The Changing Role of HR now and in the Future

Human Resource functions and responsibilities are changing and intensifying at a faster pace and to a greater degree than many other areas of the corporate organisation.

Once relegated to the back office and concerned mainly or exclusively with transactional processes and functions, HR organisations are taking a greater role in strategic business activities.

Efficiency remains the foundation of HR. More transactions must be completed at a lower cost, while processes are becoming increasingly complex to manage.

A typical 10,000 employee company handles more than a million employee related transactions annually, each of which costs in the region of 50 Euros.

The top 10 recruiters in Europ report that they are placing 35k to 95k employees annually. Managing the recruitment pipeline, the selection process, and the induction process is a complicated endeavour.

At the same time, however, leading HR organisations are looking far beyond the execution of HR transactions, to a more value-added and strategic focus.

These organisations are aligning human resources and workforce planning functions with the overall business strategy, to help increase profit margins and support long term goals.

The study analyses several dimensions; staffing, cost, organisational model, IT deployment, and best practice adoption. The following key conclusions demonstrate how companies are meeting today's human capital challenges;

1) As a first step, HR managers strive to optimise the efficiency of transactional processes by standardising, automating and integrating business processes, based on Best Practice process and technology models.

2) Optimising transactional processes frees up resources that allow HR organisations to invest in more strategic functions that facilitate business growth and increase employee productivity.

3) Centralising and consolidating HR operations in a shared services environment helps increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the HR processes.

4) Outsourcing, while used frequently for transactional processes, does not always drive top performance, either in cost or service quality. Organisations need to carefully evaluate the value, performance and cost benefit trade off in outsourced versus in-house service delivery.

5) Information Technology continues to provide the basic foundation for efficiency and acts as the key driver for efficectiveness and future innovation.

Leading organisations recognise that IT supports the development of many best practices and they continue to invest in IT to integrate systems, data and processes across the enterprise.

Briefly, the study finds that the best human capital management organisations are constantly re-assessing their processes, to strike the correct balance in the drive to optimise efficiency, cost and service delivery in a continually changing global environment.

Top performers in this area balance the traditional demands that drive company profits and growth and help prepare for future innovations.