, motives and focus of employees are greater factors in achieving goal of an organization/company or commercial enterprises in this competitive business world. In forming positive attitude towards the growth of an organization, HR department should be given due importance and responsibility to form positive attitude, focus on the goal, OD practice, embracing change and appropriate re-engineering practice that fit with the organizational work method in line with the organizational vision and goal.
(Concluded)
