Institutional Pressures And HRM: Roles And Functions

Analysis

Describe about the Institutional Pressures and HRM?

There was a time when Human Resource Management was considered as a secondary function in the organization. With time, organizations have expanded in different parts of the world and HRM has emerged as a critical organizational function. The role of HR managers have also evolved from a reactive role to proactive role. Today, it is expected that HR managers would be able to bring transformational change in the organization (Pochet, 2011). This era is market with high competition and organizations have realized that their employees is their biggest asset. The role of HR managers is to ensure that organizations can get and can retain best of the talent. It can be said that in today’s world, HR managers are not only the managers that do operational work but they also have to exhibit thought leadership in the organization.

In this era of globalization, multinational organizations have expanded in different parts of the world. Today, companies like Microsoft; Walmart has to work in different cultures. The companies like Google and Facebook have their presence in almost every part of the world. There are certain cross-cultural issues that arises in multicultural environment. It is the role of HR managers to ensure that cultural issues could be resolved. Today, HR managers are also involved in strategic nature of the business (Taplin, 2013). The role of HR managers has evolved from operational work to strategic work. In today’s world, there exists a strong integration with Human Resource Management and other core organization function like Marketing and Finance. Organizations have realized that eventually the management is all about ‘People’ management and it is the people that can help organizations to develop and grow. The objective of this paper is to discuss and analyze various roles of a Human Resource Function and its practitioners.

With a change in time, organizations have changed, organizations functions have evolved, and HRM function has also changed. Therefore, the time demands that the traditional function of HR function should also be changed. The traditional roots of HR managers could be traced back to the era of trade unions. In current time, trade unions functions has also changed. It would be good if trade unions can work and perform along with strategic HRM function in an organization (Dunn, 2009). People may have the opinion that HRM is a cosmetic function but it can be said that HRM is a strong function and with time, this function has evolved. Today, HRM is not only a support function in the organization and HRM function is definitely more than people management.

It can be said that establishment of HRM practices in a formal way have definitely help to handle employee grievances. With the increase focus on HRM as a critical organizational function the employee productivity and employee motivation has gone high. Today, most of the organizations have been focusing on matrix organization structure. In this organizational structure, employees typically have business managers and HR managers. (Valle, 2008) highlighted that the role of HR managers is to ensure that employees remain motivated and the issues of employee could be resolved immediately.

Traditional roles of HR function

The HR managers have to perform the traditional role of recruitment, employee relationship, compensation and benefits and at the same time HR, managers have to perform the role of leadership in the organization (Meardi, 2012). Some of the varying role of Human Resource Function and its practitioners can be discussed as:

These would be the most basic roles of HR managers. It is believed that one of the most important and basic function or role of HR managers is recruitment. HR managers are expected to manage internal employees. Traditionally, HR function is considered as an internal function only with the focus on employee grievances and employees issues. HR managers also have to design the compensation packages of employees. In an organization, setting the salary structure is developed by HR managers only (Messersmith, 2012). The role of HR managers would also include training and development. The employees would look towards HR managers to get training. It is important that Human Resource manager should ensure that every new employee of the company gets training.

Compliance with labor and employment laws is another critical HR function. Noncompliance can result in workplace complaints based on unfair employment practices, unsafe working conditions and general dissatisfaction with working conditions that can affect productivity and ultimately, profitability. The traditional role of HR managers would also include employee engagement and employee relationship. In several cases, HR managers also have to act as mentor for new employees (Guthrie, 2010). It is the role of HR managers to ensure that new employees can break the ice with existing employees. It is critical that HR managers should have good relationship with employees as employees’ looks forward to HR managers as a guide. It is also that HR managers should try to bridge the gap between employees’ expectations and management perception of employees’ expectations.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the role of HR managers is to act as layer between employees and management. HR managers have to ensure that any friction should not come between management and employees. As discussed above the traditional role of HR managers would include:

Service provision role: The employees are the internal customers for HR managers and they have to ensure that all the needs of employee could be meet.

Guidance and advice: HR managers are the first point of contact for employees and it is duty of HR managers to guide and advice the employees at every step.

HR managers have to manage the workforce not only in domestic region but also in international market. As far as the compliance with local laws is considered, MNCs have to comply with the local laws at place. It is important that MNCs should adhere to the local laws when they are expanding into other countries. The role of HR managers is to help organizations to comply with the local law (Boselie, 2009). As far as the matter of discrimination is considered, it can be said that MNCs should adopt anti-discrimination policies in the work place. Under no conditions, MNCs should allow the discrimination of workers. In fact, MNCs can also have the tie up with government officials of countries in order to establish a fair and just job culture. It is a role of HR managers to ensure that organizations should not be discriminating employees in any of the form, knowingly or unknowingly.

HR managers in multicultural environment

There was a time when companies used to operate only in domestic boundaries, however with the wave of e commerce companies have expanded well beyond domestic boundaries. It is imperative for companies to understand the local culture of foreign country. In this business model, also the companies have to integrate with local suppliers and distribution channels. In a nutshell, integration is one such thing that cannot be avoided (Ceulemans, 2014). It is better that companies can realize that cultural differences would exists and people have to perform amidst these differences. In fact, these differences could be taken as a positive conflict of mind. Organizations should try to get positive things from these differences. People should respect the views of other people and they should understand the culture of other employees. People or employees should have a tendency to learn good habits from other cultures. This will not be possible unless people leave the feeling of individualism (Mitchell, 2013). It is the role of HR managers to ensure that employees can leave the feeling of individualism and employees are able to work with people from different cultures. It is the responsibility of HR managers to ensure that a good level of integration is achieved among all the business functions. The above discussion would highlight that HR managers have to take the role of

Business partner: It is the role of HR manage to ensure that business as usual is not getting affected due to change in internal environment of the company.

