The Changing Human Resources Role

The role of the HR professional is changing. In the past, HR managers were often viewed as the systematising, policing arm of executive management. Their role was more closely aligned with personnel and administration functions that were viewed by the organisation as paperwork.

When you consider that the initial HR function, in many companies, comes out of the administration or finance department because hiring employees, paying employees, and dealing with benefits were the organisation’s first HR needs, this is not surprising.

In this role, the HR professional served executive agendas well, but was frequently viewed as a road block by much of the rest of the organisation. While some need for this role occasionally remains — you wouldn’t want every manager putting his own spin on a sexual harassment policy, as an example — much of the HR role is transforming itself.

New HR Role

The role of the HR manager must parallel the needs of his or her changing organisation. Successful organisations are becoming more adaptable, resilient, quick to change direction, and customer-centred.

Within this environment, the HR professional, who is considered necessary by line managers, is a strategic partner, an employee sponsor or advocate and a change mentor. At the same time, especially the HR Generalist, still has responsibility for employee benefits administration, often payroll, and employee paperwork.

Depending on the size of the organisation, the HR manager has responsibility for all of the functions that deal with the needs and activities of the organisation’s people.

With all of this in mind, in Human Resource Champions, Dave Ulrich, one of the best thinkers and writers in the HR field today, and a professor at the University of Michigan, recommends three additional roles for the HR manager.

HR Role: Business and Strategic Partner

In today’s organisations, to guarantee their viability and ability to contribute, HR managers need to think of themselves as strategic partners. In this role, the HR person contributes to the development of and the accomplishment of the organisation-wide business plan and objectives.

The HR business objectives are established to support the attainment of the overall strategic business plan and objectives. The tactical HR representative is deeply knowledgeable about the design of work systems in which people succeed and contribute. This strategic partnership impacts HR services such as the design of work positions; hiring; reward, recognition and strategic pay; performance development and appraisal systems; career and succession planning; and employee development.

To be successful business partners, the HR staff members have to think like business people, know finance and accounting, and be accountable and responsible for cost reductions and the measurement of all HR programs and processes. It’s not enough to ask for a seat at the executive table; HR people will have to prove they have the business savvy necessary to sit there.

HR Role: Employee Advocate

As an employee sponsor or advocate, the HR manager plays an integral role in organisational success via his or her knowledge about and advocacy of the employees. This advocacy includes expertise in how to create a work environment in which people will choose to be motivated, contributing, engaged, and happy.

Fostering effective methods of goal setting, communication and empowerment through responsibility, builds employee ownership of the organisation. The HR professional helps establish the organisational culture and climate in which people have the competency, concern and commitment to serve customers well.

In this role, the HR manager provides employee development opportunities, employee assistance programs, gain sharing and profit-sharing strategies, organisation development interventions, due process approaches to employee complaints and problem solving, and regularly scheduled communication opportunities.

HR Role: Change Champion

The constant evaluation of the effectiveness of the organisation results in the need for the HR professional to frequently champion change. Both knowledge about and the ability to execute successful change strategies make the HR professional exceptionally valued.

Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organisation will minimise employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change.

The HR professional contributes to the organisation by constantly assessing the effectiveness of the HR function. He or she also sponsors and supports change in other departments and in work practices. To promote the overall success of his or her organisation, the HR professional champions the identification of the organisational strategic plan: mission, vision, values, goals and action plans. Finally, he or she helps determine the measures that will tell the organisation how well it is succeeding in all of this.

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