Much of the HR function is evolving. The conventional HR practices that may have worked five years ago may not be of much use today. As the world is changing, HR professionals must adapt to the changing demands of their businesses too. While some traditional HR positions remain beneficial, more dedicated HR specializations are emerging to meet the demands of the shifting business landscape.
HR Role and Scope Throughout Time
The most important tasks of the HR department; payroll and employee benefits require human’s supervision, even if the process is done digitally. Thus, the HR position for this role and scope is here to stay. However, HR practitioners should go beyond administrative duties and go for a more of a strategic role as business partners. As HR grows in complexity, it becomes more involved in business forecasting, establishing business ROI and executing progress that could be directly tied to the future and current business success. As a result, the role of the HR professional evolved into a strategic function that involves both human capital and organisational development.
New Roles and Scope
HR professionals should come forward and assume the role as an employee advocate, a change champion, and a strategic partner. Those who understand these responsibilities are leading their businesses in areas such as company success, strategic deployment of employees to accomplish business objectives, and talent development and promotion. According to Dr. Dave Ulrich, the author of Human Resource Champions, there are three new roles and scopes for HR, of which two are relatively new.
An employee sponsor or advocate, plays an important role in corporate performance through their understanding of and support for people. This advocacy involves knowledge on how to build a work climate where employees get to be motivated, engaged, and satisfied. HR manager in this role is responsible for overall talent management strategies, employee development opportunities, employee assistance programs, attain sharing and profit-sharing strategies, organizational development initiatives, due process approaches to employee complaints and problem-solving, and regularly scheduled communications.
Organization development, the umbrella field for change management methods, presents extra concerns to the HR professional. Dr. Dave Ulrich referred to this as a change champion. The HR professional benefits the business by continually evaluating the efficiency of the HR function. They also advocate for improvements in other departments and workplace practices. They champion the identification of the company’s goals, vision, values, targets, and action plans in order to support the overall success of their business. Finally, they contribute to the development of metrics that will inform their company how well it is doing in all of this.
HR managers must consider themselves to be strategic partners. In this function, the Manager helps with the planning and accomplishment of the organization’s overall business mission and goals. The HR business objectives are created to help the entire strategic business strategy and objectives be reached. The operational HR representative is well-versed in the establishment of work systems that enable employees to achieve and develop.
When HR goals are aligned with the company’s, the organization’s people management aspect is viewed as a strategic factor to business success. To be effective business partners, HR leaders must think like entrepreneurs, grasp finance and accounting, and be able to take responsibility for cost savings and the measurement of all HR programs and procedures.
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HR Roles and Scopes That Are Here To Stay
Although there are new roles and scopes in today’s HR dynamics, conventional and traditional ones are here to stay. After all, it is the business environment that adds more and more demand without eliminating basic and common duties that have existed long before.
A true administrative position. An HR coordinator has responsibility for filing, maintaining reports, processing payroll and typically the scheduling of interviews. HR Coordinator might plan and organize events, develop email content for newsletters and other inter-office communication within the department and the company. Their roles are focused on administration providing a valuable service to the organization in maintaining order and a system for everything. They are hourly non-exempt workers.
This position typically requires 1-3 years of HR experience and is still focused on administration, payroll processing and other administrative tasks. HR specialists can gain additional experience working on speciality projects, employee orientation, training, and pre-screen interviewing. HR Specialists have a basic understanding of some employment law and serve as a go-t0 resource for employees and managers alike.
HR managers may or may not oversee and supervise staff or employees. They serve a generalist role, where they often do a bit of everything including benefits, compensation, recruiting and handling employee relations issues each and every day. The responsibilities in this role are very wide, ranging from location forecasting, budgeting, recruiting and interviewing to compliance, employee investigations and claims. HR Managers sometimes process payroll but are less administrative than coordinator or specialist roles. Often they are cross-trained in administrative tasks for emergencies.
Often responsible for 2 HR teams or more, human resource directors oversee a region, a number of locations or serve as the highest ranking member of HR within the company. HR directors are also responsible for building annual budgets and oftentimes have decision making when it comes to buying software, systems and negotiating benefits offerings for the company. Less likely to be a department of one than the HR Manager, their responsibilities involve less compliance and policy and more focused on building relationships with executive team members and driving results for the organization focused on human capital and company.
Depending on organisational size, the vice-president of HR often reports directly to the CEO or COO of an organisation, although sometimes the chief human resource officer (CHRO) has this distinction. Depending on the structure and size of the organisation, the VP of HR works with the executive team to discuss business objectives. They review financial documents and work to understand how the focused programs and services they offer the organisation drive revenue.
The VP of HR works to integrate people into the full scope of business operations, evaluating how the impact of human capital benefits the overall organisation. This position is heavily focused on business metrics, reporting and analytics directly in contrast to the administrative roots of the industry. They are often a key decision maker in companies.
Successful companies are becoming more adaptable, resilient, fast to take evasive action, and customer-focused. If your company’s HR department is not reforming to align with forward-thinking principles, top management must raise critical questions to HR executives. Companies nowadays simply cannot afford to have an HR department that does not contribute to leading current thinking and increasing business profitability.
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