The changing environment of HR management

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HR's Changing Role

The HR department's responsibities have gradually become broader and more strategic since the days when business people began incuding "personnel departments" in their organization charts.

In the earliest firms, "personnel" first took over hiring and firing from supervisors, ran the payroll department, and administered benefit plans.

As technology in areas like testing and interviewing began to emerge, the personnel department began to play an expanded role in employee selection, training, and promotion.

The emergence of Union Legislation in the 1930s added "protecting the firm in its interaction with unions" to the personnel department's responsibilities. Then, as new employment legislation created the potential for discrimination-related lawsuits and penalties, personnel's advice and oversight became even more indespensable.

Today, the globalization of the world economy and several other trends are again triggering changes in how companies organize, manage, and use their personnel/ Hr departments. We'll look at these trends and changes next.

Illustration of the HR management responsibilities of line and staff (HR) managers

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Cooperative Line and Staff HR Management: An example.

Exactly which HR management activities are carried out by Line managers and by Staff managers?

There's no single division of responsibilities we could apply across the board in all organizations, but we can make some generalizations.

For example, in recruiting and hiring, it's generally the line manager's responsibility to specify the qualifications employee need to fill specific positions.

Then the HR staff takes over. They develop sources of qualified applicants and conduct initial screening interviews. They administer the appropriate tests. Then they refer the best applicants to the supervisor (line manager), who interviews and selects the ones s/he wants.

Some activities tend to be HR's alone. For example,

60% of firms assign responsbility for preemployment testing exclusively to HR

75% assign college recruiting to HR

86% assing HR insurance benefits administratin

84% assign HR exit interviews and

88% assign HR Personal/ HR recrod keeping

But employers split most activities, such as employment interviews, performance appraisal, skills training, job descriptions, and disciplinary procedures, between HR and line departments.

Figure 1-3 will be posted later.

Figure 1-3 illustrates the typical HR-Line management partnership. For example, Hr alone typically handles interviewing in about 25% of firms, but in about 60% of firms, Hr and the other hiring departments both get involved in interviewing.

In summary, HR management is an integral part of every manager's job. Whether you're a first-line supervisor, middle manager, or president, or whether you're a production manager, sales manager, office manager, hospital administrator, county manger (or HR manager), getting results through committed people is the name of the game. And to do this, you will need a good working knowledge of the human resource managemen concepts and techniques.

FROM LINE MANGER TO HR MANAGER

Line managers in area like production and sales may also make career stopovers as staff HR managers.

A survery conducted by the Centre for Effective Organisations at the University of Southern California found about one-fourth of U.S. large businesses appointed managers with no HR experience as their top HR executives.

Reasons given include the fact that these people may find it easier to give the firms HR efforts a more strategiv emphasis, and the possibility that they may sometimes be better equipped to integrate the firm's HR efforts with the rest of the business.

However, most top HR executives do have previous Hr experience. About 80% of those in one recent survey worked their way up within HR.

About 37% were in employment/ recruitment, and so were mostly involved in activities like recruiting and selecting employees. 30% were in labor relations Union- Management), and 27% worked in training and development.

The other basic HR functions the top HR executives came from include compensation benefits, EEO/ affirmative action, human resource systems (HRIS), and safety. About 17% of these HR executives had earned the Human Resource Certification Institute's Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) designation, and 13% were certified professionals in Human Resources (PHR).

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In small organizations, line managers may carry out all these personnel duties unassisted. But as the organization grows, they need the assistance, specialized knowledge, and advice of a separate human resource staff. The human resource department provides this specialized assistance. In doing so, the HR manager carries out three distinctive functions:

1. A line Function.

The HR manager directs the activities of the people in his/her own department and in related service areas (like the plant cafeteria). In other words, he/she exerts line authority within the HR department. While they generally can't wield (have) line authority outside HR, they are likely to exert implied authority. This is because line managers know HR has top management's ear in area like testing and affirmative action.

A Coordinative Function.

HR managers also coordinate personnel activities, a duty after referred to as Functional Control. Here the HR manager and department act as the "right arm of the top executive" to ensure that line mangers are implementing the firm's HR objectives, policies and procedures (for example, adhering to its sexual harassment policies).

3. Staff (assist and advise) Function.

Assisting and advising line managers are the heart of the HR manager's job. The HR manager assists in strategy design and execution by helping the CEO to better understand the personnel aspects of the company's strategic options. HR assists in hiring, training, evaluating, rewarding, counseling, promoting, and firing employees.

It administers the various benefit programs (health and accident insurance, retirement, vacation and so on). It helps line managers comply with equal employment and occupational safety laws, and plays an important role in handling grievances and labor relations.

It carries out an innovator role, by providing "up-to-date information on current trends and new methods of solving problems" - such as today's interest is instituting systems for measuring human resource management's strategic impact.

It plays an employee advocacy role: It helps define how management should be treating employees, make sure employees can contest unfair practices, and represents the employees' interest within the framework of its main obligation to senior management.

The size of the HR group and the number of HR specialists reflects the size of the company. For a very large company, an organization chart like the one in figure 1-1 would be typical, containing a full complement of specialists for each HR function. At the other extreme, the HR organizational chart for a small manufacturer may contain a total of five or six staff, and have an organization along the lines of figure 1-2.

Examples of HR job duties include:

Recruiters.

Search for qualified job applicants

Equal employment opportunity (EEO) coordinators.

Investigate and resolve EEO grievances, examine organizational practices for potential violations, and compile and submit EEO reports.

Job analyst.

Collect and examine information about jobs to prepare job descriptions.

Compensation managers.

Develop compensation plans and handle the employee benefits program.

Training specialists.

Plan, organize, and direct training activities.

Labor relations specialists.

Advise management on all aspects of union management relations.