The Role of the Workforce - Essay Example

Human Resources Introduction The role of the workforce in the success or even mere survival of a business organization cannot be over d. The oldclich which states that "people are our most valuable asset" will not probably met disagreement with any manager in this competitive business environment. This is further emphasized by Bullinger, president of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft1 by stating that employees are a company's best assets together with their knowledge, abilities, creativity and commitment. He further asserted that the competitiveness of a business organisation is highly correlated with the company's highly trained, creative, and motivated employees. This paper will address two challenges faced by business organisations as outlined by the article Slippery Slope which looked the evolving role of the human resource practitioner due to the structural changes in companies. The first section will look at why Ulrich's well-known employee champion role is disintegrating in business organisations. Before the in depth discussion, the first section will also give a background on the four key roles of human resource practitioners as laid out by Ulrich. The second section will tackle how the changes to the operations of HR function have often created problems for HR practitioners, line managers and employee in general. This paper will also look at specific solutions to address these problems. Why is the role of employee champion now disintegrating in a number of organisations David Ulrich recognized the role of the human resource in furthering the thrusts of business organisations in the face of rapid technological advancement, globalisation, growth and changing customer demands. He emphasized that in the evolution of this hypercompetitive environment, requires a competent workforce. In fact, he cited that organisational capability can be a source of competitive advantage in a company. Thus, Ulrich challenges businesses to "redefine business capabilities to sustain and integrate individual competencies" (Performance Management 1998) In relation to this, Ulrich presented four key roles that human resource practitioners should be able to fulfill in order to add the greatest value in business organizations. According to him, practitioners should be strategic partners who translate the organisation's strategies into action; administrative experts who build efficient business infrastructure; employee champions who increase employee's commitment and capability; and change agents who substantially understand the theory of change and apply them to business organisations (Performance Management 1998). Among all the four key roles mentioned above, this paper will solely focus on the employee champion role of human resource practitioner. Ulrich described this role as listening and responding to employees and finding the right balance between the demands of employees and resources available on employees. In order to do this, the company's HR department must find time to know their employees well and spend time meeting and listening to their concerns. This role also includes promoting communication through the use of "employee surveys, employee suggestion programs, all-employee meetings, on-going communication on business status, and any other program that can make employees part of the team and dedicated to customer service" (The HR Philosophy 2006). Nowadays, employee champion is also referred to as employee advocate. However, as will be discussed in the next paragraphs, this role is rapidly being eliminated in business organisation due to various changes in company structure. According to the study conducted by Helen Francis and Anne Keegan, the current business structure facilitated the deterioration of the employee champion role of human resource practitioners. However, it should be noted that the disintegration of this role can be traced to current emphasis on business or strategic partnering. The authors note the rapid increase in the number of companies looking for HR business partners as advertised in various media. Strategic partnering is seen to have modified the business landscape by directly influencing how the HR department is organised and how the HR people are talking about their values, roles, and practices. The strategic partner role of human resource practitioner which mainly involves aligning and assessing the company's human resource with its various strategies have taken up so much place business organisations, consequently weaken their thrust on employee champion role. Consistent with this, the authors highlighted that "the emphasis on HR strategy at the heart of business partnering is having the effect of downgrading the employee-facing role and producing a number of far-reaching structural changes that are taking the HR off the shopfloor and away from employees" (Francis & Keegan). The focus on business partnering consequently stressed the importance of administrative expertise. The role and responsibility previously handled by the human resource department were channeled to line management in order to have more HR practitioner fill up strategic posts. This situation called for the reduction of personnel personally handling the business organization's employees. The larger number of practitioners handling strategic issues and concern became severely detrimental to the role of employee champion. Without these practitioners who will meet face to face and listen to the concern of each employee, businesses are not able to get to know their employees, limiting the chance of enhancing their capability and commitment. Aside from focusing on the role of strategic partnership, companies also pursued various initiatives which further facilitated the deterioration of employee