Authorspeak. ‘The HR function has had to redesign itself and revisit roles’

Three HR veterans, Ganesh Chella, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, CFI, Harish Devarajan, leadership coach and organisation consultant, earlier with Hindustan Unilever and Sundram Fasteners, and VJ Rao, Executive Director, totus HR School, have got together to write a book, HR Here and Now: The Making of the Quintessential People Champion . Unlike many HR books that are dense and theoretical, this book offers a practitioner’s take on human resources management keeping in mind current and contemporary practices. Excerpts from an interview with the three:

A few big ideas are HR’s evolution into a pivotal function and indications of its brighter future, and how the positioning of the HR function within the organisation and the professional capability of the HR team are the two important determinants of its impact. Also, the redefinition of the contractual, legal, power, social and governance boundaries and their obvious and not so obvious impact on relationships and organisational development. One of the reasons why HR evokes a lot of existential questions and debates is because it touches people and their lives. It is important for business success and there are far too many dilemmas and contradictions between the multiple stakeholders. All of this makes HR work complex and hard-to-please.

The HR function has also had to redesign itself to deliver at scale. It has also had to revisit its roles and embrace technology to deliver consistent results.

Above all, the rapid economic growth and emergence of large global organisations has necessitated that a large part of HR work is as good as any line function. HR professionals have certainly mastered the art of execution.

These days, a place at the top management team for HR is almost a certainty. The demand is for HR to impact business performance in a more sustainable and strategic fashion. Not just the buy-in of the CEO but his/her strong championing of the people agenda is critical for the overall organisation’s success. As talent is becoming scarce, people are at the centre of businesses, the expectations and demands are becoming a more strategic and significant part of boardroom discussions.

Of course, it also depends on the culture and life stage of the organisation whether they will accord that seat.

In the past decade or so, IT seems to have led the way with progressive HR practices. “Context is key” and the nature of industry does determine the kind of HR practices that are appropriate. Progressive and innovative HR practices are present across the spectrum of industry segments. The IT/ ITES companies have been people-intensive organisations as well as early adopters of Technology for HR, hence one has heard a lot about their new HR practices especially in the people acquisition and the HR operations domain.

Equally impressive practices exist in companies in the brick-and-mortar segments as well as the service sector. Every sector is innovating to meet the specific people needs of that sector.

The current demands on HR are two-fold: Introduction of new and more effective approaches to address traditional HR deliverables and contribution in a significant way to organisational capability-building through leadership/ top team and organisational development initiatives (including change management and organisation culture).

It presents a new challenge to the HR folks. The percentage of contract employees in the manufacturing sector, the temporary employees in the service sector, technical and management consultants for special projects are on the increase and in many organisations it is more than the people on the permanent rolls of the company. This is what we refer to as the people portfolio mix and this is going to be a key decision in the business strategy. HR’s role is not only in deciding the appropriate mix but also in ensuring that the HR policies and practices are tuned to the portfolio mix chosen by the company.

This emerging phenomenon does certainly demand a greater focus on leadership development and use of initiatives like executive coaching/ mentoring. HR folks need to be adept at leveraging and deploying these new development interventions in an appropriate fashion. This has actually created an opportunity for HR to strongly influence people issues in organisations and also make every interaction with a business leader an educative and value-adding experience.