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Human Resource Management


Research Report
Understanding HR role of Line Manager/ Team Leader

Submitted by:-

Group No.: 2
Aastha Manglik (141203)
Abhinav Prakash(141205)
Akash Kumar Singh (141206)

Section: B
Batch: MBA-FT (2014-2016)

Institute of Management, Nirma University


Date of Submission: 9th, March 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank Prof. Reena Shah for giving us the opportunity to undertake this
research. We would also like to thank Prof. Sameer Pingle for their valuable guidance and
inputs. This study has helped us gain a first-hand insight of HR management and as such
developed our skill set.
We would also like to thank Institute of Management, Nirma University for providing us
infrastructure and access to abundant reference material.
Last but not the least we would like to thank all the respondents and friends who have
contributed to this study in one way or the other.

ABSTRACT
The Line managers in the organizations are dealing with the employees directly and are best
placed for the HR roles. The organizations have started involving line managers in the HR
roles. This Research reports findings from 15 interviews with line managers on their
experience of performing the HR work given to them. The study discusses the benefits and
the challenges that exist from involving the line managers into HR. The study finds that the
line managers have the desire, ability and capacity to perform the HR functions but they
perform better when supported by HR managers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
S. No.

Particulars

Page No.

Introduction

Literature Review

Research Gap/ Rationale

Research Methodology

Data Presentation and Analysis

10

Finding and Conclusion

12

Recommendations and Managerial


Implications

13

References

14

INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization focusing on the
recruitment, management and providing direction for the people who work in the
organization. It deals with the issues related to people like compensation, hiring, employee
motivation, performance management, learning and development etc.
In India, the HRM has evolved over the years as the scope of people management has gone
beyond just the welfare. Earlier the main aim of people management was to take care of the
interest of the people. But in 1990, The American society for Personal Management renamed
itself as The society of Human Resource Management and HRM came into being.
Line managers are having the responsibility for directly managing individual employees or
teams. These include planning, work allocation, cost control, appraisal, absence control etc.
Line managers in turn, report to the higher level management about the performance of the
employees or team they are handling.

Theoretical Background
There are many people management activities that are being performed in a company. Some
of them are:

Occupational health and safety


Worker compensation
Career planning and development
Industrial relations
Recruitment and selection
Leadership development
Providing remuneration and benefits
Promoting equality and diversity etc.

Most of these activities are related to HRMs domain. But over the recent past, organizations
have seen a shift and involvement of the line management as increased considerably in these
people management activities. The primary reason of this shift is to increase the efficiency of
people management so that the HR staff can spend more time on strategic planning of the
organizations.
There are many more faces to this aspect also. The involvement of line managers in the
people management activities has also been attributed to the organizations desire to cut the
costs. This can also be used as improving the quality of people management or organizational
performance. This aspect can also help in increased communication between the line

managers and HR managers which can help in better training of the line managers in people
management skills.
The line managers are the best people too deal with the people management activities
because they are the closest to the line employees, communicate regularly with them and
manage them directly on day-to-day basis. Other factors influencing the trend is decentralized
decision making, organizational restructuring, growth of teamwork etc.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Hutchinson and Purcell (2008)1 tried to find out the role that line managers do in the effective
delivery of people management. Their main purpose was to explore if line managers role
create any difference to service delivery and performance in the NHS. Here people
management means all dimensions of how people were managed that includes recruitment,
selection, appraisal, reward, training and development and leadership skills. Their target
populations were the line mangers and people how report to this mangers were mainly staff
managers who did not have any management responsibility. They found that to understand
the line managers people management responsibilities and its impact on service delivery and
performance it was important to understand the line mangers attitude and behaviour and
related positive and negative impact. The most common questioned ask in an interview was
what makes a good line manager. Their main finding from the research was that these line
managers had the ability to carry out heavy workloads better than the equivalent managers in
other sectors. They think beyond traditional managers works and they work like actually
running mini business units.
Looking on the work pressures and attitude of line managers we found that Alfes, Truss,
Soane, Rees and Gatenby (2013)6 carried out a research to link the activity done by line
mangers to HRM practice and individual performance outcome. They tested a model linking
perceived line manager behaviour and perceived human resource management practices with
employee engagement and individual performance. The research was focused on the
individual task performance and innovative work behaviour. It was found out in this research
that that line manager had to perform HR activity which helped him in employee
engagement. Various activity discussed in the research were, that the line managers tell the
employees what are the expectation of the employer and management have faith on the
employee. Line managers should also link between HRM and organization to explain and
measure the performance. Line managers helped employee to develop their skill and
knowledge which increased the employee work effort and work quality. Employee
engagement is positively related to innovative work behaviour and mediates the relationship
between perceived HRM practices and innovative work behaviour.
To understand the motivation and challenges faced by the line managers, we found that
Renwick (2003)2 in his study has mentioned that there was a drive among the line managers
to take the HR roles in the organisation. This helped organisation in speeding up the decision
making and reduce cost. This is because of the sole fact that the line managers are in direct
contact with the employees. However, line managers required constant support of the HR
managers in order to complete their HR related responsibilities properly. There were some

