HR Management Definition, Dimensions and Philosophy
Human Resources becomes the real business partner, which contributes strongly to the achievement of the overall business targets. Being the business partner, it develops its HR Strategy, which builds the unique competitive position of the organization on the job market. The smart top executives share their visions with their HR leaders. The HR Leaders are able to translate visions into HR Strategies. The strategies navigate managers and employees, as the overall performance of the company beats the competitors.
The effective HR Management develops the potential of the organization, and builds a stronger and highly motivated workforce. The HR Management is definitely the competitive advantage of the modern and innovative company. The future of the HR Management is bright.
The effective HR Management
The effective management is about always skilled and experienced managers. The manager is always the crucial role in the organization. Some employees believe they can perform better without the manager, but they can always outperform with the great manager. The effective HR Management helps to develop outstanding managers. It helps to identify them on the job market, attract them, hire them and develop them into the true leaders.
The management of the employees’ related agenda brings HR standards to the organization. Today, the internal equity creates the innovative and supportive climate in the company. The employees do understand to policies, practices and standards. They see no exceptions made, as the management makes decisions sticking to fair internal practices and policies. The employees value the corporate culture, which values all.
The educated and progressive top management is the implication for the successful HR Management in the organization. The top executives have to listen to their HR professionals, and they have to include the opinion of their HR Business Partner into decisions.
What makes your HR Management style different?
Your HR Management style needs to be focused. It has to create the value for the organization. Today, the competition is tough and the market changes constantly and quickly. Each company can lose its sources of the wealth within few months. The effective HR Management does support the introduction of changes and support the creativity of employees.
The company with a modern style of the people management is well recognized by employees and potential job applicants. The employees want to work for the progressive and innovative organization, which values its employees, and allows them to realize their full potential. The modern leadership style is not about a complete freedom, but it is about the trust, that employees will do the best for the organization, if they are allowed to do so.
Your HR Management style needs to be focused on the development of employees, increasing their performance and the cultivation of the corporate culture. The results are hard to measure immediately, but the increased performance will be visible in all benchmarks against competitors. The innovative organization outperforms the market, and gains the market share even in difficult times.
The HR Management is not the Financial Management
Many HR Managers believe, they should introduce the management based on HR Standards and HR Benchmarks. Honestly, the HR Benchmarks do not help to introduce the real state-of-the-art Human Resources practices in the organization. The benchmarking is always about following the best practices; the benchmarking is not inspirational in most cases. It can lead to difficult procedures trying to measure each HR Process.
The HR Benchmarks should help in the process of the identification of gaps in Human Resources. They should identify weak processes, and the HR team should make a strategic decision. The processes can stay weak, if the organization builds the competitive advantage in a different area. The processes need to be in the top rank, if they are in the core target area. No company can build the sustainable competitive advantage using weak processes. However, it can build the advantage on the friendly corporate culture. The weak processes can be then a successful part of the story.
The HR Standards should define the standard services offered to all employees of the organization. They can be divided for employees and managers, because managers usually consume more HR services. However, HR Standards should not be taken as a complete menu of HR services. HR has to deliver more than expected and advertised. HR should outperform other enabling functions in the company.
Description of HR Management
The HR Management is about managing the development and the performance of employees employed in the organization. Many organizations say, that employees are their most valuable assets. They have just a different behavior then. The HR Management is about the corporate philosophy behind the people management, values of the organization, HR Strategy and other people management stuff.
The HR Management in the organization is determined by the corporate values and the corporate culture. The high performing organization has a different HR Management style and philosophy than the mature organization.
The HR Management Theories are still under a heavy development as the human capital management is a crucial component for the development of the sustainable competitive advantage. The theories focus mainly on the interactions between the management, the organization and employees. HR is not a function, which defines the content of the corporate culture, but it contributes to the positive development of it.
The HR Management is based on the following HR Management Components:
- HR Management Philosophy
- HR Strategy
- HR Policies
- HR Processes
- HR Practices in the Organization
- HR Projects and Programs
These basic components are designed to create the modern HR Management system for the organization. The HR team has to set priorities for the implementation as the evolution of the state-of-the-art HR system is a long term effort. The HR Strategy sets the main priorities and goals for the team.
The modern and competitive organization invests into the development of HR Management Practices as the return on the investment is high. The top talents are recruited to build a competitive HR Function, which is able to design efficient HR Processes and implements HR Policies, which drive the efficiency of the people management in the company.
The HR Management is not just about the policies and procedures. It is not just about the roles and responsibilities of HR. It is about the relationship of HR with the line management. HR sets the rules for the game and leads managers to work with the employees efficiently and correctly. The compliance of HR is a top priority today as the fair and consistent HR procedures contribute to the satisfaction of employees at all levels of the organization.
The HR Management support the long term goals of the organization, provides processes and tools for the line management to meet the required levels of the performance and for the management of the employee life cycle in the company.
HR develops the HR Model, which is aligned with the business strategy, the corporate culture and the HR Strategy. The corporate culture and the business strategy are crucial for the efficient and modern HR Management. They define the way the organization makes decisions and behavior the organization really values and rewards. Each HR Management philosophy always starts with the definition of the desired HR Model as the HR organization works smoothly and delivers results.