Strategist role: It is the role of HR manager to participate in the development of the high-level strategy of the company.

One of the most important objectives for organizations is to ensure that discrimination at work place could be avoided altogether. It is important that organizations should set strong standards in order to avoid discrimination at workplace. Discrimination can be done on the basis of gender, religion, caste, social culture etc. (Hirsh & Kornrich , 2008) mentioned that discrimination at work place is an issue not only for small organizations but also for large organizations. There are various legislations in place that ensures that employers should not adopt discrimination activities. The standards and policies to avoid discrimination can be avoided altogether only when all the employees works against discrimination with the support of HR managers.

HR managers have to realize that discrimination would always change its nature and it is almost impossible to leave the discrimination behind. Discrimination could be thought of as something that would just change its nature. The old form of discrimination would go out and new forms would emerge. There was a time when discrimination was about white and black, though it still exists today. In the current time, new ways of discrimination have emerged, such as; discrimination based on interpersonal skills, discrimination based on looks etc. The time is not far when discrimination would also have lot other parameters such as technology. The focus of organizations is to eliminate the negative impacts of discrimination rather than to eliminate the discrimination itself. This role highlights that HR managers acts as guardian for values in an organizational setting.

Organizations have realized that have to change in order to develop and grow. It demands that organizations should be flexible and agile. Human resource managers have to wear the hat of multiple organizational functions. The ‘change’ in the organization could be triggered from a business leader or sales head but the change could be implemented effectively only with the support of human resource managers. HR managers also act as link between employees and management. It is the uncertainty associated with change that acts as a resistance for employees. Therefore, before implementing any change, it is important for management to unfreeze employees. Lewin model of change management is based on the steps of unfreeze, change and refreeze. Therefore, it is important that a holistic understanding of the change should be gathered before implementing any change.

It is the tendency of human to get accustomed to a thing that then becomes a comfort zone. It is correct that it would be difficult to sell change or implement change when employees are in their comfort zone. To avoid these situations, HR managers should focus on cross training of employees. Typically, it has been observed that project managers or delivery managers may not willing to let resource go to some other project (Beaufays, 2010). This could not be a best practice because by this managers are putting employees in comfort zone.

For example, At Google, engineers are free to select the team, project, and employees and encouraged to change the team. It ensures that employees do not really attain a comfort zone. At Google, an employee working in the ‘Maps’ team can easily switch to ‘Search Engine’ team. It would be right to say that HR managers should keep employees vigil and out of comfort zone, so that change management is effective and efficient (Heidenreich, 2014). Talking about the peer pressure, when enlisted, they are change’s most powerful allies; when resisted, they are its most stubborn foe. Peers in large organizations are invaluable in spreading behavior change across an enterprise. In that respect, they constitute a woefully underused set of resources, mostly accessible within the “informal elements” of our organizations. Therefore, it is up to managers and senior leaders that how can they utilize the peer pressure and peer power towards the organizational change,

Emergence of HRM has ensured that employees are made aware of their right and employers can ensure that employees can work without any operational and other issues. With globalization, internationalization, e-commerce and Internet organizations have advanced to more open culture rather than being closed ended (Buren, 2011). In today’s fast pace culture, the work matters. Organizations want to have employees that can perform. It is the role of HR managers to provide internal consultancy to employees so that employees can keep pace with organizational goals and objectives. Therefore, in an organizational setting, employees should be asked to speak up for themselves. Management should foster a culture when employees can resist the changes openly. In fact, any resistance from employees should be debated within the organization. Any resistance should be taken up as the avenue for new ideas.

It is important that HR managers should also monitor the performance of employees. The performance management is also a critical role of HR managers. The role of HR managers would include to develop performance based reward system. The performance based reward system would ensure that employees’ motivation and productivity remains high.

Conclusion

The above paper discussed the role of HRM function and HR managers. With the above discussion, it can be said that the role of HR managers have evolved to contribute to different organizational functions. There was a time when the role of HR manager was internal in nature. In recent times, HR managers are also supposed to keep a watch on external environment of the company. One of the biggest and most challenging role of HR managers is to manager the change. HR managers should realize that resistance to change should not be taken as a bad thing. In fact, any resistance to change in an organization acts as the opportunity to bring new ideas that can make change better. Having said that, it is also important that this resistance to change should be active in nature and not passive. Any resistance to change would be useful only when employees are provided enough freedom to speak up their mind. It is important that Human Resource Managers should develop a culture when communication is open and two ways (Jimmieson, 2011). It means that low-level employees should also be able to reach out to higher management. It should be the responsibility of HR managers to ensure that some good points of discussion could be derived from resistance to change. Any resistance to change should not be hidden from employees of organization. It would be good if managers and change agents shall communicate freely with all the employees in an organization. 

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