Traditionally, the role of the Human Resource managers in several organizations has been to serve as the systematizing, policing arm of executive management. Their role was more closely aligned with personnel and administration functions seen by the organization as paperwork. In this role, the HR professional served executive agendas well but was often viewed as a hurdle creator by large part of the organization. Employees believed that the HR function was in place solely to serve management. HR professionals are criticized for everything from education to professionalism and to support for employees. HR professionals are accused of misleading employees, failing to keep employee information confidential, and showing poor practices in fields such as investigations, benefits options, and recruiting employees.

Today’s organizations cannot have means to have an HR department that is unable to contribute to lead modern thinking and contribute to increase company profitability. In this environment, much of the HR role is transforming. The role of the HR manager must fulfill needs of changing organization. Successful organizations are becoming more adaptive, resilient, quick to change direction and customer-focused. Within this scenario, the HR professional, considered necessary by managers and executives, is a strategic partner, an employee sponsor or advocate and a change mentor. Dr. Dave Ulrich recommended these roles and discussed in Human Resource Champions. The HR professionals who understand these roles are leading their organizations in organization development, strategic utilization of employees to serve business goals, and talent management and development.

Changing Scope of Human Resource Management

The ambit of Human Resource Management has undergone changes drastically during the last few decades. However, the change has been proportionally tardy as compared to the changes taking place in other areas of business, management and administration. Changes definitely are taking place in human resource management. Some HR sub-functions seem to be separating from HR function, other seem to be emerging sub-areas while still others appear to be changing merely in terms of their greater emphasis and extent of significance. Several of these changes rely on the size of an organization in which the HR function happens.

These changes broadly include the managerial philosophies, the rising importance of HR functions, the changing organizational requirements, employee needs and social worries. Managerial and organizational development, HR planning, organizational planning, human resource development are promising areas that are attracting substantially more attention; they did in the past. Training and executive development and HR research have become more important today; while the place of performance appraisal, wage and salary administration, have to some extent declined in terms of comparative emphasis. The issues that have ever been the important HR concerns include the employee benefit and services and workers’ health and safety. Labor relations, public relations and security of the plant are personnel sub-areas taken away from the HR department because of their increased organizational importance.

Trends in the Nature of Work

In his address at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference, “The Changing Nature of Work: Five Global Trends’. Kushner stressed five global trends influencing the changing nature of work. Kushner also address the way to deal with those trends within the next 10 years. Kushner is president and CEO of Kushner & Co., which is a global HR strategy consulting firm. The trends include technological advancement, outsourcing, transforming worker attitudes and values, demographical characteristics and diversity, and globalization. The organizations quick and light in movement going are likely to be more successful. Kushner felt that embracing change isn’t just a necessity, it is a requirement. Fig 1 shows the trends in the nature of work.

Technological Changes

Technological changes have already taken over the management in manufacturing, communications, raw material designing, supply chain, logistics. These have helped in increasing productivity and reduction in number of employees. Labor intensive blue collar and clericals jobs have begun declining with advent of the new techniques. Technology will also compel companies to be competitive, job redesigning, change in organization structures are being accepted. Information technology has also speeded up the call of hierarchy. Now managers rely less on yesterday’s chain of command approach to organizing.
Smart devices that allow uninterrupted connectivity continue to obscure the difference between work and personal life. One of the challenges in HR is attempting to figure out how to acquire engaged employees. For the most part, most organizations haven’t considered through how to differentiate. Telecommuting and flexible hours are just the initial steps down to navigating the issues about constant connectivity and work/life balance.

Globalization

Globalization refers to the predispositions of companies to enlarge their sales or manufacturing to the new markets abroad for business, internationally, production is becoming global too, as manufacturing operations are established around the world by manufacturers, at places providing competitive advantages.
This globalization of markets and manufacturing has greatly increased international competition. The trends in technological change and globalization are changing the nature of work. Information technology has allowed companies to relocate operations to places where labor is available at low wages..
There is also a trend to hire ad-hoc workers, contractual employees and as consultants. Service industry is resorted to get work accomplished, and to get knowledge through Information Technology. An enormous shift from manufacturing jobs to service jobs is taking place in many part of the world.
Other trends affecting Human Resource Management relate to legal protection to employees in the matter of employment, health of employees, safety provisions, workers management relations. These changes need a fresh approach to management of human resources.

