Roles and Functions of Personnel Departments and Ways to Improve Their Value to Organizations
Role of HR Departments
The HR model of the four HRM perspectives devised by Ulrich helps clarify the role of Personnel Departments (University of Sunderland 2004, p. 75).
Strategic Partner
As Strategic Partner the HR Department creates an appropriate organisational architecture with the target of achieving a match between factors such as culture and work processes and the organisation’s strategic goals. The focus is on results orientation and performance enhancement (University of Sunderland 2004, pp. 75, 78).
Administrative Expert
The role of Administrative Expert comprises professional practice, i.e. typical HR activities such as recruitment and training (University of Sunderland 2004, p. 75).
Employee Champion
As Employee Champion the Personnel Department manages the contribution of the organisation’s staff. This means that the HR Department tries to encourage higher employee commitment and full contribution. This can be achieved by acting as a partner, which means listening attentively and responding to employees and their needs, by providing them with adequate training activities, and by monitoring staff morale (University of Sunderland 2004, pp. 75, 79).
Change Agent
This role comprises management of change. This means that the Personnel Department encourages and initiates change in organisational culture to bring about a more appropriate culture and organisation to be able to achieve organisational aims such as business change, consistent employee commitment, new behaviours and competitiveness (University of Sunderland 2004, pp. 75, 79).
Role Evaluation
From the above-mentioned role description it becomes cl...
... middle of paper ...
... quality of HR services might be improved through outsourcing, which is an important step towards increasing strategic HR value.
The customers of the HR Department are the company’s employees and managers (University of Sunderland 2004, p. 84). Consequently, a good relationship between HR and its customers is a good starting point for improving HR value. Creating a positive relationship involves considering the needs of individuals when forming policies. The HR Department should rather provide a basic framework that leaves free space to its customers instead of foisting their policies and procedures on them, which might lead to resistance and failures of processes. Bearing this in mind, the strategic value of the Personnel Department might be improved.
References
University of Sunderland 2004, Strategic management of human resources, University of Sunderland.
The Human Resources Department (HRD) is the unit responsible for providing the leadership to develop and refine key operational plans to promote the incr...
Human Resource Management (HRM) is the administration and control of employees. Its purpose is to ensure that the workers and the employer cultivate a valuable relationship. As a result, the company will record an exceptional performance particularly with regard to employee productivity (Paauwe, 2004). Further, the workers will benefit in terms of job satisfaction and self-development (Paauwe, 2004). Some of the activities involved in managing workers include selection and recruitment, training, development, motivation, and appraisal (Sharma, 2009). This paper aims to analyse the role of human resource management in organisations and its linkage to the wider organizational strategy using Tesco and Harrods as illustrations.
Hailey, V. H., Farndale, E. & Truss, C. (2005) ‘The HR department’s role in organizational performance’, Human Resource Management Journal, 15(3), 49-66.
This paper will highlight the history of the company, followed by HR policies & practices that stand out and implications of HR policies when comparing to other companies. The paper will also explain why the HR policies and practices chosen are important.
HR as a strategic business partner can therefore be defined as an arrangement between different departments within an organization to help
Whether an organization consists of five or 25,000 employees, human resources management is vital to the success of the organization. HR is important to all managers because it provides managers with the resources – the employees – necessary to produce the work for the managers and the organization. Beyond this role, HR is capable of becoming a strong strategic partner when it comes to “establishing the overall direction and objectives of key areas of human resource management in order to ensure that they not only are consistent with but also support the achievement of business goals.” (Massey, 1994, p. 27)
In general definition, personnel management is the recruitment, selection, development, utilization of and accommodation to human resources by organizations. The human resources of an organization consist of all individuals regardless of their role, who are engaged in any of the organizations activities. A change based on a reason, changes personnel management into human resource management takes time and stages. From time to time, the term human resource management is increasingly replacing personnel management positions. This occurs because of changes in personnel management is seen as old-fashioned way to manage people, and to give priority to the development needs of the organization rather than the individual. In every change has the distinction of various aspects such as the process changes, characteristic, function and roles.
Changing the Roles. Traditionally, HR has been an administrative position — processing paperwork, benefits, hiring and firing, and compensation. However, recently HRM has moved from a traditional to a strategic role, with the emphasis on catering to the needs of consumers and workers. Before, HR was seen as the enemy and employees believed that HR’s main purpose was to protect management. Now, the position requires HRM to be more people-oriented and protect their human capital, the staff.
