HR in an Organization Part- 2: One HR, Many Roles

One HR: Many Roles

Objective

We always come down with heavy bashing of HR pointing out what they don’t do or do incorrectly. However, it is time to acknowledge and give them some credit this time. HR people are often specialists in one area but they need to also be jack of most other areas within the purview of HR. As they need to don many hats during their stint, this small write up is a small attempt to clear the perception many people carry about HR. This article may also help people who would like to create their career in HR as they may be better prepared for the reality.

It is always good to have deeper and diverse knowledge. One should be in constant strive to gain the expertize especially in the professional space to get the competitive edge. But sometimes the required knowledge for one function is so deep and complex, getting into other domains becomes practically very difficult. Yet, HR cannot escape that. There are many reasons for the HR function to be complex. Firstly let us understand the structure of Human Resource and the involvement of various functions of HR.

Figure 1: Functions of HR

Figure 2: Employee Lifecycle and HR Functions in Action

If HR functions are so clearly defined then what makes the function so complex or why there is a need to multitask? The reasons are as below

•  Human Resource as a function is often involved in lot of internal cross team work.
• Generally people are not able to differentiate between two different functions of HR and they reach out to any HR for any HR related query.
• There is lot of overlap between two functions during employee life cycle. Output of one function is input for another which increases the need to understand the complete HR process flow.  
• The function is very delicate in terms of data and process sensitivity. Incorrect information to any internal or external stake holder could be detrimental.
• Lot of legal angles are involved like employment laws, immigration etc.
• Cases may have a similar background, but each case needs to be treated as individual case and there cannot be one sieve for all.

The complexity for HR does not end here. There are certain questions which will always loom in front of HR function. There will always be a dilemma in front of HR. Balancing these tricky situations is no different from walking on a razor edge. Yet, day in and day out, HR has to face at least one such situation.

•       Is an employee a cell in excel or we need to always have empathy towards the employees?

•       Shall we stick to policy or make an exception and if we make an exception then to whom or whom all and how many?

•       Shall we focus on retention or promote healthy attrition?

•       Shall compliances be given prime importance or we can compromise on few for business’ speed and agility?

•        Shall we stick to ethics or have a way out considering the situation or urgency? After all the objective is to help business grow.

•       Shall we focus on budget or quality of manpower? What is the optimum point?

•       How to avoid a situation where Just In Time (JIT) becomes Some How In Time?

To deal with so many challenges in everyday life, any HR professional has to assume many roles which we normally do not associate with HR but to perform their job effectively, Human Resource function need to assume one or more of the below roles which may change as per situation. The roles can be

1. Statistician or data miner:  Any HR function requires lot of data orientation. Fulfillment of open position, headcount, top performers, attrition or employee satisfaction; all are numbers to be tracked on a regular basis. These numbers collectively gives us the health of organization and the problem areas. The problem can be accurately diagnosed only if the correct data is rightly captured, sliced and diced, represented in comprehendible manner and correctly interpreted. Any corrective course can be put on to action after problem and it’s source is diagnosed.  Hence, HR people do lot data oriented work.
2. External stakeholder managers The very first thought which comes to our mind is that recruitment team deals with external stakeholder. But apart from that there are many other external dealings where HR comes into action. Employer branding, immigration, dealing with government agencies and participation in forums for discussion or best employers are just few examples. Some of these activities are must for the creation of brand value for the organization.
3. Finance expert: Yes. It is finance. Generally HR people are perceived to be weak in finance but HR act as financial controller as well accountant. HR people have sufficient command on budgeting and structuring. They need to get the right optimization of compensation structure to have a win-win situation for employee and employer. Employee would like to have maximum take home component out of given cost to company while any organization would like to minimize the cost to company while offering maximum benefits to the employee. We all have experienced the fine art of getting compensation explained when we had taken up the offer. That consolidates my point that HR is adept to understand the details of finances. We also know that HR is responsible for changes in compensation during performance cycle. What we do not know that HR plays a significant role while deciding this huge budgetary impact to the organization. A control over salary cost and with sufficient differentiation in hikes and payouts with respect to performance needs to be carefully balanced and HR does that only.
4. Legal expert: Adherence to complex central and state employment laws, manpower transfer (within and across countries) laws and compliance laws are mandatory for any organization. The onus is on HR to ensure compliance on PF and gratuity act, ESIC act, local people hiring and required documentation during movement of manpower. There can be a legal team to guide and support but the core responsibilities always lies with HR
5. Market researchers: HR people need to be constantly updated with market trends in terms of hiring trend, competitor analysis, competitive or differentiating benefits, positioning of salary band with respect to market trend etc.  HR are aggressive with market research in order to give that differentiating factor to the organization. The source of data can be an in house team or external agencies.  
6. Consultant: HR is an enabling function and plays a vital role in giving inputs to the business. Availability of skills in a particular area, optimum manpower requirement, partnering for development of internal resources, HR has to bring in their experience and expertise at a regular interval. These suggestions are vital for planning of business and HR assume the role of external consultants.
7. Inspectors: As custodians of many processes, HR needs to safeguard lot of processes. Mandatory checks at the time of recruitment, one’s development process, PF filing, non-competitive agreement or no hire clauses, examples are many. These processes are like traffic signals telling the organization or traffic to move or stop and HR ensures that signaling system is working fine without any collisions.
8. Agony Aunt: Yes, we all know whom to reach out when we have any concerns. Be it trouble with manager, wrong salary, medical emergency or planning a long term break.  

Below table will help in clearing any leftover misconception or wrong perception about HR’s capability

Function of HR	What People perceive HR’s role to be	What HR actually does
Talent Acquisition	Schedule Interviews           Source Resume	Compensation fitment Maintain parity Track fulfillment of open positions vis-à-vis targets Competitor analysis
Talent Management	Arrange parties and fun events	Grievance handling            Performance management            Identifying key resources            Attrition management            Employee Satisfaction            Employee Utilization
Compensation and Benefits	Give arbitrary hike	Compensation benchmarking Budget control of overall salary cost Differentiation of performance  Benefits programs like insurance, food coupons, car lease etc.
Programs	Send mails on health, surveys etc	Running campaigns like anti sexual harassment or safety programs, participating in external surveys, centrally driven objectives like induction
Leadership and Development	Conduct training which often infringes into our delivery schedules	Identifying skill gaps of individual and make them ready for next level with relevant interferences.
Payroll and shared services	Send salaries every month	Maintaining the uniqueness of every salary Legal compliance and related filings with respect to PF, gratuity, income tax etc.

To conclude, HR is perhaps one of the trickiest and potentially most impact creating enabling function. There are paradoxes and fuzzy logic or I may even get away by saying hazy logic here. There is no binary approach and many a times, HR needs to behave like an octopus, having his hands spread in all possible direction. In such situation, HR has to create their followers within business, which will help in some faster results. There is lot of misconceptions about role of HR as they do a lot of transactional work too. Hence, HR needs to do one more job effectively which they often fail at; perception management about what they do and what they can do to create an impact for the business. Not an easy task but surely doable !!