The evolving role of people management

The past two centuries has witnessed the evolution of the human resource management function from simply being a welfare officer, to a labor and employment manager, as a personnel manager, a human resources or compliance officer to what we consider now as strategic human resources (Zulkifli Mohd, 2011). This evolution is reflective of the era where rapid socio-economic growth and progress is experienced by organizations—the industrial revolution, world wars and globalization. As businesses face the challenge to grow, the need to innovate their products and services, and optimize their resources and organizations has started to be keen in ensuring that the people processes and human assets are optimized to ensure competitive industry advantage.

Currently, the human resources journey is still evolving. HR’s nature of work depends on the organization’s strategic initiatives and focus. From transactional work of ensuring employee welfare, safety, compensation administration, labor relations, employee relations, compliance, benefits administration, recruitment, training and employee survey implementation to more transformational activities of employee information management, performance management, organizational design, strategy planning, business partnering, employer branding, shared services management and establishing centers of excellence. It is critical to re-align the delivery of human resources services in a strategic direction to add more value to the organization.

With this, the focus of HR must expand beyond the traditional and transactional activities. For Mohd Zulkifli, “HR is shifting from focusing on the organization of the business, to focusing on the business of the organization.”

David Ulrich, one of the most well-known influencers in human resource management, introduced the HR model. This defines the four key roles of HR. The HR model connects the strategies, goals, objectives and processes to an operating model. It also identifies the key roles and responsibilities of HR. The model also defines HR operation styles and serves as a decision matrix guide. It is important to appreciate the model to organize the HR team’s mindset and effectively involve the right partners and stakeholders from the business. Organizing the HR strategy may be too abstract to articulate. Thus, the HR model must be in place to guide and anchor Human Resource professionals. In Ulrich’s book, Human Resource Champion (1997), he defined these four key roles: As an HR business partner, change agent, administration expert and as an employee advocate.

The Human Resource Champion gave birth to the HR business partner role, who serves as the strategic internal single-point of contact of internal customer. As an HRBP, he serves as the face of HR services in the organization. He is also expected to positively influence the culture in the business unit or account that he is assigned to. This role shares the same business objectives of the internal stakeholders, and ensures that the overarching goals of the human resources team is cascaded to his account of responsibility through a healthy communication channel. Helping the business by recommending innovative HR solutions, ensuring productivity, identifying, developing and retaining top talents is the role’s value.

Being a change agent, is another strategic role of human resources. HR is expected to lead in the planning of internal communications and interventions to achieve the objectives for implementing the change. HR’s participation in change management teams must ensure that the changes are communicated effectively, and gains the trust of employees. As a change agent, part of his role is to organize learning sessions and activities that will enable employees to acquire the necessary skills and competencies needed for his current and new role. This role of HR is aimed at ensuring that changes are received by the employees as an opportunity to improve, through constant feedback and communication. Effectively managing change is dependent on how well people are managed to adapt to it. Thus, building trust and confidence despite uncertainties that might be brought about by the change.

While organizations are geared towards the transformational and strategic roles of HR, being an administration expert is still important. To be a successful and trusted strategic HR business partner, one has to demonstrate expertise in labor regulations and standards since he is expected to effectively communicate and ensure compliance to these regulatory requirements. HR must also take full responsibility in ensuring the correctness of all information available in the primary HR information system for accurate analysis of data and as a reliable basis for decision-making.

HR is expected to represent the employees, protect them and ensure that the organization’s strategic initiatives is a win-win. This is core to the HR role. As an employee advocate or employee champion, HR should lead the improvement of the employee experience by fostering a nourishing work environment and innovative culture. Open communication through employee feedback mechanisms and satisfaction surveys must be in place, to identify gaps and lead to the enhancement of the organization’s ideal culture and in promoting the best business practices.

Moving forward, how do we create an HR operating model for the future? Andrew Spence (2009), has identified considerations in determining such. He has identified the key drivers for change: economic, workforce challenges, technology for different generations, social enablers, talent management agenda, and the HR vendor services market. Thus, HR should think of ways to ensure increased productivity, a more responsive workforce, increase collaboration, promote a technology-enabled worker mobility, ensure availability of tools and data, and must be able to maximize the value of investment in HR.

The future HR operating model must have the following key components, according to Spence: HR strategy, business partners, centers of expertise, vendor management, analytics, change management and service centers. Transformation efforts in HR should lead to an increase the allocation of resources from five percent to 20 percent in HR strategy formulation, from 25 percent to 40 percent in improving performance, and reducing resources allocated to transactional activities from 70 percent to 40 percent.

Achieving the ideal future HR operating model will require an organization to re-define the HR and workforce strategy, optimize the HR operating model, re-allocate resources to strategic HR, organize a project team of non-HR sponsors that will advocate the strategies, lead the acquisition of new technologies for line leaders and consider outsourcing options.

The future for HR holds a lot of possibilities, especially when identifying the best possible HR organization model. “One-size-fits-all” no longer applies in this digital age. Organizations may now choose from a variety of HR archetypes. Emerging models may vary from “lean HR model,” which is large but lean and is considered cost-effective that poses little change or volatility in a more homogenous workforce. Some organizations might consider the “professional services model,” which is talent-powered and value-driven that is ideal for a project-based work environment. For a more volatile business environment, the “just-in-time” HR model might work especially for a highly diverse, but talent powered workforce. The emerging markets with fast changing businesses where speed more than scale might also want to consider a “federated or decentralized model.”

Nowadays, the evolving business needs, technology and talent landscape no longer require a prescribed singular HR operating model. But one thing is certain, that HR and its services must be agile, adaptive and relevant to the needs of a more people-centric organization. HR’s key role is to shape the culture of the organization through innovative solutions and interventions to optimize business performance.

Carl F. M. M. Dizon is a manager from the advisory group of KPMG R.G. Manabat & Co. (KPMG RGM&Co.), the Philippine member firm of KPMG International.

This article is for general information purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice to a specific issue or entity.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG International or KPMG RGM&Co. For comments or inquiries, please email [email protected] or [email protected]. TOP OF MIND   Carl Dizon