This is a very much overdue post.  I was all the while thinking about sharing this simple assignment I did as part of my DBA program.  The questions is - “Is HR on the table? or under it?”

My immediate reaction was “HR is NOT YET at the table”, and there’s a web of issues that preventing HR from getting to the table.  These issues are very much inter-related as shown in the web below (extracted from my assignment):

 I’ll share the simple conclusion on this post.  Feel free to download the paper for your own reading pleasure.

My simple conclusion to the question:

From the various evidence discussed in this paper, HR is clearly not yet at the table.  However, it has made significant inroad from the days of being a Personnel Department.  The issue remains that while managers are aware of the importance of HR; most managers prefer to invest in short-term results.  This is further compounded with the lack of credibility in the HR profession in terms of business acumen and strategic thinking.  The scarce strategic HR talents have forced management to depend on their own views (which are often in conflicting nature to HRM).

Having said that, it is important to break the loops in the issues web of HR; bringing HR to the table.  With the increasingly demanding employees and high speed of change, strategic HRM must be the focus to drive the organization and minimize adverse effects.  Discussions in Section 4.1 and 4.2 have underlined the complexities of managing people matters today, which should not be left to the business managers alone; while Section 4.3 have also shown that strategic HRM can affect business bottom-line by reducing cost of recruitment, retention, training, motivation and increasing efficiency.

Providing Head of HR with more significant role as Chief HR Advisor to CEO is among the quicker ways of rolling out HR interventions.  In longer run, investment in process automation could free up HR to pursue more strategic functions.  This, in addition to a structure career plan, will motivate more talents to join the HR profession and put their capabilities on par with executives of all other departments.

Finally, while HR is a specialist domain, HRM implementation should be the responsibility of all managers ranging from the CEO to the frontline supervisors.  Thus, success of bringing HRM to the table lies with the commitments of all managers.

CLICK HERE for a copy of the assignment if you’re interested to read it.

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Tags: Assignment, DBA, Discussion, Doctorate, HRM, Human Resources, Issues, talents

This entry was posted by Clayton J.C Tan on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Human Resources, Leadership & Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.