THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN RESOUCE FUNCTION: RESOLVING THE TENSION BETWEEN A

TRADITIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE AND A NEW STRATEGIC ROLEMICHAEL BEER

Stratejik İnsan Kaynakları Yönetimi, Makale DeğerlendirmesiZeyd GÜLESİN, 15.10.2014

Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesiİşletme Yönetimi, Doktora

AIM OF THE PAPER

• What are the forces for change that HRM is having at the 20th century?

• Where are the HRM and HR function going?

• What are the octacles to getting there?

FORCES FOR CHANGE

• Principle reasons for the transformation:o Competition, o Globalizationo Continuos change in markets and technology

o The future of the HRMo Less bureaucratic,o Less hierarchical,o Faster and more responsive

o People will be employed in a moreo cost effective manner ando will be competitive advantage

CAPABILITIES FOR BEING THE SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANGE

• Far higher levels of

– Coordination across functions, business units, and borders

– Employee commitment to continuous improvement

– General management and leadership competens

– Creativity and entrepreneurship

– Open communication will have to be developed

A VISION of THE HUMAN RESOURCE FUNCTION

• Traditional roles of HR:

– Administrative

– Compliance

– Service oriented

• New strategic roles of HR:

– Developing organization

– Developing capabilities of its managers

– Enhance quality of management

• Challanges:– Not enough time to perform both administrative

roles and strategic role

– HR professionals tend to perform more thetraditional role rather than the new role

– Administrative and strategic role do not easilycoexist in the same function

• Moving administrative and service functionsout of HR is essential if a new strategic role is to emerge.

• Traditional HR applications are waste of time

• Performance appraisal systems far from performance evaluation

• Training programs are very expensive and inefficient

• So all of these functions should be out of HR and HR should transform itself to its new form

WHAT WILL THE NEW HR FUNCTION LOOK LIKE?

• Much smaller, more high powered

• Key role will be strategic

• HR partners will work closely with the GM

• New roles including assessing, diagnosing and developing the alignment of the organization with strategy.

CORPORATE HUMAN RESOURCE

• Corporate human resource staff will be composed of a few key subjectmatter experts in disciplines such as compensation, management development, diversity and organization effectiveness.

• Main responsibilities:

– Promoting an organizational learning process

– Developing Strategic Human Resource Profile

BARRIERS

• There are six core barriers to strategyimplementation– Poor cordination and teamwork

– Unclear strategy and priorities

– An ineffective top team

– Top-down management

– Poor vertical communication

– Inadequate management and managementdevelopment throughout the organization

OBSTACLES TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HR FUNCTION

• To play strategic role HR professionals will have tohave analytic and interpersonal skills.

• Alternative is to train HR professionals in the skillfor organisational analysis

• Top management itself is another obstacle totransform the HR functions.

• A well established action learning process is needed: Strategic Human Resource Management Profiling developed ad Becton Dickinson mayovercome the problem.

COMMENTS

• The ideas proposed not exactly about the new strategicrole of the HR

• Some new applications are proposed which are alreadysame with the traditional ones

• There are some contradictions for example the paperfinds the training programs of traditional HR as ineffective and expensive but proposes training of HR professionals.

• The paper proposes new independent HR applicationbut new strategic role of HR need to focus on therelation between other departments of theorganization.