Professional human resourcesmanagement (HRM) is concerned with all aspects of how people are employed and managed in organisations. It covers activities such as strategic HRM, human capital management, knowledge management, social responsibility, organisational development, resourcing (workforce planning, recruitment, and selection and talent management), learning and development, performance and reward management, employee relations, employee wellbeing and the provision of employee services.
Professional HRM is usually concerned with supporting the organisation in achieving its objectives by developing and implementing human resources (HR) strategies that are:
- Integrated with the strategic goals of the organisation
- Contributing to the development of a high performance culture
- Ensuring that the organisation has the talented and engaged people it needs
- Creating a positive employment relationship between management and employees and a climate of mutual trust, and
- Encouraging the application of an ethical approach to people management.
People Not Paper:
- By design, administrative officers are good ‘all-rounders’, but the roles they play, and the structures in which they work do not allow for the development of the technical HR skills needed to address the fundamental ‘people problems’ prevalent in the organisation
- In contrast, the HRM professional is trained to proactively identify and nip in the bud minor problems that, left unchecked, can develop into formal issues, e.g. absenteeism, lack of motivation at work, poor work ethic,etc.
- Administrative models often assume a ‘one size fits all’ approach to people management, with little autonomy given to individual ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs),departments and units
- A professional HRM model acknowledges that the HR issues and needs, and therefore solutions, may be MDAspecific, and sometimes departmentspecific, and that professional HRM officers in individual MDAs have a key role to play in tackling these.
Contents
Evolution of the Concept of Professional HRM
End of the 19th century
Around the mid 1980s
In 1990s
Professional HRM Today
Growth of Professional HRM in the Public Sector
Differences Between the Approaches
Some Benefits of Professional HRM
People Management
Budget/MTSS
Value for Money
Service Delivery
Evolution of the Concept of Professional HRM
End of the 19th century
- Use of the term ‘personnel’ began
- This is when welfare officers (sometimes called ‘welfare secretaries’) came into being
- Their creation was a reaction to a number of factors:
-harsh industrial conditions
-growing influence of trade unions and the labour movement
-campaigning of enlightened employers for what was called ‘industrial betterment’
- As the personnel role grew there was increasing acknowledgement that these officers had a key and evolving role to play in balancing the protection of employee rights with the employer need for higher output.
Around the mid 1980s
- The term ‘HRM’ arrived from the USA
- This started to suggest that employees were an asset or key resource in their own right
- It also placed emphasis on employee commitment and motivation.
In 1990s
- The term ‘personnel’was used less and less
- Increased use of the term‘HRM’to describe the changing way people where thinking about HR
- Emergence of the concept of ‘Human Capital’,which describes the value of people at work, i.e., their collective knowledge, skills, abilities and capacity to develop.
Professional HRM Today
- Today’s HR professionals encompass a number of specialist disciplines, e.g. diversity, reward (including compensation, benefits, pensions), recruitment and resourcing, employee relations, organisational development/design, and learning and development
- Crucially, however, professional HRM adds the greatest sustained value to the organisations it operates in, both now and in the future
- It combines the highest standards of professional competence with the closest alignment to organisational goals, to deliver sustained performance
- It is a practitioner model that focuses on skills, behaviour and expert knowledge.
Growth of Professional HRM in the Public Sector
- There is a growing international and regional trend for those in the public service to look to be more effective, e.g.in Botswana, Tanzania and Ghana
- This has forced governments to consider new management practices, with a greater emphasis on achieving efficiency, effectiveness and economy
- Policymakers are often overlyoptimistic in their expectation that once plans for reform have been devised, the process of implementation will be straightforward
- Not only does strong people management increase the chances of successful reform implementation, but professional HRM also responds directly to the need for governments to become more focused on performance and accountability
- A strategic approach to HR and the active and proactive management of people is therefore essential.
Differences Between the Approaches
Administration (Personnel Duties) / Professional HRM- Administrative experts
- Generalist skills (all-rounders)
- Management based on terms and conditions of employment contract
- Support service
- Directive driven
- ‘Siloed’ HR functions
- ‘This is what we’ve always done’
- Service-wide HR only
- People practitioners
- Specialist skills (HR experts)
- Management of skills, abilities, knowledge, talents
- Strategic partners
- Proactive and long term
- Joined up HR functions
- Change agents
- Service wide HR and tailored MDA/department specific solutions
HR issues differ in each MDA, in each department and even in each unit, so only through dialogue with Heads of Department and Heads of Unit can HR issues be proactively identified and addressed, using tailored in-house HR solutions. For example, a letter is often merely a symptom of a wider HR issue – it does not address the underlying root cause or actively manage the expectations of the individual concerned.
The HR officer therefore has a key role to play in balancing the interests of management with the interests of individual officers, with an emphasis on coaching/counselling. Trust and confidentialityare also critically important.
Some Benefits of Professional HRM
People Management
- Concept of meritocracy will be reinforced
- MDAs will acquire, develop and retain higher performing officers
- HRM officers will be able to provide professional, specialist advice on particular areas
- Greater accountability and stronger people management
- Professional HR strategists andHR managers are the primary resources for operational managers for all people problems and solutions
- HR officers will work closely with the heads of department to support MDA and department specific objectives, in particular designing and implementing HR solutions that support their strategic aims
- HR officers will ensure the people strategy of the MDA is consistent with what each department is trying to achieve, and implement appropriate tailored HR solutions
- MDAs will build stronger people capability
- HR officers will support longer term human resource and talent management planning
- There will be tailored capacity-building interventions within individual MDAs
- Each MDA will be better able to anticipate the future needs of state government and its component parts.
Budget/MTSS
- Budget and medium term sector strategies (MTSS) do not exist in a vacuum
- They require that the mandates of each MDA are clearly defined, and strategic HRM professionals give input into this
- HRM professionals then ensure the MDAs actually deliver their mandates by ensuring the right people, with the right skills, are in place, with the right motivation, at the right time
- Without these key HR and corporate planning linkages, the right information will not feed into the MTSS and budget process, and MDAs will not be able to deliver
- Professional HRM will make sure the size and shape of the service is congruent with a government’s strategic priorities, and is affordable.
Value for Money
- In many parts of the country there is a general trend for revenue to be dwindling, while expenditure is escalating
- Total personnel costs appear to be increasing unchecked year on year, making up a large percentage of total recurrent expenditure
- Such expenditure may prevent much-needed capital expenditure
- The civil service maytherefore become increasingly bloated, yet there are few returns and little improvement in MDA performance and service delivery
- This would be symptomatic of a lack of workforce planning and a recruitment process that is not strategic, and hence the need for professional HRM officers who can address these issues.
Service Delivery
- Staff will be better able to respond to civil service needs, and more motivated to do so
- With active support of the political leadership for the civil service, HRM can contribute to translating the vision of government into reality
- MDAs will have clearer accountability and civil servant performance management.There will be a link between people management and the strategic objectives of the state government (or organisation)
- Professional HRM will show how new strategies set by government can actually be achieved
- Staff will respond better to the needs of the state and be more motivated to do so.
11BHRM or Personnel Administration?