The four missions of HR management
I just arrived from a week-long convention among ASEAN HR professionals from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Brunei. I was the only convention speaker from our country, and my topic is the title of this column. This was the same topic I discussed last week in the PMAP Mindanao Summit held in Dahilayan, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon. I have been in HR for a combined experience of no less than 20 years: three years as HR Director of Petron (formerly called Petrophil) and PNOC; twelve years as Director for Employee and Labor Relations of San Miguel Corp., and five years as Vice President for HR and Legal of Pepsi Cola Philippines. All that time I was teaching Labor Law in a number of universities and law schools in Metro Manila.
I concluded that HR has four missions: Talent Acquisition (formerly called recruitment); Total Rewards Management (formerly called compensation and benefits); Learning, Development, and OD (formerly training); and Employee Engagement and Organizational Justice (formerly called employee relations, labor relations and industrial relations. There is now an ASEAN effort to reconcile and integrate the HR systems of the ten member-nations, and, hopefully, to adopt an ASEAN Labor Code. The HR professionals in the Philippines are among the best in the region. Many of our HR top honchos are entrusted with managing human capital not only in our country, but across Asia, not just ASEAN. There are even a few Filipinos who manage HR on a global scale, across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
In Talent Acquisition, Filipinos are among the most advanced and aggressive executive headhunters all over the world, searching, screening and selecting top candidates for CEOs, COOs, CFOs and top sales, marketing, manufacturing, and HR talents. The Talent Acquisition experts know how to ARM (Attract, Retain, and Motivate) the best in the highly competitive talent markets in the region. In Total Rewards Management, the experts attribute value to different jobs. Thus, they are masters of job evaluations, benchmarking, salary and benefits surveys, performance appraisals and the like. Pay may be based on positions, performance, persons' unique talents, potentials and other considerations. And there are non-monetary rewards like perks and privileges and potential for promotion, professional growth and exposure, recognition, rewards and others.
Learning, Development and OD focuses on enhancement of knowledge, attitudes, skills and habits. Individuals and teams are given a complete portfolio of ladderized development program curricula, both classroom-type and on-the-job, both local and international. For high potentials managerial and executive professionals, a managed Harvard, Stanford or, at the very least, AIM leadership and executive development programs. The most challenging of the four missions is Employee Engagement and Organizational Justice. There are five pillars: namely Employee Engagement, (for individuals), Employee Relations, nine for teams) Labor Relations (structured interactions), Industrial Relations, (the lawyers' tasks in dispute resolutions) and Grievance Management (resolving employee complaints and concerns). We have no more space to explain each one but I will in future columns. Any HR professional worth his salt must master all these by heart.
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