problems between the HR and the line managers as the latter thought that formers advice
were policed by the rules. The line managers appreciate that HR functions are a specialist
area; they still think they can do it.
In another study Thornhill and Saunders3 discussed that the line managers should recognise
the contribution of HRM activities to the organisation. The managers should seek to aim for a
co-ordinated approach where they involve and communicated with the employees for
business activities. The HR skills of the line managers to offer leadership, to involve
employees, to manage change, to communicate and to motivate are important for high
employee commitment. On similar grounds, they need to develop the change agent skills to
develop flexibility, adaptability and quality in the employees they manage. They should aim
to develop high quality workforce through coaching, team building and involving more
employees.
We also found that a researcher at University of Sheffield (2004) 5 carried out a study in 3 UK
based organizations where HR activities were already performed by line managers that
includes employee reward and recognition schemes, re-training, sickness and absence,
recruitment, performance reviews and staff development. Positive points shown by line
managers while doing HRM job were that they felt sense of pride while carrying out HR job.
Many managers were happy that they were now involved in the review of employee working
under them and enjoyed independency at work. Some negative points shown by line
managers while doing HRM job were that they felt that much work of HR is a matter of
common sense even though they were not able to perform it properly. Many found it burden
because they were already over load by their own activities.
Herrmann and Donald (2001)4 stated the areas where line managers often pass their duties
and responsibility to HR; Things that line managers ask HR to do; Roles of HR within the
company; When managers should go to HR for assistance. They found from the HRs that all
mangers were not at fault but few created problem. They talked about some particular
problem like one of them mentioned that they had to spend too much time directing to read
the employee handbook or their handbook. This happened after giving a lot of training on
policy issue. Another area was when manager wanted to get rid of the subordinate then they
turn to HR. They submitted incomplete personnel form to HR and this lead to delay the
action for the employee or delay in the process of replacement of departing or transfer
employees.

RESEARCH GAP/RATIONALE

We all know that as per todays trend the organizations are transferring many of the HR roles
to the line managers. Through this study we are trying to find whether the line managers
require some formal training or qualification to perform the various HR roles. We are also set
to find out what are the major HR roles that are being performed by the line managers.
To fill in these gaps we chose to interview the people from sectors like information
technology, automobiles and aftermarkets who were handling teams of different domains
ranging from marketing to technical backgrounds. People from such diverse domains and
sectors were chosen to understand and get a deeper insight on how the HR roles vary across
sectors, companies, domains, and teams etc. From their experience we can also get a better
understanding on how important is to get the qualification or knowledge of HRM for
performing day to day activities.

METHODOLOGICAL DISCUSSION
Research Design
The Exploratory research was conducted over a period of 2 month where data was collected
by interviewing the managers of different sectors like IT, Automobiles etc. These managers
are working across various domains like marketing, research and development etc. A total of
15 managers were interviewed in the process.

Data sources:
The sources are primary. Primary data are collected through conducting interviews of the
managers. The data was collected by doing fieldwork and conducting the interviews over the
phone.

DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

In order, to understand the importance of HR activities in an organization and the role


played by the Line Managers; we interviewed 15 Line Managers from varied industries
(automotives, banking, fashion) to get a comprehensive and generic view. The following
were the functions carried out them.

Identifying the strengths and weakness of the team and classify it accordingly: The
line managers believed that it was essential to know the team well before delegating
the work. The strength of every team member ahs to leveraged in a fashion that they
overshadow the weakness of other team members.

They are trained well, that is their profession and I think you have got to take that on
board. (Amreesh Khar, Mahindra & Mahindra First Choice)
The aggressive one did phenomenally well in marketing... (Sunil Kumar, Autoneum)

Supervision according to employees capabilities and attitude: The employees


capability acted as an anchor in delegating the work to them. The line managers
harness the capabilities of the employees. Attitude of an employee also plays a key
role in task delegation.

