THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER
It would suit us well to begin with a working explanation of human resources management (HRM). In several tradition-bound organisations, the principal concerns of HR relate to five things. The first is welfare i.e. maintaining canteens and latrines. The second is legal compliance i.e. submitting returns to governmental bureaucracies and doing the least that is needed for operations to remain legal. The third item on the list is administration i.e. maintaining the personal files of all employees and keeping a record of their earnings (wages, incentives, and increments). The fourth objective is discipline i.e. issuing charge sheets, caution letters and holding domestic inquiries. The final objective is recruitment and separation i.e. hiring as and when needed and firing as and when not needed, while legitimising the illegitimate various practices at the same time. The large army of unemployed persons, the increased feminisation and casualisation of the workforce since 1990 allows this system of man management to perpetuate.
In the more modern organisations there are five sub-functions of HRM viz.: planning, administration, Development, industrial relations and information systems. It is in the context of the modern organisation that we shall discuss the twin concerns of the quality of work life and what HRM means. In doing so we shall retain our original premise, which is that managerial ethics and corporate governance form the bedrock on which a value-based culture can flourish bringing about development amongst the ranks of all stakeholders.
HR is a strategic managerial function that is concerned with increasing the level of satisfaction of the internal customer thereby motivating him to produce and maintain goods and services such that the external customer is delighted and the economic objectives of the organisation are stretched. In the process, the values and ethics of the manager and the business are not jeopardised and the quality of work life improves.
This explanation implies five conditions:
The employees enjoy work and develop a sense of belonging.
The per capita real time output is increased.
The quality of goods and services improves consistently.
The profit levels consistently rise such that organisational objectives are met.
The propensity of the organisation to increase its share of the market increases.
These five conditions are only possible when the corporate culture supports creativity and innovation, as well as entrepreneurial tendencies, so that work becomes emotionally as well as economically rewarding. In short, efforts must be made consistently to see that the quality of work life improves.
In our treatment of strategic human resources, the real message that percolates through is five folds. First, the organisations must learn to thrive on competition, for which good people management is important. Second, good people management helps the individual and the organisation to leverage their strengths and sideline their weaknesses. Third, this can be sustained in the long run if all management is value-based and is approached with a positive attitude. Fourth, there must be absolute clarity of vision, mission, goal and role if the intervention is to succeed. Fifth, the work environment must be one wherein trust, transparency and teamwork co-exist in a way that the dignity of man is safeguarded.
These are not easy things to achieve, but then who said life was easy? As the indomitable Winston Churchill once remarked Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. Value-based HR intervention, in other words makes organisational development possible and assists organisations to transform boys into men in the process.
THE HR specialist is the messenger and not the message; he is the singer and not the song; and the cause but not the result. He exists and performs only within the ambit of bounded rationality and his actions are founded on derived authority.
THE HR expert must specifically define his position vis-à-vis the organisation and the environment clearly and unambiguously, but only after taking cognisance of the following conditions. He must be a facilitator, developer and partner within the business process. Gone are the days when the HR man was like a drummer in the Roman galleys. Today the HR man must inculcate the white water rafting mentality among work teams. Just as everyone in a raft that is speeding down a rapid has to do their bit independently, so too must the employees behave at work. Just as team members in a raft keep the lives of others safe and prevent the boat from capsizing so too every knowledge worker must do their bit independently to take the organisation forward in a highly competitive and fast-changing environment. Everyone will swim or sink together and there are no leaders since everyone is forced to assume a leadership role.
THE HR expert must be a part of the policy formulation and implementation team if he is to add value to the organisation. He must be concerned with strategic HR and not HR strategy. The organisation must empower the HR expert to initiate and facilitate change processes for its greater good. The HR expert must be accountable for the actions taken in the process of bringing about change.
THE HR specialist needs to understand the concept of stakeholders. The concept of stakeholder is extremely important for the HR specialist to comprehend. The concept has to be accepted by various parties in an organisation so that commitment and belongingness automatically spring from it. HR interventions that do not promote commitment and belongingness needs, have invariably failed. For this purpose, HR interventions must see and treat every actor, to use the terminology of John Dunlop, as a stakeholder. Moreover, this treatment is unlikely to bring in results unless co-operation replaces competition within organisations and markets. Competition between units within a corporate entity must remain healthy and unit level excellence should never eclipse the overall excellence of the corporate entity. In other words, individual brands should never eclipse the corporate brand since once this happens, the process of disintegration begins, and this is preceded by back-stabbing, petty-minded behaviour, organisational politics, lying, cheating and skullduggery.
HIGH quality standards can only be associated with a strong corporate brand. Quality then is to be built into every aspect of management. It is in-built into the person, the process and the product all at once. It is not inspected at the end of the product or process chain as in the traditional manufacturing organisation where the inspection officer takes a random sample of the output and then either rejects or passes the batch on the basis of his analysis.