Outsourcing.

Companies have come to define core and non-core work. Kushner stressed that organizations in future will resort to outsource the noncore competencies of the workplace. Outsourcing is an allocation of specific business processes to a specialist external service provider. Organizations now use more free agents who come in for projects and provide a particular expertise while enhancing their skills and then move on to other organizations. The challenge for HR if this trend remains is to look at organizational strategy and develop HR strategies about how work to get done in the organization and who will do it.

Changing worker attitudes and values.

There was a time when people remained in one job their entire lives. But today an organizational life expectancy is of just 3.5 years. That is going to be a challenge for HR as it struggles to reconcile how we engage our workers in such a way that they desire to stay, but recognize they have interests outside the workplace.

Demographics and diversity.

People are living longer. In the next 10 years, organizations will have five generations in the workplace. Kushner pointed out that there would be traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen wireless. These are people who grew up with technology in their hands—they understand it and know how to leverage those tools.

Emerging Role of Human Resource Manager

It is apprehended that there are dangers of the personnel manager giving way to the new specialists who are coming up. These are the experts in information technology, management of research and development, manpower planning. Unless the HR manager makes an effort to acquire advance knowledge and prepares for the change. He should, therefore, relate himself with key areas of emerging change:
 Changing composition of work force
 Growing unionization among the work force
 Increasing role of government in enhancing protective legislation to equalise the interests and rights of the employees in the organization
 Revolution in information technology and other technological innovations adversely affect the interests of the work force.
 Rapidly changing job and skills requiring long-range manpower planning,

The emerging role of HR manager is depicted in Fig.2

In all these areas of change, HR people would be requiring more of training, re-training and mid-career re-training. Furthermore, they must also well understand the intricacies of human behavior so that they could depend on integration of professional goals with the goal of the organization and by self-control rather than on management by centralized direction and control. They also should not neglect the problems of day-to-day personnel administration. More prominently, the changes and transitions are taking place in the following HR areas.

Transition in people at work and interpersonal relations

People at work and their interpersonal relations are also undergoing change. Although HR people and HR departments are widely recognized and accepted by top executives of the important role play in planning and administration systems of human resources, the future is going to present major new challenges in different fields.

Individual as the unit of activity

The individual is and will be the fundamental unit of activity. Individuals provide the knowledge, skills, and energy utilized in organizations. It would be correct to presume that each person will continue to have needs, drives, and expectations; but no two persons would be same in their goals and objectives, ambitions, strengths and weaknesses. Such people may expect even more from their employment relationship. For example, the increased level of education and mobility will change the values people have towards work. They will be more intellectually committed to their jobs and will perhaps require more involvement, participation and autonomy in the workplace.

Education of Workforce

The educational level of the work force is expected to continue to rise. The work force will be more diverse gender, age, ethnic affiliation, backgrounds, concentrations, and ideological philosophies. Groups earlier considered minorities of the work force (such as the women, the handicapped persons, the members belonging to scheduled castes, etc.) will increase in number and proportions and their demands will become more vocal. Several workers might be enjoying more leisure time due to change in patterns of work. Managers will be required to meet a different variety of demand from employees.

Organizational Structure

Future organizations would be larger, complex with inter-related structuring of the people. Accordingly, such organizations will come more impersonal and more dehumanizing. Such organizations might be required to decentralize decision-making and other functions. They might also hope that the people should recognize common objectives, plans, and goals so that they can make collective contribute toward mutually beneficial goals. Managers at upper levels will have to spend their time for the integration of decision-making to unite the efforts of the entire organizational members.