championship. The authors identified these as "shared service centers, IT driven changes to integrate HR activities, administrative templates and introductory support packs for line managers to handle recruitment, discipline and so on, centralization of HR administration, and devolution of professional HR expertise throughout the organisation" (Francis and Keegan). It can be seen that all these activities are designed promote the operational efficiency of the business organisation but also lessen the face to face interaction among practitioners and employees. One of the key changes implemented by firms has been the adoption of advanced technology in order to facilitate transactional efficiency. The rapid revolution in technology spurred the creation of systems which virtually connects everyone in a company. It is irrefutable that most companies harness the power of intranet to connect all the departments for communication, information dissemination, value chain integration and other processes which were usually conducted face to face. Companies now have their own call centers which handle not just the queries of customers but employees complaints as well. As human resource practitioners are tied up in strategic partnering issues and line managers are juggling the responsibilities of recruitment, absenteeism, grievance handling, coaching and counseling as well as handling operations, employees are left with a virtual and distant individual to address their own problems. It is irrefutable that this new system, instead of enhancing the employee championship role gradually disintegrates it. Traditionally, human resource practitioners recognize the importance of employee champions. From the time an applicant shows interest in a post, the company begins this role by establishing a recruitment process which assesses the knowledge, skill, and capability of a prospective employee. In this process, a human resource practitioner is needed to adequately know and evaluate an individual. With this job taken up by line managers who often specialise in a different functional area, the employee championship role is not fully extended. It is also the function of human resource practitioner to deal with the important issue of daily motivation in order for the company to harness the full efficiency of its workforce. This motivation can be best developed by really interacting and knowing the needs of the human resource. Traditionally, these tasks are assigned to practitioners who are present in companies' shopfloors. However, the new structure placed line managers to oversee its employees. With the line managers overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done, "they don't have the enough time and training to give HR work the priority it needs" (Francis and Keegan). To make things worse, locating the HR practitioners in call centers makes employee hesitant in voicing out their needs and complaints making the employee champion role impossible to carry out. Thus, the main goal of employee champions to enhance the commitment and capability of the workforce remains unmet. In summary, the role of human resource practitioners as employee champions is being endangered by the organizational structure of firms. As companies focus on the strategic partnering, practitioners are being preoccupied with other goals instead of knowing, motivating, listening and directly interacting with employees. The impact of technological advancement also becomes detrimental as intranets and call centers make impossible the face to face interaction between employees and HR practitioners. The line managers, who are assigned the responsibility of being employee champions, are often incapable of fulfilling this role due to time and effort constraint as well as lack of the required skill. Also, employees are becoming increasingly disappointed and disheartened knowing that there no HR practitioners in the shopfloor. Comment on how changes to the operations of HR function has often created problems for HR practitioners, line managers and employee in general. How might these problems be overcome in the future In the first section, we have discussed the changes in the structural aspects of the business organization and how it disintegrates the employee champion role of HR practitioners. While the focus of the above discussion is the plight of the employees, this focus will look at the problems being met by HR practitioners and line managers. Traditionally, HR practitioners handle everything relating to company's employees. Realising the gains of adequately knowing the workforce, business organizations often assign practitioners in the shopfloors for them to assess the needs of each employee. Employee complaints were often directly relayed to practitioners either through mail or personal communication. These practitioners are often the bridge which connects the ordinary employees to the top management. Their concern is the overall well-being and satisfaction of employees. On the other hand, line managers were traditionally into the evaluation of the performance of their specific departments. Their only concern is the achievement of the goals of their lines. Comparing the traditional and current situation in firms will show the problems faced by HR practitioners and line managers. In the part of HR practitioners, the shift from their HR post to more strategic responsibilities was met by other employees with resistance. It should be noted that one of the detrimental effects of the new business structure tackled by Francis and Keegan in the emergence of "disenchanted practitioners." Lifting from their research, HR practitioners are expressing concerns about their career options: "Those originally attracted to the position because the promise of fulfilling the long-standing ethical