Human Resources Basics

CONTEMPORARY HUMAN RESOURCES ROLES: HR has a long list of people and entities it is charged with serving. Included are employees, middle managers, senior managers/executives, job seekers, survivors, retirees, other organizational departments, consultants/vendors, boards of directors, stockholders/owners, local communities, professional organizations, governmental regulatory agencies, and the families of employees. In addition, HR must ensure that the plans, programs, procedures, and policies that affect the people the function serves are administered efficiently, effectively, fairly, and continue to be responsive to the needs of the organization and the people it employs.

One of the most difficult, albeit important, tasks facing HR professionals is to provide advice to senior management that flies in the face of the position or positions established by those senior people, regardless of the outcome. Although able to only go so far in offering contrary advice to senior management, the business press has been full of stories where senior managers trampled on the interests of employees and stockholders in an effort to advance their own careers and/or financial interests. Where were the HR professionals hiding when those decisions were made? They should have spoken out!

And, more and more, HR professionals are being required to look beyond the past and present and into the future or, in other words, developing strategic HR plans. While most managers and employees know where the organization has been, and where it is now, what is most important is to attempt to determine the factors that will impact the organization in the days, weeks, months, and years that follow. In order to do so, HR professionals must know what their company produces, how it produces it, where its current path will take it, what market and technology changes will affect the organization's short and long-term future, what changes in the company's workforce will be necessary to respond to those changes, and what skills must the future workforce possess.

CONCLUSION: HR change was more or less evolutionary only a few years back. Today, however, HR professionals are continually being challenged to respond to the many demands being thrust upon them by the communities they serve. In order to succeed in today's business environment, HR professionals must be the catalyst for change, rather than just react to changes that are thrust upon them.

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