HRM - should we mourn the demise of the HR department?

A hat tip ti Simon McCrossan for spotting this thought-provoking opinion piece in the Times this morning.  It questions the role and relevance of the HR department in modern business.  This would make a good stimulus piece on a lesson that considers how an HR department can contribute to a business.

The article could also be used in conjunction with Graham Salisbury’s superb blog series on the role and activities of HR Managers (see links below)

How to be a top UK HR Director

This week has seen the publication of Personnel Today’s Top 40 Power Players list which aims to recognise HR’s most prominent and influential professionals, those who have “played a part in bringing people issues to the top of the business agenda and been a shining light for the HR profession”

The Changing Face of Human Resources

The HR function has probably undergone more changes than any other over the last half century. Many of those areas that were once considered to be the responsibility of HR Managers (or Personnel Managers as the majority were called before the turn of the 21st Century) have been transferred to line managers, leaving HR Managers to (in theory!) concentrate on matters of more strategic importance. 

Planning for a winning team

The Times ‘Ideas at Work’ section has a feature today about how to build a winning team in business. The first point questions whether you actually need a team, or simply a group of individuals working on separate tasks but reporting to the same supervisor. On the assumption that the business needs something a bit more than that, much of the advice centres on long term strategic planning, which should be a central part of human resource management – allowing time for team dynamics and bonding to evolve, having a team which is small enough to be co-ordinated and setting clearly defined roles with a decisive leader. There are two vital aspects of recruitment that reflect points made by Mike Southon, the Beermat Entrepreneur, at last week’s Business Studies National Teacher Conference; getting a mix of people and talents rather than several matching talents, and bringing in a ‘deviant’ – someone who is prepared to take a different view and question the normal status quo, but without acting as a ‘team destroyer’. To quote Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, “You want people to challenge each other, but you don’t want winners and losers — people stop talking to each other.”