I always had the passion to work as a HR professional as I liked dealing with people and solving their issues which made me start my career in the area of HR. Unlike what was studied, the practices in the field of Human Resources majorly confined to administrative jobs even in a well-structured industry. It was not considered as a business function. Bringing about a paradigm shift in the thinking of top-level management that HR is a strategic function was a challenge. The only thing I lacked at that time was lack of business experience, in the absence of which visualizing what is needed and aligning my strategies with that of the organization was difficult.

HR Professional as a Change Agent

In the context of Nepal, human resource management is still in its infancy. On different occasions, it has been seen that HR professionals are not empowered by organizations, and many times they have to confine themselves to administrative jobs. Even in the most structured industries, HR functions are confined to administrative jobs and has not been contributing strategically. HR professionals themselves have to understand their primary roles and responsibilities. Most administrative jobs these days are automated with the increasing use of Human Resource Management System. What is required by HR professionals is to become a strategic partner for the organization and serve as a change agent.  I feel, most HR professionals do not understand their strategic roles and hence confine themselves to administrative roles. 

Organizations on other hand should come out of the myth that HR departments have to be led by individuals specializing in HR academically. HR is not a specialized job but is a strategic function. Managing performance of employee is job of all line managers and a major HR concern for the success of the organization.

With my experience in the area of human resource management, I believe, for any organization to excel,

1.    HR Professionals should be empowered as Strategic Partners

Aligning business goals with people capabilities is important in achieving targets. HR managers should be able to provide a strategic framework for supporting the long-term business goals and outcomes. One of the primary roles of HR managers is to ensure that right skill set are available for the set business objective and if not, employees have to be developed to achieve sustained competitive advantage. They have to provide directions to the organization in such a way that both needs of the employees and organization are met. 

2.    HR Managers should understand Business 

As mentioned above, one of the major roles of an HR Professional is to be a strategic partner besides being a business partner at the operational level. Hence, sufficient understanding of the how different verticals of the business function is necessary, without which formulating HR strategy in line with business strategy would be difficult and may not be fruitful.  In the absence of business knowledge, HR may fail in providing necessary support to other verticals and departments to meet their expectations and hence application of HR theories & practices will not be as expected.  Understanding business will enable them to achieve the results in their core activities like recruiting the right people, identifying development needs and training them, managing employee performance, manpower planning for all functions of the organization, disciplinary actions etc. Besides, HR in everyday operation, has to provide input and make decisions. Incorrect decision or feedback sometimes may make huge impact in the entire business. Hence, HR Manager must understand operational realities to justify their role as a strategic partner. It is only then; HR can customize and map up their internal processes.

3.    HR should serve as a change agent in re-engineering of the organization:

The way organization function has changed drastically with digitization and artificial intelligence. To have a competitive advantage, it is important for organizations to review their organizational structure and the way they function at a set periodicity. HR has a major role in re-structuring of the organization by ensuring that the business still runs while the restructuring is going on and keep the skill set ready for the future change. HR managers should be able to visualize this and work on long term strategy to develop their employees. Further, designing of organization structure is a long-term strategy which requires HR managers to look beyond 5 to 10 years and needs an integrated approach.

4.    Line managers as HR managers

Though, the organizational strategy is developed at the senior management level, implementation of the strategy takes place at lower levels of organization. Many organizations have a participative and bottom up approach in formulating organizational strategy and at these organizations’ employees take accountability of the targets vested upon them which in turn is reflected in performance of the organization. Line managers in other words team managers are critical cogs in ensuring that the strategies framed are implemented in a timely and effective manner. They have to be in a position to identify the needed skill set and problems of their team members to achieve desired results. The input of a line manager is essential for organizational learning. Developing talent is a priority of any organization and line managers are key source in identifying, developing and promoting the right talent for future generation of leaders. Line managers are leaders of their vertical and unit and should serve as coach and mentor for their team members. Hence, it will very important to develop Line managers as HR managers. 

5.    HR should be led by a sufficiently senior person:

HR Managers have to serve as strategic business partner, a change agent and has to take up critical HR roles like member of Recruitment and Promotion Committee, Process Disciplinary Action cases, deal with the trade union etc, which requires positional authority. The trend in the Nepal is to hire lower level HR professional to lead HR verticals which deprives them with positional power and authority. HR should be understood as a critical function and hence an experienced and sufficiently senior person should be posted to handle this responsibility. 

Source: Liberty of HR Thoughts