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HR Download - Global HR practices
The HR voyage (View Comments)
Anuradha Parthasarathy
Posted On Tuesday, February 02, 2010 at 04:08:25 PM
‘Human Resource’ is a term coined only in the 1980’s as a drift from terms like workforce or labour or personnel. Ever since humans reached the state of civilisation, where the faculties of work, organisation and productivity in the human intellect developed, HR has been subtly present in our eco-system. However, the realisation of the importance and the evolution of HR as a function with a complete definition of the role is a process still under evolution.
The world as we see it today though has been through various phases, the structured and organised economies can be said to have originated with the industrial revolution in the late 18th to 19th century. That was the time, where the employer and employee equation took form and some thought was given to increase productivity and motivate people to work. In India too, we are known to have good and bad landlords with different ways of making the farmers work. However, the only factor for motivation considered was money and the people were treated as equivalent to machines. Since technological development, newer economic theories, a change in the world policies was the top priority in the human society; HR or any concept about people was not placed under consideration.
Over the decades and the turn of the century, concepts like personnel departments in organisations, labour laws in states, administrative departments, and others came into being. But as a practice, it was new and was more restrained to simply abiding the rules than giving any real importance to actually caring for the employees. By 1970s, we could see some scratches in the personnel departments, which was in every way better than the previous mindset of treating humans as tools.
By the 1980s, HR had become quite noticeable. In fact, this was when the term ‘Human Resource’ was coming into fashion and replacing with the rather infamous clichés. HR departments were now not only handling paperwork and becoming the policy guardians, they were also beginning to promote compensation strategies, health and wellness, and working with managers on employee relations issues. There was a rising awareness in employees to have a choice in compensation, benefits and growth.
The 1990s brought about the tidal change in the perception of HR, as seen in many other fields as well. The most remarkable factor of the last two decades is ‘change’. Change, which is at a lightning speed, is the call of the day. Therefore, in HR too, we have seen a radical evolution from 1990 to 2009. Growth in technology has impacted this function and has been the catalyst to bring about a major shift in perception. Technology has impacted in both making the change happen and helping through the change.
The whole perspective of HR has outgrown, from every angle. Whether from an organisational point of view, or the employee point of view or even that of a student’s point of view. Let us have a bird’s eye look at the changes in these three perspectives, beginning from the latter:
Change in a student’s perception:
With leading educational institutions promoting specialised courses in HR, and inviting jobs in every sector in the HR departments, more and more students aspire to take up HR as a profession. The growth ladder for an HR in a company is now at par of with that of any other stream, with lucrative compensations and equal opportunities of growth and exposure.
Change in an employee’s perception:
HR has created the greatest impact on the employee force, where the HR manager has become the sole point of communication for the employee and the organisation. An employee looks up to the HR for each and every requirement or need that the employee has, which even includes personal well being, growth and every other factor associated with professional life. This has also benchmarked the HR’s role and responsibility towards every employee in the organisation. And this is a still evolving field.
Change in the organisation’s perception:
Leadership in an organisation now largely depends on the HR function to ensure smooth running, healthy workoshpere, leading to higher productivity. HR is now a part of the C-suite and the notion of ‘seat at the table’ is the talk of the time. Even though this department is not directly involved in the revenue generation, but the whole character of the organisation is directly dependent on the HR policies and the function.
We still remain to be restrained at the policing level and dealing with recruitments and retentions, whereas the call of the hour is to grow to the deeper levels of strategic development and core management of the organisations.
The author is CEO, Global Executive Talent
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