There are those who will work without being reminded, these are those that will do
because they care. There are also those who will not work unless they are pushed...
(Amreesh Khar, Mahindra & Mahindra First Choice)
I need to identify their (employee) area of expertise ... (Sunil Kumar, Autoneum)

Task delegation: The line manager has to ensure the tasks delegated are equally
divided amongst the employees. An unequal distribution results in dissatisfaction and
the work produced is not up to the mark.

Identify motivational factors: The line managers require to constantly motivate the
teammates to derive the best out of them.

I work by persuasion rather than table banging, and I think people appreciate that ...
(Ravi Gaur, Wipro Technologies)

Synergy between employee aspiration and organization goals. The line manager
needs to know the underlying goal of an employee. His expectations and align them
with organizations goal to derive best outputs. This can be obtained by healthy,
honest and clear communication with the employees.

It is actually about making sure that we never lose sight that people are valuable to us

and we treat them with respect.- (Rohit Goel, Infosys)


Challenges faced while carrying out HR functions:

Task of taking ownership: the major challenge faced by line managers is that
employees lack the feeling of ownership. They believed in social floating and did not
bother with the goals of the organization.

Coordination amongst employees: it was a challenging task to develop a feeling of


oneness and team spirit in the team, which resulted in hardly any coordination
amongst the teams.

Disagreement with employee rating: A difficult issue to deal with is the comparison
in the employee rating. The employees believe that the management is biased
towards a particular employee.

Retention of employees: the rising dissatisfaction regarding employee rating and


appraisal results in high attrition rate.

Importance of formally qualified HR managers:


Affirmative Responses: A number of line managers are of the opinion that HR plays a
crucial role In the smooth functioning of company. They also had high regard for the
role played in helping them with their work. They believed there is a need for a
professional HR at each level of the orgaanostion.
Basic human instincts are enough for 1 st level HR management but as we move up in the
hierarchy Formal training is required. (Ravi Gaur, Wipro Technologies)
At every vertical, HR manager is required. An organization with no HR Management is
not an organization.- (Vashima Goel, Flipkart)
Negative Responses; A few managers were of the opinion that HR is not a specialized
work that requires a formal training as with basic human nature anyone can deal with
these situations.p
Being an MBA, I had a basic knowledge of HR Management. With having a good
experience you can do with it. Main learning happens in the job.- (Rohit Goel, Infosys)
No company provides HR training. I learnt things by observing HR managers and hands
on experience. (Anshuman Agarwal, G.E. Money)

FINDING AND CONCLUSION

When reflecting back on the analysis of the case several interesting issues emerge. The Line
managers acknowledge the role of HR in an organization. The attempt to place certain HR
responsibilities on line manager is to ensure quick decision making and using line manager as
a means to carry the work than outsourcing it.
This study also focuses the degree of agreement to which Line manager acknowledge the
need of HR personnel. It gives both affirmative and negative responses.
Essential finding of this research is, line managers do have the desire to carry out HR
activities, have the ability and capacity to do it well when they are assisted by the HR
managers.

RECOMMENDATION AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

HR functions are pretty important in an organization. It is seen that a lot of line managers are
practicing these activities and have a drive to carry them out. Prima Facie they find to be
carried out by common sense, but are not that easy. They are performed better when
supported by the HE managers. Thus, it is recommended that the organizations should
arrange the training and some certified courses for the line managers that help them in
developing HR skills. The involvement of the line managers in the HR roles will be quite cost
effective and help in better decision making in the long-run.

REFRENCES

Hutchinson S., Purcell J (2008). Front Line Managers and the delivery of effective people
management. A study of front line managers in the NHS
Renwick D, (2003),"Line manager involvement in HRM: an inside view", Employee
Relations, Vol. 25 Iss 3 pp. 262 280
Thornhill A., & Mark N.K. Saunders, "What if line managers dont realize theyre
responsible for HR?", Personnel Review, Vol. 27 Iss 6 pp. 460 476
Herrmann Jr., & Donald M., HR Magazine. Jul 2001, Vol. 46 Issue 7, p131. 3p. 1 Color
Photograph.
University of Sheffield (2004), "HRM the devolution revolution", Human Resource
Management International Digest, Vol. 12 Iss 3 pp. 27 29
Alfes K, Truss C, Soane E. C., Rees Chris, & Gatenby M (2013) The Relationship Between
Line Manager Behavior, Perceived HRM Practices, and Individual Performance:
Examining the Mediating Role of Engagement, Human Resource Management and
the Line Volume 52, Issue 6, pages 839859, November/December 2013

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