Social applications

Social applications will have a large impact on the attitudes and behavior of people in organization. Since individuals have normally social orientation, the attitudes and values of organizational peers, colleagues, family members, friends, and others to whom they socially relate are likely to influence their perceptions and actions. The task of managing may therefore turn more challenging and more varied than it has been in the past.

Technology and innovations

Technology, discoveries and innovations are likely to create new pressures on organizations and people and require for changes in objectives of organizations and methods and procedures to accomplish these objectives. The requirements of skills will change as a result of advancements in technology. In some cases, technology might make workers and their tasks more interrelated, while in others there might be predispositions toward separation. Computer technology is likely to reshape a number of organizational roles and goals and will have a significant impact on decisions. These and other changes pinpoint the challenges lying ahead for future managers.

Mental and physical limitations

Since managers are human being also, they will be limited by their mental and physical constraints, will be subject to their own philosophical commitments, their own biases and prejudices, and to outside pressures from different directions. However, future managers should be able to profit from the increasing body of knowledge and experiences of the current and past managers.

Role of HR Manager of Tomorrow

The role of manager of tomorrow is not likely to be an easy one. It will be more complex and intricate. HR manager will play more diverse role and prominently these:

Knowledgeable about people and environment

The future manager will be more knowledgeable about people, organizations and the total environment. He will be well conversant with social sciences, world affairs, and the humanities in general and will effectively integrate the techniques of information technology with the available human resources. To meet future challenges, professionalism among the managers will be on the rise. They will be getting more formalized educational training in managerial techniques and responsibilities. These manager will also need different types of skills, e.g. top managers will need more conceptual, analytical and decision-making abilities, first line supervision may require more of technical skills and interpersonal leadership abilities, and middle-level managers may need a mix of the above skills in addition to coordinative abilities. The development and utilization of skills and abilities in interpersonal relationships will benefit all the managers.

Ability to be Perceptive

The managers of tomorrow have to develop the ability to be perceptive towards themselves, their superiors, colleagues and subordinates; their organization, its goals, resources etc. and many additional issues. They should be sensitive and emphatic to the people, events occurring around them. They must perceive to discern changes in knowledge, attitudes, behavior, values and needs. They must have the ability to get to the real core of the individuals, bear their views, and find out suitable solutions.

Open-minded and receptive

Since the managers will have to face changes, they must be open-minded and receptive to new ideas, processes techniques and innovations and also possess patience and tolerance so that they perceive the problems, as well as diagnose cause and work with other individuals.

Help other make decisions

The strength of future manager would be in helping others make decisions for themselves. Therefore, he should know how to lead group efforts, counsel with individuals and be a good listener. The HR manager should put more emphasis on helping people accomplish personal goals while striving for organizational objectives. This type of environment induces employees to be more productive because they are forced to perform. At the same time, the manager should not avoid the use of ‘negative motivational techniques’ when they may be useful.

Participative

Besides, future HR manager need to be deeply involved in the encouragement of participative management or enrichment of job which may have an impact on job design. The corporate staff should be more related with organizational planning, designing of organization manuals and to advising the chief executive on over-all organizational structure and implementing plans of reorganization.

Strategic thinking new core competence.

The future manager will have to develop core competence in strategic thinking in order to reposition as a strategist in the enterprise. Really, the trend toward more strategy-focused and smaller HR departments was predicted a decade ago. Therefore, HR needs to create its strategic value to the organization. This comprises the ability to make accurate projections on the basis of understanding the goals of the business. This strategic role cannot be outsourced as strategic planning requires expertise within the organization. The trend toward a more strategic HR function may even lead to the creation of new job designations. HR Professionals will likely change into HR Business Professionals who need to understand HR implications as well as business operations and strategy.

Use of analytics and big data

In-house HR professionals will need to develop analytical skills and handle big amount of data to become strategic leaders in their companies. It is predicted that in the coming decade, the analysis of data and metrics will determine the career path of HR professionals. New employees might be required in the HR department to adjust the enhanced use of analytics. The present trends in big data will give new ways for HR to show its value, so we can expect HR departments to desire to hire people who have analytical abilities.