HR Management Philosophy
The HR Management Philosophy is not mainly about Human Resources Function. It is more about the leadership style of the top management, the current corporate culture and values. It is about the vision of the leader of the organization. The modern leader usually requires a modern HR Management approach and builds the environment suitable for the evolution of the modern HR Management. This is the HR Management Philosophy behind the scene.
The development of the HR Management Philosophy is a long term process. The philosophy is usually informal and respects values and opinions of the main stakeholders. The leader of the organization has a significant influence on the HR Philosophy. The HR Leader is the next one influencing the philosophy significantly.
The informality of the HR Management Philosophy is important. It differentiates it from the HR Strategy. The philosophy is the set of values, behavior and practices. The practices are extremely crucial for the leader. The leader is not interested in written formal HR policies. The leader is interested in the real decision processes in the organization. They can be really different from the written rules (as people do not follow them, they follow the philosophy).
The main factors influencing the HR philosophy in the organization are:
- Leadership Style
- Corporate Culture
- Corporate Values
- Market Competition
The leadership style is extremely important. The leaders of the organization are the role models for managers and employees. The manager always try to act as the leader does. The behavior is observed and spread across the entire organization. The leader sets the basic expectations from all employees and managers. They adjust their behavior to be fully compliant with the leader’s expectations. The HR Management Philosophy is the same story.
The leader is usually the person, who starts the change or the re-design of the HR Management Philosophy. The leader observes the behavior in the organization and requests several changes. The leader usually calls a new HR leader, who is responsible for the leadership in the change management. The biggest task is to change the behavior of the leader.
The corporate culture and the corporate values define boundaries for the HR Management philosophy. The HR Management cannot be in the conflict with the corporate culture. It has to be a natural part of the culture. In case of the changes in the HR Philosophy, the HR team has to start influencing the corporate culture. It has to be adjusted as well. The change of the corporate culture is the joint effort of the leadership management and Human Resources. It has to be changes by changes of the living examples. The employees will follow the changes naturally.
The external market and the direct and indirect competitors have the influence on the HR Management Philosophy. The competitors define the industry standard. The completely different approach usually builds the organizational weakness. The HR Philosophy has to be better, it cannot be completely different.
The leader usually compares the performance of the organization with the direct competitors on the market. The leader identifies weaknesses and advantages. In case of the need, the leader provokes the change of the corporate culture and the HR philosophy.
HR Management Dimensions
The HR Management has several dimensions in the organization as it supports the organization in its growth and competitiveness. Based on the researches and studying the common HR practices in successful organizations several common HR Management dimensions were identified. The HR Function has to design processes, policies and procedures in all dimensions. The non-presence in any of the dimensions make the organization weak.
The main dimensions of the HR Management are:
- HR practices and performance
- Re-engineering of organizations
- Leadership
- Workplace Learning
- Relationship with employees
The performance and HR practices are crucial for the competitiveness of the organization on the market. The organization without the focus on the performance improvements does lose the its position on the market. It dies slowly. The HR Measurement has to be designed and introduced as the top management (and the corporate layer of the organization) has the exact information of the performance of employees.
The performance systems and performance standards should a priority for Human Resources. HR has to represent the top management in discussions and it should propose solutions with no pressure on adding the additional workforces to the organization.
HR should put the organizational structures under a pressure. The managers should change the organizational continuously as the performance improvements are reached. HR has to provide managers with the market benchmarks and the internal trends.
The organizational design and the re-engineering is the second dimension of the HR Management. HR has to gain the knowledge and expertise in the area of the organizational design as it can serve the organization. Most managers do not understand the organizational design and they solve issues by adding managerial layers and workforces.
The modern and competitive organization analyzes processes and introduces improvements by making processes lean. It eliminates process steps and centralizes the control of different processes. It eliminates the double work and introduces clear roles and responsibilities. HR has to be a leader in the organizational design initiatives.
The leadership is highly important HR Management dimension. The leadership is focused on the current leadership practices and the leadership development for the future of the organization. The current leadership practices are usually underestimated, but HR has to lead managers to become the true leaders for their functional units.
The leadership is a long term dimension of HR. The leaders do not evolve over a night. HR has to co-operate with the top management to identify successors and high potentials in the organization. The specialized programs have to designed for them.
The workplace learning is about provoking managers and employees to do their job better every day. The workplace learning is about spreading the know how of the organization and improving it. HR has to design programs supporting innovations. HR has to support the introduction of innovations into the daily practice. HR has to show the living examples of successful innovations.
HR has to introduce processes, which aim to protect and develop the know how of the organization. Many organizations have employees, who have unique know-how and they do not share it. HR has to support managers in spreading know how as the company is not vulnerable.
The relationship with employees is highly important. HR represents the organization and the management. It has to deal with employees and has to understand the interests of employees. The employees have to trust to HR. It is a difficult role for HR, but it has to be successful. HR has to inform employees about all changes affecting their roles and it has to protect their interests during the strategic meetings. All decisions should consider opinions of employees.
