Friday, October 13, 2006

A li'l Peep into HR 1

I love HR and i'm currently reading a book titled the "Human Resource Champions" by Dave Ulrich.
I'll like to share a little from the book for the benefit of those who know nothing about the peofession, those who have a misconception about it.

HR has a multiple role model ranging from Operational (day-to-day) to strategic (long term), and the focus ranges from people to processes.

These roles are
1. Strategy execution
2. Administrative Efficiency
3. Capacity for change
4. Employee contribution.
These roles are can be termed deliverables of HR practices. That is, they are the outcomes of HR activities.

Strategy execution:
The strategic HR role focuses on aligning HR practices and strategy with the business practices and strategy in order to create a system that can achieve the organizational objectives. Here HR professionals increase the capacity of an organization to execute its strategies; They participate in the process of defining business strategies by asking questions that move strategy to action and by designing HR practices that are in allighment with the business strategy.
In any organization, strategies exist either explicitly or implicitly,HR professionals should be able to identify the practices that can make the strategy happen. The primary role here is to translate business strategies into HR practices.

Administrative Efficiency:
HR is the caretaker of the corporate infrastructure. HR ensures that efficient HR processes for Staffing, training, appraising, rewarding are designed and delivered.
HR professionals accomplish administrative efficiency in 2 ways:

a.Ensure efficiency in the HR processes
b.Hiring, Training and rewarding Managers who increase productivity and reduce waste.

By delivering administrative efficiency, HR plays the role of an administrative expert, mastering and pioneering re engineering refforts that foster HR and business processes by being able to cut out unnecessary costs, improve efficiency, and constatntly find ways to do things better.
Simply put, Administrative efficiency is the ability to accomplish more with less.

There is a general misconception that HR is a social/corporate therapy for employees, It is designed to provide oractices that amke employees more competeitive. Not anyone, even if you are a people person can do HR. HR is based on proven theories, principles, research and it is evolutionary in nature.

No comments: