By
-Arti Bakshi
“Human Resource”- A magazine for the discerning professional
www.humanresource.net.in
Human Resource management is people management and the role of managing people lies on the shoulders of a Human Resource manager. People Management is a wide section that involves numerous aspects ranging from hiring to invigorating. Managing people is utmost important as it is only the employees that can make up an organization. The employee directly or indirectly influences and effectuates the organizational augmentation.
The aspects that the manger highlights begins with hiring the appropriate individual well suited for a task on the basis of their education and experience. Once the person is appointed, their role in the organization is explained to them along with the ways to achieve their goals and how their role can enhance the organization. Befitting to the task training is provided that makes the employee acquainted with the task.
A buffer period is given where the employee actually starts working but under supervision. The HR manager makes sure that the right amount of motivation is provided to the employee to generate quality work. The employee work is evaluated to ensure that the employee works swiftly and the errors could be eliminated. A disciplinary environment is created that allows the employee to work without interruptions. Incase the employee is not up to the mark or the organization has to adopt lay-off principles, the HR department takes the authority and helps in detachment.
The salary negotiations, compensation and benefits all come under the HR perspective. Adopting rejuvenating mechanisms like games and events is the HR manager’s responsibility. The HR team is appointed to serve the employees thus it is said that human resource is people management.
Dear Arti & Friends,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Human Resource Management is People Management; however, I look at it slightly differently & the difference is on who are the People that need to be managed by HR; the Functional Heads & Managers or every individual employee.
People Management being the responsibility of HR; its traditionally a debatable aspect (unfortunately still debating), no doubt that the prime responsibility of HR processes lies with the HR team; the execution of it always has a shared role with the responsibility sharing varying for different HR activities very much like any other function in the organisations; no function can exist or perform in isolation; they all have a role to play & most of them jointly whether its Safety / Supply Chain / Operations / Maintenance / Quality / Marketing / Sales / Finance & Accounts / HR, etc. People Management similarly is every Managers' responsibility and most of the successful Managers regardless of the functions are without doubt good "People Managers".
We just take one example of Hiring; needless to say, it’s the responsibility of HR; however, the activity has a shared role of the concerned Functional Manager in terms of;
a) Elaborating the job role,
b) Expectation of the concerned Manager for the specifications in the profile that he/she would look at for the role,
c) Selection of the candidate which needs to be approved by the concerned Manager
d) Consent on negotiated salary
e) Consent on date of joining
The list of activites having a shared role for one HR activity is longer……
How long does the incumbent stay with the organisation is very highly dependant on how well has his / her Manager connected & comforted the incumbent irrespective of other variables like culture of the organisation, HR processes, etc. On exits, it is said, "Most of the people do not leave the Organisation, they leave their Boss"; this holds true in majority of cases, not all for sure.
As I mentioned in the first line, it is debatable but that does not give a solution or progression to the issue.
Going Ahead: What has not happened well in organisations where HR function does not command respect is that HR Managers have not been able to create or have not chosen to generate appropriate awareness, communication, transparency & involvement of non-HR functions in the defining, amending & executing the HR processes. Thus, in most of such cases very rightly the non-HR Managers do not own the HR processes; the processes are perceived as closed / traditional / conventional if not obstacles for the business.
A lot has been spoken on this issue in different organisations, professional fora, institutions, research papers but the issue has not moved well towards workable solutions.
So, what’s next: HR Managers need to;
ReplyDelete1. Open up & interact more
2. Handle & learn from criticism
3. Create higher levels of business & operational consciousness amongst themselves & exhibit alignment with it
4. Have participative approach with functions
Once, the above is achieved, the next steps will get paved differently in different organisations, certainly for good.
On the topic, in my view, the HR Managers need to make a better connect with the counterparts in non-HR functions and channelise the interventions with them to reach to every individual in the organisation.
The choice still remains with HR today is; whether to be DESIRED or just needed but very soon the choice will fade out (the process has significantly begun) and HR is vulnerable to become an outsourced function like the canteen / transport because if we do not associate Business Managers for HR interventions; HR is in any case been seen as OVER-HEAD; the Business Managers will learn as much HR needed & hive off the rest. In this lead, I also have experienced some non-HR Managers who have taken up / been assigned with the responsiblity of HR; they have done things differently and for sure successfully.
I am from HR and have been in the function for the last over 19 years and its not that I have experienced differently during my career till now in terms of the significance for HR as seen from the other side of the function; the struggle is still on & certainly mostly from within the function; TO EVOLVE.
Everyone is so quick to blame management. How often do people stop and realize that their morale and career are in their own hands? Yes, management is the key, but until you start taking charge and holding people accountable for their jobs and the expectations you have of them, you can't expect change. Just remember, the employee to manager ratio is quite high. Not all managers remember that their biggest responsibility is their people without which they'd be out of a job. On the flip side, as a good and valued employee, it's in your hands to remind them of this.