agenda at the heart of HR work talked of facing a bleak future" (Francis and Keegan) One of the respondents openly expressed his disappointment on the operation of the new organisational structure. He, irrefutably, once envisioned himself as a n employee champion who works and directly interacts with the company's workforce. With his assignment to contact centers to receive employee constraint was not what he previously expected. He relates, "We are losing what HR's all about." This opinion reveal HR practitioners feeling of being let down. In this scenario, it is apparent that HR practitioners who are tasked of healing the grievances and finding solution to the workforce problem are also currently a part of the organization's unsatisfied employees. This has a very significant implication for the firm. If the persons required to motivate employees are not fully motivated, there is no way that an organisation can function efficiently. As they are also embittered by their own disappointment with the company, they will not be able to give the necessary motivation for the other employees. They can only share their bitterness and may discourage others. In fact, if this is the case, the company is surely bound to have a poorly functioning workforce making it bound to failure. Line managers are not exempt to the problems generated by the new organisational structure. It was discussed that line managers are currently doing HR jobs which were not traditionally assigned to them. Giving these tasks to line managers generally squeeze their time for their core activities. Also, since line managers are often trained and oriented to do non-HR jobs, they are often incapable of fulfilling the role of employee champion. Line managers often have other concerns. It is also possible that they are not appreciative of what the role of employee champion will bring to the organization. Francis and Keegan relate that line managers often fail to consider HR jobs as their priority. The disenchantment of practitioners coupled with the incapability of line managers to accomplish the employee champion role has devastating impact on employees. Employees are reported to loss their trust and confidence. This also endangers the well-being of the whole human resource. As human resource practitioners vacate their posts in the shopfloor to concentrate on strategic issues, employees' confidence and trust toward the organisation is constantly deteriorating. The virtual human resource practitioners in the company's contact centers will not suffice to extend the firm's concern to its employees. As social organisms, employees need to directly interact with other individuals to feel their passion and commitment. Locating R practitioners wHR HR practitioners away from the employees build up a feeling of discouragement for employees. Another important implication of the current problems in the new system is the degeneration of employees' well being. In the situations above, it is imperative that companies improve and modify their current organisational structure in order to give emphasis to the much overlooked employee champion role. As discussed above, the current system is detrimental to almost all the persons in the organisation. It should not be interpreted that this paper is against the efforts put in strategic partnering. However, it was shown that too much focus on a single function of HR specifically strategic partnering is detrimental. As Ulrich emphasized, the four key functions of HR should be carried out. Focusing only in one function does not lead to the attainment of competitive advantage in human resource. It is recommended that companies strike a balance among its numerous goals. The company should not be overwhelmed by the role of strategic partner. Companies should start realizing that without fulfilling the role of employee champion, their efforts on the other aspects are in vain. As the most valuable asset in the organization, the human resource should be given the attention that they need. Companies' commitment to give the best to their employees should always be reinforced and emphasized. This paper suggests that companies put an enormous effort to promote interaction between HR professionals and employees. This can be done by assigning a number of practitioners in the shopfloors in a daily basis. This does not necessarily mean that all t he practitioners in the contact centers should be relocated to the shopfloors. A number of practitioners, regularly and closely monitoring employees will be enough. This is just to show to employees that they have professionals who can readily help them in times of needs. This straightens the problem in practitioners and employees. This will also free line managers from HR jobs, giving them time to focus on their main concerns. Regular evaluation of employees' needs should be conducted. It is also important that in running a call center which focuses on serving employees, the workforce should be oriented on how to use the system and why such system is needed. It is irrefutable that the use of this contact center facilitates the efficient resolution of concerns. However, direct contact with employees should continuously pursued. It is also necessary that companies always evaluate their motivational tools. This is important in order to ensure the efficiency of all employees. Regular team building and recreation activities should be pursued. Companies should also reward employees for their achievements and recognize them for their efforts. These activities will surely counter the loss of confidence and trust that employees feel. References "Performance Management," Retrieved 21 August 2006, from http://www.opm.gov/perform/articles/119.asp "The HR Philosophy," Retrieved 21 August 2006, from http://www.auxillium.com/about.htm Read More