“The Changing Role of Human Resource Management.”

“The Changing Role of Human Resource Management.”

Today’s companies are pressured by a great number of factors such as the increasing globalization, rapid technological change, a tougher competition, new alliances or structures and changes in workforce among others. Summarizing; as the company grows from its “fetus” state into a stable and advanced entity, we can say a series of alterations, innovations and changes are bound to happen.

In order to manage such steady changes of circumstances, the need arises to make the HRM play a crucial role in aiding organizations through the transitions induced by the pressures it undergoes. 

Human Resources is a field that has been continuously evolving for a while now, transition after transition. One of the most representative examples is the change from “personnel” to “Human Resources” department, which clearly depicted the increase in value of the employees as an organizational resource. Redefining therefore its  traditional association with a bureaucratic and slow personnel department. 

Nowadays, HRM is attributed with being more a fresh, modern and dynamic field; for this role, CEO’s seek to hire, according to Johnson (1997), strategic thinkers, who understand the pressure of being responsible and conducting an effective business, and what’s more important, strategic thinkers. Therefore, when looking for fulfilling the Human Resources Management position, high executives often look for “not a typical HR person”. It is to be mentioned, that today, most of the applicants that have turned out to be successful usually describe themselves this way. 

For some years now, it has been noted that the Human Resource department has slightly diverged from its most rudimental mission: recruiting and paying employees. HRM has been in charge of bringing the company more productive and qualitative outputs, and therefore delivering a higher intrinsic and extrinsic value and revenue. This happened because HRM established as first concern to fulfill the need to educate, train and organize resource-planning, along with the duty of promoting the common company culture and favorable teamwork to create the high-performance network companies have today. As Renee West, from Luxor and Excalibur Hotel stated: “You can have the best strategy and the best building in the world, but if you don’t have the hearts and minds of the people who work with you, none of it comes to life.” 

In the agenda of any successful HR department lay the priorities of acquiring talent to employ, deploy, train and retain the best individuals. 

As agreed by numerous eminences in the HR field, “the deployment and retention of suitable acquisition of talents in an organizational workforce is the most important and challenging task of the Management of Human Resources”, it is a proven fact that in the long run, this is the key element to organizational success. 

The previously explained, closely relates to the term Performance Management, which portraits the action of abstracting the best talents from the workforce through training, mentoring and orienting through employee assistance programs. When putting it into practice, the best approach to do so is Motivational Development Planning; defined as face to face interaction between the employee and the project, always in presence of the HR department, which will positively lead to a level of accomplishment on the solving of issues arisen within the department. 

As the company evolves globally, complex business processes, high-tech machinery and truly demanding customers, organizations have been motivated to implement a more practical set of methodologies so as to assist the continuous advancement of the factors of production’s efficiency and productivity. 

When it comes to innovation within the organization, to make sure the transition is well received, it is relevant to have a solid interaction and open dialogue between the quality assurance team and the HR department, in order to maintain and follow the quality control rules; in a nutshell, quality information should be shared among the team members, creating therefore a favorable environment for development and innovation, in which interdepartmental communication is a pathway for success. 

It is believed that this innovation-oriented HRM, have been leading the transitions occurred in the last years, mainly the ones concerned about work and employment.