Chapter 2: The Changing Role Of HR - From Operational To Strategic HR

Overview

The role of HR has changed significantly over the past couple of decades and is continuing to change as the HR profession strives to gain acceptance as a strategic business partner. In many organisations HR is performing a very different role to that of twenty to thirty years ago. Its role has evolved from that of payroll clerk and welfare supporter, through corporate policeman and industrial relations expert, to that of a business partner role.

A key area of change has been in the label given to those working in the field of Personnel. The Personnel label, other than in public sector organisations, has been largely superseded with that of Human Resources. This change coincided with the decline in the importance associated with industrial relations, both in economic and political terms, and the decline in the membership and influence of trade unions (Guest, 1998). In the 1970s and early 1980s when industrial unrest dominated UK industry many personnel practitioners gained their credibility through negotiating with the Trade Unions about pay and working conditions, on behalf of the organisation.

The distinctions between the traditional personnel role and that of HRM (Holbeche, 1999) are summarised in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1: Contrasting traditional personnel and HRM

Characteristics of the traditional personnel role	Characteristics of the emerging role of HRM
Reactive	Proactive
Employee advocate	Business partner
Task force	Task and enablement focus
Focus on operational issues	Focus on strategic issues
Qualitative issues	Quantitative issues
Stability	Constant change
Tactical solutions	Strategic solutions
Functional integrity	Multi-functional
People as an expense	People as assets

The HRM agenda according to David Guest (1998) is concerned with: ensuring commitment from employees; creating a focus on values, mission and purpose; developing an environment-based on high trust and building an organisation consisting of flexible roles, flatter structures and where there is autonomy and selfcontrol within the work that individuals do (Guest, 1998).

The HR function, according to Dave Ulrich (1998), is crucial to organisations achieving excellence. Excellence, according to Ulrich comes through a focus on learning, quality, teamwork, reengineering, knowing how things get done within an organisation and also how people get treated; all of which are HR issues and hence achieving organisational excellence requires the work of HR.

Ulrich suggests that given the business challenges that organisations face today – globalisation, profitability through growth, technological change, intellectual capital and continuous change – success depends on organisations building core capabilities such as speed, responsiveness, agility, learning capacity and employee competence. Developing these capabilities, in Ulrich’s view, is the mandate for HR. This he suggests requires a focus on four key areas.