A World Without Human Resources?
Could This Be the Next Step in the Evolution of HR? |
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During the past half century, there has been an evolution from Personnel Management to Employee/Industrial Relations to Human Resource Management.As David Ulrich wrote in his influential book, HR Champions, "an HR professional from the 1940s would find it difficult to recognize the HR function of the year 2000." And the past 11 years have brought even more changes.
Technology has made many of the functional tasks of HR obsolete, and outsourcing is on the rise, but the human side of human resources cannot be overlooked.
Organizations have to remember that HR is no longer solely about payroll and personnel.
For example, the way employees look at the relationship between themselves and their employers has changed. Loyalty has been challenged in the past 10 years. As companies have increasingly laid off and downsized staff, employees have felt more responsible for their own well-being. HR has had to be more strategic in how it attracts and retains top talent.
Over the last three decades, the effects of downsizing, large-scale manufacturing shutdown, legal restrictions on their activities, changing attitudes and symbolic defeats led to a steady decline in trade union membership and collective bargaining arrangements. This reduced HR's role as intermediary between management and unions.
But another dimension in the evolution of HR was the growth in legal regulation of employment relationships. As governments began to enact more legislation to protect workers, HR professionals were responsible in ensuring company compliance with these initiatives.
So what would happen if the HR function didn't exist? Some executives argue that there would initially be problems with salary payments and paperwork, but finance and legal could step in and take over. Line management would step up, too. But at years end, who would take responsibility for the legal fees, excessive overtime, and other indirect costs run up in the absence of the HR department?
Payroll would continue paying people, but what would happen when, with nobody to maintain data on pay relativities, salaries begin to get out of kilter? Before long, people would be complaining about unfair pay differentials and possibly even bringing equal pay claims.
The legal department wouldn't be of much use either if it didn't have any employment lawyers. Only those versed in employment law would understand the management issues behind each situation and give the relevant, nuanced practical advice.
You might also miss your HR department if you didn't have their specialist knowledge of the employment market, their ability to find and recruit good staff and its general overview of the organization that few other functions have. And what about employee relations issues, such as dealing with the EEOC? Who would coach employees in how to handle certain situations?
Better HR managers will also be good coaches and advisers. If your HR department is any good, it helps managers tackle performance issues. Without it, a lot of these problems might fester away while under-confident executives avoid dealing with them.
According to Michael Haberman, SPHR, of Omega HR Solutions, businesses without HR would have unhappy employees, unsure managers, turnover and numerous lawsuits. Government regulations don't go away. Poor managerial decision making doesn't go away. Mistreatment and discrimination don't go away.
If there was no need for HR functions, they would disappear. Most HR activities are, in some form, necessary to the organization and have to be done by someone. Not all of them can easily be outsourced. HR functions evolved in organizations for a number of reasons. Those reasons haven't gone away--and until they do, HR professionals will always be with us.
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