Human Resource Management and People Centered Business

It is often said that “people” make an organization what it is. It is for this reason that we have seen increased focus on human resource management, with organizations working hard to be more people-centric. Over the years Human Resource Management has emerged as one of the most challenging aspect of governance for organizations. The change in the social, cultural and economic scenarios, emergence of the global organizations and new service models have resulted in several changes in the nature of the workforce, raising new challenges in human resource management.

It was in the early 1960’s that Peter Drucker introduced the terms ‘knowledge work’ and ‘knowledge worker’ (Drucker, 1993). What was considered as radical in the 1960s has become a reality of economic relevance in the twenty first century. Globally, knowledge assets have emerged as the most important contributor to economic development and competitive advantage (Malhotra 2003). This has resulted in a workforce that comprises knowledge workers with specific skills and very different needs from that of the traditional workforce. Knowledge work is predominantly complex and ambiguous. Being more knowledge intensive, knowledge work requires different skills and mental orientation. Thus, knowledge workers are employed for their ability to think for themselves and their work involves a high degree of autonomy. Qualitatively knowledge worker are very different from less-skilled workers, and even though they may be much less in numbers, they need to be treated differently. Different HRM practices are needed for the knowledge workforce: they have to be more performance-support or performance-facilitation oriented for the knowledge workers than performance-management oriented (...

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...ures are constantly morphing (Choy, 2007). Organization boundaries have blurred resulting in an extended workforce comprising global network of outside contractors, outsourcing partners, vendors, and other nontraditional employees. The trends of more technology enablement and social media would result in further democratization of work and disruption of organizational structures, hierarchy and job titles (Accenture report, 2013). The resulting scenario would require customization in management of employees (Choy, 2007) wherein the workforce would be treated as workforce of one.

Human resource management in the twenty first century would definitely not be straight forward and simple. For organizations, the challenge therefore lies in adopting a new approach which is able to effectively convert the workforce of today, into a vibrant throbbing life-force of tomorrow.