Main HR Issues in HR Management

Today, Human Resources is a department under a pressure. The HR Managers are expected to start the initiatives to decrease the costs of the organization, develop the tools to increase the performance of managers and employees, the tools promoting the innovations in the business operations and new products. It is a huge change from the past, when Human Resources was mainly a support function, which was designing and developing the procedures to make the job of the business leaders easier. The HR has difficult issues to be solved as the organization stay successful and build the sustainable competitive advantage.

As the business environment changes and the top management start to count the employees as the really valuable asset of the organization, the top management demands more from Human Resources . The HR employees have to solve several issues on their way to become the real HR Business Partners. Human Resources has its own issues.

Current Main HR Issues

Understanding Business Strategy and Business Issues

Human Resources was always more people oriented than business oriented. It is fine, but HR has to find the right balance between the employees and the business. Human Resources will always represent the interests of employees during the decision making process, but it has to be realistic about the pros and cons.

The HR Managers were not involved in the business initiatives to increase the profitability, decrease the operational costs and product or services innovation effort. The top management did not believe Human Resources could add any value added to such an effort. Human Resources was a support function with no significant opinion about the future development of the organization.

HR Managers have to be skilled in Finance Management and they have to understand the products and services of the organization. They have to study the processes in the organization and they have to be able to discuss about the re-engineering of processes organization-wide.

The HR Managers have to ask the tough questions about the profitability, generated cash flow, potential cost saving, increasing the market share and how the HR value added services can support all the organization-wide initiatives.

Performance Management

HR has been always responsible for the Performance Management, but it played its role extremely badly. It had no arguments in the discussions with the business leaders and it was protecting the “strange” rules, which were able to stop the growth of the business.

The performance management is not just the HR Process. It is the process, which is shared by Human Resources, Finance Department and Business Units.

Human Resources has to bring the general rules for the performance management in the organization as the organization can keep its growth healthy and it has the development of the organization under a full control.

Human Resources has to set the rules for the performance management, which helps to keep the growth healthy and not servicing just the managers. The performance results have to be ambitious enough, but the employees have to feel the possibility to reach defined and stretched goals.

The goal setting process has to be redesigned as well and it is the effective part of the performance management again. It is a difficult HR issue as the managers tend to set the goals, which are easy to reach and the goal setting process is not supporting the innovation effort in the organization.

The goal setting process has to involve the full balanced scorecard again and it has to be focused on the financial and people part as the organization stays profitable and competitive. The organization without money and top talents has no chance to survive on the market.

HR Project Management

HR is under the pressure to deliver new activities and to provoke the improvements in the overall business results. Human Resources has to become excellent in the project management as the HR Projects are finished on time and the project charter is successfully achieved.

In the past, Human Resources started many HR Projects and the projects were never finished or realized fully. Today, the top management will ask to conduct just few HR Projects, but they have to be finished on time and Human Resources will have to prove the track of achieved results.

HR has to learn the excellent practices in HR Project Management and how to communicate the achievement through the organization.

Additional Information

The Simple Human Resources Guide offer many articles on different HR Topics and HR Issues.