Time to reconstruct HR practices, approach

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The boom in the new economy industries and the service sector has brought human resources (HR) centre stage. In recent years, the HR profession has captured the mind share of top management and boards immensely. This sudden importance has come along with high expectations that are slowly exposing some shortcomings in the discipline as well as the profession. Giving vent to the undercurrents of disaffection is an article titled `Why We Hate HR’ by Keith Hammonds, deputy editor of Fast Company, which is doing the gleeful rounds among the ill-disposed.

Hammonds lambasts that “after close to 20 years of hopeful rhetoric about bec-oming strategic partners with a “seat on the table” where business decisions are made, most human-resources professionals aren’t nearly there.” He finds ‘Strategic HR Leadership’, the theme of a Las Vegas meet, as “a conceit” and “plain laughable”. He also believes that most of HR function would be outsourced by 2008 as nearly 94% of large employers have reported outsourcing at least one HR activity.

This article renews the controversy that raged some years ago when some had forecast that HR function would wind down in the years to come. The unfortunate lambasting that uses prejudiced language can indeed be twisted around to criticise any other function forcefully. Despite the anger that it may generate in the HR community, it must be taken as a provocation for reconstruction of human resource management (HRM) approach and content.

Many have begun to wonder if the rise in HR rhetoric is matched sufficiently with advances in robust techniques. Even as the CEOs say pompous things about the importance of human resources in annual reports, shareholder meetings, research analysts’ meets and the endless conferences, there are gnawing doubts if these match with practice at all. One is not able to reconcile the growing trends of inequities, disparities and unbridled greed with HR philosophy. Approaches to people-issues are often in direct contrast to professed HR values—they appear softened by pragmatism and finance.