ReplyDeleteHR is the fallback in case things need to get escalated. They should be impartial in all their dealings. It costs a lot of money for a company to replace a valuable employee. Unfortunately, not all companies realize this.
The issue that I have seen here in India is that most folks are chomping at the bit to become managers because it looks great on their resume. People expect promotions every year. Forget the part where they're ill-equipped to manage people or the fact that a company has not provided them adequate training on what people management means. If we set folks up for failure just to pander to their ego, we can scarcely blame them when they fall short of the mark.
HR has earned a very bad name, largely because they do not walk the talk. They speak big but deliver little.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that must be taught to the HR managers/executives is that they are the 'servants of the employees' and not the masters.
Most HR personnel look up & work (do only what the boss says); they must learn to look down (work for the employees). At best, the boss must be considered as an irritant.
If this be the attitude, HR practices can genuinely flourish.
Hi Arti,
ReplyDeleteA good thought but I have something to add to it.
When people talk about HRM as people management they tend to reflect it as welfare work.In my view it is all about managing works in an organisation through people efficiently and effectively with minimum input giving max. out put not one day but for repeated period of times.In this process those performing this task has to be looked after well to get better performance and help them with right sort of motivation and feed back for their continuous upgradation.Besides a very big part of HR work goes in degining sop's and work culture that will never be grouped under this definition. No guessing it is thankless job,cause those who benefit never tend to look back to their mentors in HR with sense of gratitude.If we restrict HR to people management definition then only it sound too soft.At times very harsh decisions are taken in the interest of the people and the organisation that never be termed people management.
Well human resource is people management but looking at its definition human resource management refers to the process ofprocuring,acquiring,training,compensating,a ttending to their safety and health issues and motivating them.So when we ask whose training ,compensation and health and safety issues have to be looked upon the answer will be the people of the orgnisation.Many organisation consider their workforce as an asset so to manage them Human Resources play critical role.role of hr has become very critical these days.we can very well see that people nowadays have a tendency to be a job hopper.there are so many cases when people show much of absenteeism and it is because they are not happy with the job,they are either not happy with the compensation or nature of the job .Sometimes the employees also feel that at the time of performance appraisal they are not getting the promotion even after working hard and they feel that the bosses are biased.There are even cases when the empoyees commplain that another employee with simimlar qulaification and simliar experience are given more challenging assignments but they are not getting the right opportunities.These were just few problems which most of the organisations are facing and here only a HR people can solve the problem.Without a proper HR policy the organisation will have to suffer a huge cost burden.
ReplyDeleteHuman Relations Director and Manager have an array of duties, such as: hiring, firing, motivating, provides evaluations, maintains the salary compensation system, responsible for employee insurance plans, develops personnel policies, procedures and systems, identifies and arranges employee training, coordinates recruitment for vacant positions, works with the compensation system, monitors the company's web page, conducts orientations, reviews worker's compensation claims, provides and compiles surveys and suggestions, sets up off-time company entertainment and sets up hotel stays for visiting executives, develops benefit procedures with the payroll specialist, works along with the stock compensation, monitor's employee eligibility for benefits which includes pension plan, etc.
ReplyDeleteI realized that the Human Resource Manager hires but only after the person has been interviewed by the person or persons they will work for and those people have approved the new hire. If it were only the Human Resource Manager that did the hiring then the fit would be poor.
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ReplyDeleteYes, HR serves valuable functions in people management. But, this article places too much importance on this role by stating that "the role of managing people lies on the shoulders of a Human Resource manager." The role of managing people is a complex role that is distributed across participants - some of it indeed lies on Human Resources, some of it lies squarely on management (from first line supervisors and team leaders to senior management), and some is the responsibility of the individual themselves. For the latter, an example helps explain this - a company can offer career development opportunities, but it is the responsibility of the individual to step up and take full advantage of these by applying themselves to grow and develop. Too many firms allow management to abdicate their responsibilities to their people by saying that human resources is responsible for that. Management is responsible for many functions of people management - including ensuring appropriate staffing actions are taken, selecting people, helping people grow, providing continual feedback and praise (not just the HR-mandated annual review), supporting training and development. A surprise to many organizations encountering our work with the People CMM for the first time is the amount of involvement that management should have in people management. In some organizations, we have found that by actively engaging in these tasks, management invests more time in people management, but spends less time fighting fires (crises, potentially leading to the detachment options mentioned in this article) and becomes more productive.
ReplyDeleteNice Discussion. I somehow agree to Bill here, People Management is a part of Human Resource Management, but you can not relate the whole activities with People management. If we go according to the philosophy, people management is a technique to manage people to accomplish your work, but Human Resource Management is more over for humans, where you make them comfortable by giving a good environment and help them being more productive.
ReplyDeleteOne more issue I saw in HR managers, somehow they get an impression of being more inclined towards the higher management rather human resource of the company. And it is the main cause where our appraisal system fails.
By the manifesto (which have not been made yet:), may be you people can make one.), HR managers should take care of the humans in the company and if it takes them to against the higher management, they should discuss the issue with management to sort it out in favor of humans.