Corporate success depends on HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Corporate success depends on

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

By Advocate S.K. Sharma

HR functioning had become critical for organisations. It is a matter of survival and making employees the best of the best in every way. One can’t afford to be a passive watcher anymore. Gone are the days when HR was purely a compliance function. Now the enlightened and growing company is outsourcing compliances of labour law to experts who exclusively concentrate to ensure meticulous compliance to ward off any harassment by labour authorities. You have to change your mindset about HR. Organisations goals will not succeed if they are not made to work very closely in implementing all aspects from the beginning. Human Resources (HR) will be the single most important determinant behind the success of a corporate.

It hardly needs to be underlined that employees should be treated with respect and decency to win their confidence and sincerity. The concept of ‘Master and Servant’ is rapidly changing to a dignified relationship of ‘employer and employee.’
Hence an organisation should not treat its employees as disposable.
People don’t join organisations for life anymore, but to further their careers. A study by Prof. Sunil Maheshwari of the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) has revealed that a large number of managers are “no more committed” to their organisations. The study finds that emotional bonding or fat pay cheques are no more sufficient to retain employees long. “The commitment levels have gone down dramatically. Earlier, the satisfaction levels were high and the employees were committed to the organisation. Now, the employees think they deserve more than what is being offered to them,” says Maheshwari, who had surveyed around 300 companies across industry sectors in India, and the study elicited responses from 4,000 executives. Thanks to this, says the study, the employee turnover has gone up across the
sectors. This is true even for the manufacturing sector, which earlier had a low employee turnover rate. In the ratings of commitment level, most of the companies scored far below the minimum required level. “Gone are the days when one would spend 25-30 years in one organisation. The level of commitment in terms of years spent with one organisation
has reduced. Career growth is given more importance now. Maheshwari has said that most managers, these days, are job-hopping since they
are not emotionally attached to their company. “They want to take risks in trying out
new roles. Increments are seldom of any help to retain them,” he adds. The study has covered sectors such as information technology, hospitality, textiles among others.

Also, money is no longer the only motivator for a job change. But perhaps, what’s even more surprising is that job security is the lowest on the priority list for today’s young achievers and high fliers. These are some of the findings of a survey on ‘What drives you to a job’, conducted by search firm Executive Access. The drivers in the survey included money, security, career path, empowerment and learning opportunities.
The survey was conducted in five cities, with 208 senior executives across various industry verticals taking part in this exercise. According to the results, only 1% of the respondents voted job security as the top priority, while 3% gave money as a top priority.
‘Security is now history’, declares R.S. Jagdev of Probe Intelligence Services. The ground rules of human resource management have sea-changed with the advent of globalisation. An HR Manager does not only recruit the employees but also ensures that they fit into the organisation. and are kept motivated to perform to their ability besides ensuring compliances of employment-related laws. Employees are usually
made to realise that their progress, as well as survival, depends on their performance and excellence in the organisation.
The human resource function flows all along the value chain in any organisation and has become intrinsic to the working of all departments. Over the years, the HR function and HR management practices have changed as employees decide the fate of any business. Various factors like globalisation and the increasing visibility of the information technology sector have also had an impact on HR practices. Globalisation requires that manufacturing companies maintain the highest standards of quality, while the increasing
importance of the IT sector means that managing employee costs becomes a major issue. In the IT sector, staff costs account for as much as 40-50 per cent of expenditure, while in the manufacturing sector it could be 7-10 per cent.
A weak link earlier was that the HR function could not be benchmarked. However, over time even that has changed with several benchmarking models – be it in terms of the compensation package or people satisfaction levels or recruitment costs or productivity levels – available.
An organisation is made up of competencies which we can loosely call ‘capital’. Its key components are ‘customer capital’, ‘structural capital’ and ‘human capital. No doubt, land and buildings are the most valuable assets owned by households, land and buildings account for 87% in rural areas and 76% in urban areas. It is important, however, that people, at large, and policymakers, in particular, recognise that this is just one way of looking at assets. Another perspective is that the most valuable asset is human capital. The knowledge and skills that individuals acquire, and the institutional framework in which these get deployed, to interact productively, together determine an economy’s capacity to prosper.
It is all the more relevant in the knowledge economy, in which the prime determinant of value is the knowledge wielded by workers. Of course, for knowledge to be productive, it has to be embodied in men and machinery. Men and women must enjoy good health to be able to put their knowledge to good use. The ruling alliance’s preferred solution is spending more on education and health. Given the state of accountability in the governmental system, there are very valid concerns about the efficacy of such an approach. State failure in delivering health and education reflects the dysfunctionality of the institutional framework
within which productive resources get deployed. Empowering the disempowered will raise the level of accountability of the government to the people and thus become a direct input to improving the delivery of education and health. Political reform at the grassroots, in other words, is essential to enhance the value of our most precious national assets.
That is why it is aptly and appropriately said that a nation or an institution is made by human beings, but inanimate buildings and machines do not make good human beings. Companies should understand the need to benchmark with the best in the industry to prevent others from providing a better environment and growth opportunity for effective retention as the cost and effort of hiring replacements was too high. Four Ps (people, products, processes and profits) are the mantra for corporates’ success in the modern competitive environment. The focus on the first three Ps, people, products and processes in that order, will lead to profits i.e. fourth P. The scene of action has shifted increasingly away from the ivory towers, down into the trenches. Human Resource Managers are now considered strategic contributors to the successful functioning of an organisation. They have not only been reporting directly to CEOs but even sit on the Board of Companies. So CEOs must grade up, cease to just record keepers. They will be assessed more based on how they enable and encourage others within the organisation to succeed. It
leads to a redefinition of top management’s role: the net result of that will be to lead HR out of the backroom – right into the frontline, into boardrooms. Even jarring local cultures should pose no problem; at best such things should lead to a modification of corporate culture, not its jettisoning. Thus, the changed scenario is one in which
personnel ‘management’ triumphs over ‘measurement’. Nameless, brainless and shameless bosses have to change. The organisations not understanding the importance of their workforce will not survive for long.