Human Resource Management in the 21st Century
Fact or Fiction?
HR Professionals: Business Professionals First and HR Professionals Second
2007 Sep 9 Posted by Michael
Hi Everyone,
Question: In your opinion, must HR professionals possess a solid business education, applied line or field business experience, and business acumen, supporting HR competencies and skills, in order to make value-based contributions to their organizations?
Thought leaders globally are articulating their responses to this question.
What do you think?
Please feel free to provide personal experiences, cite authors, and/or post weblink(s) in support of your position.
Michael
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Gale Archibald Says:
Indeed! I think this century calls for the hybrid HR professional and the curricula of learning institutions will need to reflect this evolution and to conform to the demands of the business and globalized world.
A financial analyst can pretty much settle into an organization from day one. The adaptation and learning curve for the HR professional (HRP) is likely to be longer. Admittedly, she will be able to apply the foundational HR practices, but when it comes to recruitment, development or even restructuring the organizations, for instance, the HRP must have a solid understanding of the organization’s business needs to make good decisions about talent selection, job-alignment, and development.
An HRP who is also knowledgeable in law can be very effective on matters relating to employee and labor relations
An HRP who is also knowledgeable in data management / IT can be very effective in HRIS
An HRP who is also knowledgeable in financial accounting can be very effective in making decisions about human capital investment and ROIs
Finally, an HRP who is also knowledgeable in statistics can be very effective in matters relating to HR measures and metrics
My background is Statistics and Information Management. At my last job, where I was responsible for a data management in another department, the HR department constantly called on me to help with querying the HRIS, working out simple metrics like turnover rates, working out ratings for performance appraisals.
The 2007 Human Resource Competency Study (HRCS)identifies one of six critical competences as the * Business Ally (Grossman, 2007). According to the HRCS “HR contributes to the success of a business by knowing how it makes money, who the customers are, and why they buy the company’s products and services” essentially calling for HRP to be “business literate”.
I do believe that HR competences must be complemented with field business experience and/or knowledge
Gale
Grossman, R. J. (2007). New competencies for HR.
HRMagazine, 52(6), 58-63.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:14 pm