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Human resource practices essential for universities?  (View Comments)

Ashok Mittal

Posted On Friday, July 23, 2010 at 02:32:21 PM

Human resource has become the mainstay for the smooth functioning of any organisation. Increasingly, the importance of HR is being felt even in universities for their smooth functioning. As the business practices are fast evolving on campuses so are the HR practices

Seeing the recent changes and the demanding times, it has become essential for the university to put in place novel concepts to maintain a steady pace. Reverse mentoring, online task management, establishing a training cell within the HR department, setting up the best appraisal system and creating a smooth exit policy which also takes a feedback of the staff before they quit are a few initiatives which could do wonders to the working of an educational set up.

Through reverse mentoring, a concept that is familiar in the corporate world, a university can change the way business is conducted on its campus. The logic of reverse mentoring in the university is that the older staff will take inputs from the young faculty as they understand the students’ thought process, their expectations and requirements much better. It can work wonders for the betterment of students, the development of curriculum and the modifications to be incorporated in the pedagogy. The concept is simple but is proving to be an effective way to transfer knowledge from the younger staff to the older employees. Employed with the primary objective to overcome a major flip-side of experience, reverse mentoring can improve productivity and provides a platform to identify emerging young talent. The open-enquiry academic environment of a university helps in providing wonderful context for reverse mentoring to be practiced.

With the world constantly shifting from one pattern to another, often times experience gained at one time period may no longer be applicable to a later time frame. The younger faculty is armed with previous experience regularly, provides feedback to the management about the needs of the industry. The information thus received is used in designing a new curriculum conforming to the needs of the students. In addition, the younger faculty guides the management in developing the pedagogy that will prove to be most effective in imparting learning.

In another HR driven policy, a university can introduce an online task management. Since it is difficult to keep a track of the activities done by the faculty and staff members on a daily basis, an online task management can come handy. The employees at the end of the day shall have to fill in the day's activity hour wise as to how much time has been spent on what activity, online. This will ensures that the time is properly utilised and no man hour is wasted. 

The training cell in the HR department should ensure equipping the employees with the latest technology being used to perform a task. Also, the training cell can train the university’s staff on issues like personality development, business etiquette, behavioral study etc. which will help the employees perform better and handle various situations better. The university should have in place good appraisal systems which shall help in pulling the most qualified staff and retaining them in the campus. The organisation where the people find the right challenges and the appropriate remuneration to take the challenges observe the correct fit.

The most difficult tasks of HR personnel are to retain people. But when exit becomes inevitable, a university can have a clear cut exit policy where the HR takes the feedback of the employees on the reason for quitting their jobs. The HR personnel can conduct exit interviews to find out the grievances of the outgoing employees.  The exit policy helps not only in addressing the grievances of the employees but at times helps in retaining the staff too.

Though most of the universities are working like the government departments today, these initiatives could change the face of universities and could make them more savvy in nature as well as objective.

The writer is Chancellor, Lovely Professional University

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