How is HR Relevant to Anyone?
“That shall be the task of HR, not us.”
It is not uncommon that people think any issues related to employees shall go directly to Human Resource (HR) department. HR is typically perceived as a specific function that solves people-related issues, not limited to hiring, performance, training, salary, promotion, and disciplinary action. Most of companies hire and form a team of HR professionals, or even partner with external HR consultants, to help them working on such issues and to ensure that their employees stay with the company for a long time. The question that comes up then, “Is it solely the responsibility of HR?”
There are variety of perceptions on how people see HR: (1) some see it as a function or department within a company that manage resources related to people, (2) some see it as a job family, a group of functional jobs having similar core knowledge and capabilities relating to people management, (3) some see it as a broad field of knowledge about hiring, developing and retaining employees, and (4) some see HR as specific as recruitment, payroll, and any others sub-topics inside this field. None of this approach is actually incorrect. However, zooming these definitions out may be necessary to allow us seeing the bigger picture of it.
What is HR and how does it relate to anyone of us?
The term of HR was first introduced around 1920s (US-based). Far before that, workers are considered as expendable resources to the company where exploitation of workers without fair compensation existed. The awareness of “workforce’s well being affects their productivity” emerged when the strikes of industrial workforce happened in the US concerning their rights. This further lead to the need of workers protection and emergence of HR practices. At that time, HR was known as “personnel administration”, and merely talks about the technical aspects of hiring, evaluating, training, and compensating employees. It focuses more on the administrative side of managing staff matters and ensuring fair compensation.
As business starts to view ‘people’ as one of its critical capital that affects its competitive advantage, the role of HR has never been this pivotal. With the globalization, rapid technology development, and changing in workforce generations, HR develops to be more complex and relevant to current business situations. HR no longer focuses solely on administrative tasks. It is then considered as business partners of the company leaders in handling strategic people issues — aligning organization design to the company strategy, driving sustainable employees’ performance, improving employees’ engagement, and building a healthy working culture. The picture shown below briefly describes the scope of services of human resources and how it is being delivered to the employees:
To simplify this model, imagine of owning a Coffee Shop and starting to run the business. As the owner, you will need to start thinking on:
- What is the model of the shop? What functions and roles do you need to run your shop? Do you need financial management, supply chain for the materials, and barista function? Identifying these would be part of Organization Design area in HR, where you identify the business models, process, functions and roles that needed to run the business and help you to achieve your goal: Be number one coffee shop in town.
- Is hiring one barista and one cashier enough? Or do you need specific one waitress as you plan to win the market by having excellence customer service? Identification of these would be part of Workforce Planning where you identify the quantity and quality of workers you need to run the shop.
- You have decided to hire one barista, one cashier, and one waitress for your shop. What are your expectations to them? What are their responsibilities? Which role has bigger value compared to others? These would be part of Job Analysis where you clarify your sets of expectations by telling your workers their responsibilities. This also includes the part of Job Evaluation where you value each role according to its impact and contribution to your shop. As example, you may value barista higher than other roles considering its skills-set which may affect customers’ preferences — the better the coffee, the more customers to the shop.
- What kind of members that you want to recruit? What are their qualities, experience, and skills-set needed to perform well? How will you recruit them? How to assess that they are the right fit for you? These would be part of Hiring and Assessment process to attract and selecting the best people for your shop.
- How will you evaluate each role’s performance? What are the criteria? How often they will be evaluated? How will you give feedback to them? These are part of Performance Management System to ensure you provide fair and clear assessment to your workers, and providing constructive feedback to allow them improving their performance and help you better.
- How much will you pay your workers? How will you reward the top performers that support you the most? Will you give him/ her additional bonus? Will you provide him/ her additional leaves? What would you offer to ensure they stay with you for a long time? These are part of Compensation and Benefits practice.
- How will you help your workers to improve his/ her skills? Would you provide them trainings? Will you teach them yourself? Considering these aspects would be part of Learning and Development, where you help your workers to upgrade their skills and perform better at work.
- Have you thought about the next role for them? Is there anyone of them that has potential to lead your current shop so you can open and manage another one? Answering these will help you identify your successor (Career Management & Succession Planning) at current shop, to allow you expand your business.
Simplified examples above demonstrate how close HR practices to any professions. Whether it is a manager in an established company, a small business owner, or an independent professional, the practices and considerations of people-related issues are and will always be relevant. In fact, it is very often that people consider, even implement those aspects, without realizing that they are actually practicing HR.
As it is fundamental to have understanding on the ‘people’ aspect in running a business, the knowledge of Human Resource becomes more relevant than ever to anyone.
Further, employees’ engagement (proud feeling and attachment to the organization) and retention (likeliness to stay with the organization) are influenced by variety of factors, and not solely the role of HR. According to Gallup Research, the engagement and retention of employees is highly influenced by the role of Managers. “Having a bad manager is often a one-two punch: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, compounding their stress and putting their well-being in peril.” Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in the employee engagement scores. Other than that, the research has repeatedly shown a consistent link between having a best friend at work and the engagement level of employees. This might be caused by the human needs of feeling trusts, belonging, and inclusion. Considering the amount of time that employees spend at work (in average workers spend 90,000 hours at work overtime, or almost one third of their life) and the intensity of interaction with both manager and co-workers, both inevitably owns certain impact to the employees’ willingness to stay with the company. It also indicates that, engagement and retention of the employees is a shared-responsibility of everyone in the organization.
Written by Khairunisa [www.linkedin.com/in/khairunnisa-khairunnisa]
References
The Evolution of HR: Where It’s Been and Where It’s Going. (n.d.). Retrieved June 01, 2020, from https://www.itagroup.com/insights/evolution-of-human-resources-management
Francis, H., Parkes, C., & Reddington, M. (2014). E-HR and international HRM: A critical perspective on the discursive framing of e-HR. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(10), 1327–1350. doi:10.1080/09585192.2013.870309
Nolan, T. (2020, May 14). The №1 Employee Benefit That No One’s Talking About. Retrieved June 01, 2020, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/232955/no-employee-benefit-no-one-talking.aspx3
Mann, A. (2020, May 05). Why We Need Best Friends at Work. Retrieved June 01, 2020, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236213/why-need-best-friends-work.aspx
One third of your life is spent at work. (n.d.). Retrieved June 01, 2020, from https://www.gettysburg.edu/news/stories?id=79db7b34-630c-4f49-ad32-4ab9ea48e72b