The findings strongly suggest that the importance of leaders in making HPW the approach of choice is critical. The willingness and desire of leaders to make a difference, to produce excellence and to do this through people, are the hallmarks of HPW. Human Resources (HR) colleagues and operational managers then help to put these ambitions into practice, a process that can be greatly assisted by a coherent HR strategy. HR functions can help in a range of ways but especially in terms of helping to resolve problems and...
The field of human resources (HR) plays a critical role in the performance and success of organizations. As organizations have become increasingly more complex, the effective management of HR has become even more important. The traditional perception of HR as only an administrative office is no longer valid. Instead, contemporary HR is directly involved with the internal organizational structure, business operations, and variety of functions carried out by employees on a daily basis (Reed & Bogardus, 2012). HR functions impact the organization’s strategic planning, improvement processes, and goal achievement. Six core bodies of knowledge provide the foundation for all of these HR functions. These areas are: strategic management; workforce planning and employment; human resource development; total rewards; employee and labor relations; and risk management (Reed & Bogardus, 2012).
“Hr is shifting from focusing on the organisation of the business to focusing on the business of the organisation” (Zulmohd 2011). David Ulrich points out four distinctive roles of HR which makes the organisation most effective and produce competitive advantage. He planned to change the structure of HR function and build HR around roles. The four key HR roles identified by Ulrich, one HR business partner/strategic partner – aligning HR and business strategy which plays an important role in setting strategic direction. It builds strategic relationship with clients and strategically manages the development of the workforce. The second key role is administrative expert which creates and must deliver effective HR processes made to tailor business needs. It also involves managing people and HR related costs. To continue to the third key role, change agent which understands the organisations culture, and takes the responsibility to communicate those changes internally and gain its employees trust. The final key role identified by Ulrich is employee advocate which is a core in HR role represents employees and helps to improve their experience, protect employees’ interests and confirm strategic initiatives are well balanced. Employee advocates must also “ensure fair, ethical and equitable people processes and practices.” “David Ulrich’s HR Model is about defining the HR roles and
...an approach of partnership is critical for organizations that want to gain competitive advantages. Butler, Ferris & Napier (1991) state this as, “the more management believes that HRM contributes to corporate success, the more its role will be integrated into the firm’s strategic planning process.” (as cited by Rose & Kumar, 2006, pg. 3). Additionally, organizations that apply energy and resources to HRD benefit from an increase in human capital. López-Cabrales, Real & Valle (2011) state the benefits of building human capital as, “If the company adopts appropriate procedures of personnel management, human capital can be orientated to the achievement of sustainable competitive advantages” (pg. 5).
Terms of reference: This report is being produced to fulfil the criteria required for Unit four of the Advance Vocational Certificate of Education (AVCE) course in Business Studies. It will give a comprehensive overview of the way's in which the human resources function(s)', within businesses are organised and managed and how they operate, and an analytical insight into the human resource management team, of the business that I' am focusing on, which is HSBC Group Plc. The report will specifically focus on the possible conflicts of interest between employees or individuals, the way's which human resources planning procedures take place, the recruitment and selection process, training and development programmes and performance management at HSBC Group Plc, in view of the current economic climate for retailing/banking. An Introduction to the Report: In this assignment, I have been asked to structure an analytical approach, about human resources and its effects, on one business, and to file all of my information in one simple, but sophisticatedly structured report.
In this assignment I will be looking at the role played by the Personnel Management to Human Resource Management (HRM) for Sainsbury's and there historic developments. I will also be looking at how the existing HR function for Sainsbury's could be developed to work more effectively with the rest of the organisation.
Introduction A comprehensive Human Resource Management Strategy plays a vital role in the achievement of an organisation’s overall strategic objectives and visibly illustrates that the human resources function fully understands and supports the direction in which the organisation is moving. A comprehensive HRM Strategy will also support other specific strategic objectives undertaken by the marketing, financial, operational and technology departments. In essence, an HRM strategy’s aim should be to capture the ‘people’ part of an organisation and its medium to long-term projection of what it wants to achieve, ensuring that. It employs the right people, those have the right mix of skills, employees show the correct behaviours and attitudes, and employees have the opportunity to be developed the right way.