HRM & its responsibilities

Episode 4:Saturday, 1 May 2010, 8:06 pm

Being an MBA, I got the chance to learn the different aspects of management in the light of Planning, Staffing, Organizing, Budgeting & Controlling which basically touch the various edges of a successful organization to bring the synchronization between various departments like Finance, Marketing, Operations, IT & Human resource. Out of all these departments and the activities of management, I consider that the HR department holds the utmost importance. Today is the era of technology but its man who runs machines. If a person clicks Ctrl+S for any document, it will always save the document. But if an executive asks his subordinate to do a particular task, then chances are there that he may or may not do it as expected. So HR skills become a major requisite to run any organization successfully.

Consider this words similar while reading the rest of the post: Organization, Employer, Firm, Company.

Role & responsibilities of HR
Manpower planning
Recruitment
Staffing
Induction to new joiners
Training
Performance appraisal
Promotions, Transfers & Demotions
Retirement

Apart from the above stated responsibilities, some other important responsibilities which most of the time are forgotten, viz. employees' welfare, icebreakers, fun at work career growth etc.

Successful are those companies which can strike a perfect balance between the organization's growth along with the career growth of its employees. HR planning is a puzzle therefore the best minds should be roped in for the task or not some self-proclaimed management gurus should take the responsibility. It is a two way street- starts with the basic functions of HR bulleted above & takes a U-turn towards employee welfare. During my MBA days, I read several case studies which clearly depict the need of this balance & how few companies failed in the absence of this balance and had to put a full stop to their operations. Employees are not the fixed assets, but only the current. Many companies just believe to tire & fume out its employees' potential but I wonder can any organization work successful without 'a happy & satisfied employee'. This negligence leads to higher attrition in most of the companies in India ranging from IT to education. Many successful organizations like Infosys, Google etc. have very well designed HR policies & compensation plans.

Today most of the executives fight with the over burden at work place. In addition to this their remuneration is not justified at times. Any employee joins a particular organization with many dreams. Obviously he expects personal growth with challenging tasks. But to his surprise, he mostly ends up in searching a new job in an year or two, thanks to the ill strategies of the leading business people of the organization. This scene holds true mostly for the freshers. The trend prevailed for few years in IT industry & to my fear it has started swallowing some others too. Remember, though a fresher is inexperienced but he is the most enthusiastic guy working. A little right mentoring, a little right direction along with a good compensation can account for a long lasting relationship between an employee and the employer.

Therefore a good HR policy should consider these three points:
1. Capacity: Figure out the capacity & the potential of an employee
2. Opportunity: Try to give the best available & challenging opportunity to the employee at the
work place according to the potential of the employee
3. Motivation: Keep motivating him to give the best results

An employer should encourage a proper dialogue between its employees & himself. here I would also like to connect the above scene with the ill strategies that a company can adopt in order to satisfy its urge to grow exponentially overnight. These strategies can be in the areas of marketing & advertising, tapping the employee's potential wrongly (by assigning a less challenging job to a worthy employee which will definitely lead to a wrong performance management). In this situation, the employee will work only for some time but a professional always looks for challenging tasks & responsibilities where he can grow with the organization. Sometimes in order to grow, many organizations enterinto expanding its opertions to the extent (mostly by diversifying their portfolio) that they end up in diluting the the brand image of their previous products & services aswell. One should never forget that each element of the portfolio should provide the maximum value proposition to its customers. In the scenario when a company forgets to 'walk the talk' i.e. fulfilling the promises made, they not only end up losing their existing customers but also the faith of the prospecting & sometimes employees as well. This only lead to lower margins and losses. Most of the companies facing this situation close down their operations to lower the operating costs & even sometimes layoff employees.

So the basic message is 'walk the talk' (Consider it for both- the customers and the employees).

A candidate seeking job with any company should therefore do a rigorous research about the organization & its HR policies. Online social media has become a boon for such primary researches and candidate can get in touch with the existing employees of the firm. ( See the magic of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook & Orkut). In addition to this, an applicant should give proper attention in providing the true information about his qualifications & work-experience and should give preference to document every single dialogue with Human resource Department, leaving no room for misunderstandings.

An employer should give proper attention in maximizing the minimum available potential of an employee and minimizing his maximum anxieties. It will help to create a long-lasting relationship between the employer & the employees- A key to the exponential growth for any firm.