THE HR expert is a strategist cum functional manager who as a leader adds value to the organisation and is himself governed by a set of core beliefs, by which he stands, for which he is known and which he actively promotes in the organisation. If he ceases to add value he must honourably quit. In a world where companies have to run in order to keep their place in the competitive world the HR expert has to create an environment through his intervention such that change processes are facilitated. This means creating a learning organisation where innovation and creativity are allowed to flourish and the white water rafting mentality is the norm.
THE HR managers must always cross-check his information and cross-reference his facts before pronouncing judgment. There are many people who seek to spread misinformation for selfish and insidious reasons and if the HR manager has a set of trusted cronies who indulge in this behaviour then woe betide the organisation.
When these seven conditions are fulfilled, research shows that such attributes as trust, transparency, total quality, dependability and creativity easily follow suit. To sustain these attributes management not only has to be ethical but also be perceived by others to be ethical. All this is possible if HRM itself is value-based.
Firstly, an HR specialist is a functional expert who operates on the basis of derived authority. He can only perform if the infrastructure permits him to do so. In addition, the infrastructure will only permit him to do so if the CEO is serious about HR. If the CEO is not serious, and sees HR as a threat to his paternalistic authority, then the derived authority of the HR expert is by itself questioned. He then has to start working on the mindset of the CEO, convert it and only then turn his attention to the rest of the organisation. If not, he will surely fail as many have.
Secondly, the HR specialist must start respecting himself before he expects the CEO to respect him. In many organisations the HR expert is afraid to walk his talk and confront the CEO who then rides rough shod over him in his myopic pursuit of short term progress (read profit). Hence, he must begin by defining his position vis-à-vis the CEO and the organisation before he proceeds further. For that, he must learn to take a principled stand and defend it. And for that to take place, mediocrity has to be shunned.
Thirdly, many CEOs cannot even distinguish between HRM and human resource development (HRD). So the CEO must be de-schooled and only then must the intervention proceed. The processes of unlearning must proceed re-learning. When CEOs are not serious about HRM or blissfully ignorant about it, they divide and rule. The result is that these lumpen managers grow rich as the organisations become poorer. Hence, very often we find that the personnel and administrative function is divorced from HRD as is the case in many corporate houses of repute. In tradition bound and feudalistic organisations many CEOs see in the HRD function, a public relations role that makes the organisation looks progressive. Unless the HR expert debunks this myth and provides a holistic picture of his specialisation, he is digging his own grave. To do so, the HR specialist needs to set objectives for himself, prove his worth and show that he adds value to the organisation before he is accepted. Only after he is accepted as an expert can he make a difference.
Fourthly, the HR specialist must know that the organisation develops by keeping satisfied employees on its rolls. This means that you pay generously for performance. Also, training is an investment in the future and cutting costs on HR may lead to disabilities in the long term. The pressure to watch the bottom line will be there but the HR expert has to communicate this to the CEO so that both his locus classicus and his locus standi are ensured at the very outset.
Fifthly, it is very easy to advise that the organisational embrace change to keep the bosses happy. It is easier still to carry tales about colleagues and advise change in the larger interest of the company. That the lumpen mediocrity seldom has a clue about that larger interest is another matter altogether. Many an organisations fortunes have suffered because they went into change processes before proper diagnosis and the corporate culture has had a retrograde effect as a result.
If the HR specialist joins that bandwagon of mediocrity, of hunting with the hound and running with the hares, he is behaving like the legendary Kalidasa who was cutting off the very branch of the tree on which he was seated. Hence, organisational diagnosis must become the stock in trade for the HR specialist before he recommends any change.
The HR expert can only demand change once the five points mentioned above have been accepted. Only after having gained acceptance of the logic of above-mentioned five points can the HR expert run with this argument further. Every scientific inquiry has a method. Only by pursuing a scientific method can we hope to approximate objectivity. To lay claims to being objective is ipso facto a subjective proposition. So too any assertions about the form and content of objective social reality are but our individual subjective perceptions of that reality. The HR expert must endeavour to approximate objectivity so that he is able to facilitate the process of understanding the chimera of HR interventions: their cause and their effect. This is especially important if he is involved as a change agent in building a value-based corporate culture and improving the quality of work life. No matter what self-styled gurus on change may claim, Indian management remains positivist (top-downwards) hence unless the top itself changes and is committed to organisational change all efforts will be brought to naught. If the top management pays lip service to change, looks only at the bottom line (read profits) then what will emerge is a group of expert managers saying yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir. Hence, business schools that are seriously concerned with producing competent and ethical managers must concentrate on not only proactive change but value-based as well as value-driven change.
Dr Satish.
