Article Summary and Critical Review

Human Resource Management

 A New Mandate for Human Resources
By Dave Ulrich

Summary

In recent times HR has been perceived as ineffective, incompetent and costly. A need has been felt
for creating a new role and agenda to focus on the outcomes and deliverables enrichinhg the
organisations value to customers, investors and employees. The four ways which should be adopted
by the HR are

 It should partener with the management in executing the strategy

 Develop an expertise in organizing and executing administrative work efficiently.

 Become a medium of transferring employes concerns to the management and develop

means to increase employee contribution.

 It should become a change agent, shaping processes and cultures for facilitating change in
the organization.

The primary role of transforming the HR role lies on the CEO and all line managers who have the
main responsibility of achieving the business goals. Thus the line and the HR should form a
partnership to make it focused on outcomes rather than activities.

Reasons for increase in importance of HR

HR can play leadership role in meeting the following competitive challenges

Globalisation – The HR must develop understanding and skills in ways of international customers,
commerece and competition. It should facilitate the organization in increasing its ability to learn,
collaborate and to manage diversity, complexity and ambiguity.

Profitability through growth – Organizations looking to expand by gaining new customers and
developing new products must be creative, innovative and have free flow of information and shared
learning among its employees. The HR function can be a critical factor in developing these features
and must help the company become more market focused – more in touch with the ever changing
different needs of its customers.The managers must also need to make sure that they make the
technology a viable, productive part of the work setting.

Intellectual Capital – The HR managers must focus on attracting, developing, and retaining
individuals who can drive the global organization that is responsive to both its customers and the
rapidly changing technological opportunities present.

Change – HR must develop the culture of discomfort with the status quo so thet it will detect the
emerging trends quicker than its competitors and have an ability to take rapid decisions and be agile
to seek new ways of doing business.

The new role of HR

Becoming a partner in Strategy execution – The HR managers should act as guides to the
discussion on how the company should be organized to carry out its chosen strategy.

1. It should be responsible for defining an organisational architecture following a suitable

model.

2. It should be accountable for conducting an organizational audit.

3. It should identify the methods to renovate the parts of the organizational architecture that
need to be upgraded.

4. HR should clearly prioritise its work as per their impact and importance.

Becoming an Administrative Expert – HR must identify within its function the processes which
can be done better, faster and cheaper and fix them accordingly. Improving efficiency will help
build HR's credibility. The HR managers should rethink about activities throught the organization
and thus prove their value as administrative experts.

Becoming an Employee Champion – HR managers should be responsible for ensuring that

employees are fully engaged in a way that they feel comitted to the organization and contribute
fully in achieving the organizational goals. They should work for orienting and training line
management about the importance of high employee morale and ways to achieve it.

Becoming a Change Agent – The HR should work for building the organizations capacity to
acquire and gain from change. The change initiatives focused on creating high performance teams,
reducing innovation cycle time and technology implementation should be defined, developed and
delivered in a time bound manner. It should as change agent replace employee resistance to change
with resolve, planning with results and fear with excitement.

To bring about the new culture, HR should

 define and clarify the concept of culture change

 articulate the need for change for business success

 define a process for assesing the current culture, the new culture and the gap
  identify the alternative approaches to create culture change

The changes required for the line management

The activities required by the line / senior management to facilitate the HR management become
outcome focused are

 Communicate the importance of soft skills to the organoization

 Explicitly define the deliverables and accountability of Hrs

 Invest in innovative HR practices

 Upgrade HR professionals in terms of quality by recruiting best people.

 Review
A New Mandate for Human Resources by David Ulrich focuses on providing a roadmap for
revitalizing the much loathed HR function which is universally perceived as an ineffective and
ineffective cost centre. In a very simple language and structured way the author tells how the
function should transform from the activity based to outcome based. David articulates why HR
should be aligned with the organization's goals and objectives and why it should be a part of the
organization's strategy execution and have a leading role as a change agent. The article also
provides a prescription for the senior management to push the HR department in acquiring the new
role of a strategy implementation partner and change agency. One things it lacks in is the quantity of
relevant anecdotal examples. Though it has some very important refrences to current HR practices
in leading organisation but having them more often and for more of points could have increased
their clarity and perceived practicality. All in all it is a seminal article providing a guide for present
day management to survive in the global and competetive environment leveraging the HR function.