Wednesday 26 February 2014

NEW OUTLOOK ON HR



Wednesday, 26 February 2014 | Rajesh Tripathi

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The scope of HR has grown by leaps and bounds as it is required by every business for its burgeoning demands, in terms of people orientation, creativity and innovative thinking to be cultivated among its employees, says Rajesh Tripathi
HR has evolved as an integral function in organisations these days. Today, there is a lot more emphasis on the Human Resource function in organisations as they look forward to inculcate a people driven orientation. As Henry Ford said: “Take everything, but leave me my people, and in two years I’ll be at the top again”. So it’s the people who make the organisation and the rest of them like material, machine and information, follows. Organisations are looking to develop and groom their employees as the axis has shifted from production to productivity. The onus is now on HR to shape and nurture people for better productivity. Job responsibilities of HR personnel has also increased as they are also expected to sketch out the psychological and behavioural aspects of employees to fit in to the organisational culture.
As lot more organisations are becoming people centric, so students can look forward to a bright and challenging career ahead. The corporate world is witnessing turn around in the history of HR function as HR managers, over a due course of time, are becoming CEOs. Earlier this was not the practice but as the HR function is evolving, HR managers are recalled in important decision making process and invariably finding their foothold in the Board of Directors in organisations.
The scope for HR function has grown by leaps and bounds as it is required by every business for its burgeoning demands in terms of  people orientation, creativity and innovative thinking to be cultivated among its employees. This in terms will expedite the objective of a sustainable business. As this function is rapidly engulfing a large sphere in the corporate structure so the job profiles are created based on the demand of any particular element of this profession. Say for example, in an established HR function separate profiles for recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management system, compensation and benefits, organisation development based on the strength of work are handled on a daily basis.
Since this function is now recognised at par with other functions like marketing, finance etc, so remuneration is not an issue. Aspirants can look forward to draw striking salaries based on their knowledge and most importantly their skills and attitude.
In the international arena, HR people need to tackle a wide variety of people in terms of their demographic and geographic differences as compared to the Indian scenario. Also getting acquainted with the changing laws and policies from country to country in itself is a tedious task and alienating your organisation policies as against such changing laws becomes much more challenging.
The strategies of HR have also evolved with challenges galore. They have found out empirical and clinical methods to hire fresh talent and also come out with untraded and unpractised ways to deal with attrition. The focal point has shifted from hard skills to soft skills predominantly. The belief in this goes by with the fitment of an employee in the organisation culture rather than just into a specific role or job description.
However, there are some challenges for this function which come in different forms and vicissitudes. At the functional level, they will find it difficult to cope with people and unrest if they are not able to acquire good knowledge of human behaviour and aptly comprehend them. At the business level, if HR managers do not enlighten themselves about the complete business process, they fail to become part of any decision making process in the business.
More often than not the challenges , as we come across, while hiring in tier 2 and tier 3 cities is the lack of communication skills and the personality as a whole. People more often lack the basic communication skills required to carry out themselves and their task in this globalised age. The persona of the person, if not groomed can lead to lack of flair and exuberance required to showcase at the corporate level.
HR skills can be inculcated in students from the early stage of their career if proper training module is executed. Students should learn to work in team.
They should start building their skills which would facilitate them to nullify differences and enhance their proximity to people. They need to read a lot. Develop a habit of reading anything and everything regarding all business functions but aim to read books related to people’s psychology, business news and articles more. Putting their reading to practice, they should also need to cultivate the habit of observing people and practicing to comprehend their minds and actions. This is a cyclic process which should go on and on and they should aim at improving on their own and be strict and honest with themselves in terms of accepting the mistakes they make in their course of learning people and rectifying it over and again.
Teachers should focus to arrange feedback and mock sessions for students who are practicing such methodology to develop and finesse their reading capabilities. As stated earlier, these sessions should be simulation-oriented encapsulating objective feedback. Simulation based teaching, as outlined, wherein students are put to test in real-life situations and providing fair feedback for their development is a tool to buff up the reading capabilities in them.
Young professionals are dynamic in nature and seek for a job at every drop of a hat. The emphasis to retain such professionals should be the compensation structure to start with. More in hand salary is the key difference between Gen X and Gen Y people. Gen Y is reluctant to reconcile and are always on the lookout for greener pastures. We need to build in a culture wherein we empower them with responsibilities such as presenting their ideas, leading from the front etc so that they can effectively analyse their contribution and significance as a part of the decision making process in the organisation.

The writer is vice president, human resource, GHCL Limited.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/avenues/new-outlook-on-hr.html
22:35:59
Wednesday, 26 February 2014

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