Section A New Mandate D Group for Human Resources -5

Akhil Krishnan Ashish Gautam Ashirvad Xaxa Chirag Jain Mano Prarthana Priya Jain 2013PGP025 2013PGP078 2013PGP077 2013PGP113 2013PGP217 2013PGP290

Introduction The article begins with challenging the very existence of HR department. As is the widespread believe, HR departments are thought of as ineffective, incompetent and costly, not to mention being non value adding. However this could not have been more wrong, in a competitive world where imitation of tangible resources is inevitable, the only real competitive advantage that a company can achieve is through organisational excellence focussing on learning, quality and teamwork. And the way HR can fit in the scheme of things is as follows: 1. Partnership of HR with the line managers in order to execute strategy 2. Enhance how work is organised and executed, ensure the costs are minimum and quality is maximised 3. Represent the concerns of employees and work towards increasing employee satisfaction 4. Continuous improvement, shaping organisations culture and capacity In companies where HR department is backed by the senior management, it takes up value-adding activities like managing training and development or design initiatives to increase workplace diversity thereby helping company serve its customers better and increase shareholder value. Factors that render HR department important today are: 1. Globalisation: with globalisation there has been an extensive need to manage people better, to move people, ideas, products and information around the world. There is also a growing need to balance gender diversity and manage complexity and ambiguity. 2. Profitability: with emphasis on achieving profitability through mergers, acquisitions, or JVs, there is a greater need for finely honed skills to integrate different organisations work process and cultures. 3. Technology: there is an enormous technology advancement, massive amounts of information are in movement. To make technology a viable productive part of work setting, there is a need to learn to leverage information for business results. 4. Intellectual Capital: going by the current scenario, the success factor of a company depends on attracting, developing and retaining individuals who are capable of driving a global organisation. 5. Change: to sustain companies need to constantly transform, creating fundamental changes along its path.

HRs NEW ROLE: Becoming a partner in strategy execution: It is the role of HR to assist the company to organize itself in carrying out its strategy. HR needs to acquire the knowledge and add value to the executive team. There are four steps involved as follows: 1. It is the role of the HR to adopt a suitable framework (e.g. 7S by McKinsey & Co) and discover the model used by the company to conduct its business and hence define a strong

organizational architecture such that the managers are clear about the companys functioning 2. Based on the organization architecture the HR and the management will be able to discuss on the fit of each component with the companys strategic goals and the HR would help the management to improve upon those components where there is no fit. HR does this by organizational audit. 3. HR must identify the areas where changes are required in the organizational structure and adopt different approaches for making those changes. 4. HR must collaborate with the operating team to analyze and prioritize the various business activity initiatives like global team work, pay for performance, etc. Becoming an administrative expert: HR becomes an administrative expert when it helps in improving the efficiency of itself as well as the organization. Costs incurred are reduced by adopting technological advancements and the HRs quality is simultaneously increased and paves way for it to become a strategic partner. A different method adopted by HR is creating expertise centres helping the company to raise its stance. Becoming an employee champion: One of the reasons for organizational failure is the under productivity of employees. The role of the HR is to engage the employees and make them feel their worth and value in order to improve their contribution towards the organizations growth. They must be a liaison between the employees and the management. They must make sure that the employees are presented with the necessary resources to achieve their full productivity. The most crucial of all is the HR taking care of the employee morale by educating the line managers by conducting training programmes. HR is also responsible for building up a relationship with the employees such that the employees believe that their voice is reflected in the decision making where HR is involved. Becoming a Change Agent: The HR should work for building the organizations capability to acquire and gain from change. The change initiatives focused on creating high performance teams, reducing innovation cycle time and technology implementation should be defined, developed and delivered in a time bound manner. It should act as a change agent to replace employee resistance to change with resolve, planning with results and fear with excitement. To bring about the new culture, HR should Define and clarify the concept of culture change Articulate the need for change for business success Define a process for assessing the current culture, the new culture and the gap between the two Identify the alternative approaches to create culture change

Four ways the in which HR is focused on outcome instead of activities: The following activities are required to be facilitated by the senior management and line managers so that the Human Resources Department can be directed towards better outcomes: Line managers and senior management need to realize the soft stuff like culture change and intellectual capital are critical for the success of the business. They should be willing to talk seriously and invest their time and effort to debate and implement these changes in the organization. Explicitly define the deliverables and accountability of HR The HR should be held accountable for not achieving its set goals which can be measured and tracked by the senior management. Invest in innovative HR practices Innovative HR practices should be incorporated within the organization as and when such practices are advocated. This will ensure that the HR has the tools, information and processes to perform its role as a strategic partner. Upgrade HR professionals in terms of quality by recruiting best people Improve the quality of the HR staff by recruitment and selection of best available talent who are capable of understanding the responsibilities and achieving the goals

Critique Dave Ulrich, through his article A New Mandate for Human Resources has presented a rich picture of the importance and future prospects for Human Resources Management. The author has stated the present HR practices are disconnected from the actual work of the organization. He has emphasized the opportunity for HR to play a leadership role by helping organizations to cope up with the recent changes and trends in the industry. Our group agrees with the views presented by Ulrich regarding the reconfiguration of HR function from activity oriented to outcome oriented. The traditional roles and responsibilities for HR need to be revamped by entrusting them with much greater responsibilities. The author has stated that the HR department will help the company to deal with the challenges of globalization, mergers and acquisitions, technological innovations and other changes in the environment. This however seems to be an overly optimistic picture regarding the HR department. If we consider the test of inimitability, the competitors can copy all the tangible benefits and resources. However, they cant copy the intangible assets of the company like the peoples policy. This is what acts as the competitive advantage for the company and this showcases the importance of HR department in any organization. We believe that the culture of the company is one of the biggest assets for any company, as has been put forth by the author during this article.

The author has envisioned new roles for the HR department, for instance, by acting as the partner to the organization management in strategy execution. Even though the idea seems beneficial, we need to consider the feasibility of it in the real scenario. The line and the top managers may not like the over-involvement of the HR personnel in their decision making process. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of involvement of HR department to the top management while implementing and deciding on any strategy. We support the statement of the author that the HR must be accountable for conducting an organizational audit. The article states that HR department should try to improve the efficiency of their own function as well as the entire organization. We believe that this is extremely important for the HR to execute this task of self improvisation leading to the overall benefit of the organization. Our group appreciates the authors assessment of HR function representing two groups: the management and the employees. It has now become an employee champion by boosting the morale of employees and giving them more freedom and autonomy. We believe that HR department is instrumental in acting as change initiators to bring about cultural and capacity changes in an organization. However, it cannot be the responsibility of HR alone. The support from the line managers and the top management is of prime importance. The examples and illustrations given in the article are primarily of the companies which have been widely successful (survivorship bias). We feel as a group that, in order to have a complete picture of HR practices the author could have included a few examples wherein the companies have faced failure due to poor HR policies. The article fails to throw light on the success of various start-up companies. These companies did not have a proper HR department. The article fails to explain the success of such start up companies in light of the absence of formalized HR functions. All said and done the article has really helped us gain insight on the importance of HR department as a whole. This article changed our perceptions we held against the HR department and made us realize the future prospects of the Human Resources. This forms a cornerstone of the beginning of a new brand of work that the HR can deal with.