Managing a remote workforce will be the new norm.

There is no doubt that in future HR will have to tackle more the challenge of managing workforce from a distance. Companies will need to take benefit of most productive and influential employees. The trend toward remote workers is an increasing challenge to managers ineffective in managing people from a distance. Automation and diverse expectations will partially solve the issue. Managers will use new technologies for the analysis of output rather than the working time. Results will get more importance than time spent for job. Business expectation from HR will be to produce more results.

Back to the specialist.

Whenever we look back and forth from the paradigm of the specialist to the generalist we were in favor of a generalist and now the shift may be toward the specialist. HR generalists as they are today will extinct. Specialized roles are going to be more dominant. This will happen as the employment scenario becomes more complex with changing employment regulations, law and benefit compliance.
Thus, the future HR manager must look for opportunities to be heavily engaged in human resource planning, selection, orientation, promotions and career planning. He should also discharge several other functions, such as training employees for change systems counseling, designing new incentives systems and building collaborative problem-solving groups.

Conclusion:

The future has many challenges for the managers of human resource management. Bringing Improvements in organizational effectiveness is the most important challenge for HR manager. To create and manage the various HR sub-systems in a way compatible with thrust on more employees’ participation in decision making, result orientation, adaptation to change and build a human organization is a great challenge. Various HR systems like recruitment and selection, job enrichment, performance appraisal, compensation and reward, collective bargaining, and training and development systems must be investigated and improved. Continual advancements in information technology have transformed methods of getting results and performance. Today the organizations also have a tendency to reduce the number of employees and depend more on outsourcing. These challenges become all the more concrete and urgent when the imperative of a higher quality of life in organizations becomes an urgent imperative.

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The role of HRM is to plan, develop and administer policies and programs designed to make optimum use of an organizations human resources. It is that part of management which is concerned with the people at work and with their relationship within enterprises. Its objectives are: (a) effective utilization of human resources, (b) desirable working relationships among all members of the organizations, and (c) maximum individual development. Human resources function as primarily administrative and professional. HR staff focused on administering benefits and other payroll and operational functions and didn’t think of themselves as playing a part in the firm’s overall strategy.

HR professionals have an all encompassing role. They are required to have a thorough knowledge of the organization and its intricacies and complexities. The ultimate goal of every HR person should be to develop a linkage between the employee and organization because employee’s commitment to the organization is crucial.

The first and foremost role of HR personnel is to impart continuous education to the employees about the changes and challenges facing the country in general and their organization in particular. The employees should know about the balance sheet of the company, sales progress, and diversification of plans, share price movements, turnover and other details about the company. The HR professionals should impart such knowledge to all employees through small booklets, video films and lectures.

The primary responsibilities of Human Resource managers are:

• To develop a thorough knowledge of corporate culture, plans and
• To act as an internal change agent and consultant
• To initiate change and act as an expert and facilitator
• To actively involve in company’s strategy formulation
• To keep communication line open between the HRD function and individuals and groups both within and outside the organization\
• To identify and evolve HRD strategies in consonance with overall business
• To facilitate the development of various organizational teams and their working relationship with other teams and
• To try and relate people and work so that the organization objectives are achieved efficiently and
• To diagnose problems and determine appropriate solution particularly in the human resource
• To provide co-ordination and support services for the delivery of HRD programmes and services
• To evaluate the impact of an HRD intervention or to conduct research so as to identify, develop or test how HRD In general has improved individual and organizational

Different management gurus have deliberated different roles for the HR manager based on the major responsibilities that they full fill in the organization. Few of the commonly accepted models are enumerated below.

Pat Mc Lagan has suggested nine roles that are played by HR practitioners

1. To bring the issues and trends concerning an organization’s external and internal people to the attention of strategic decision makers and to recommend long term strategies to support organizational excellence and
2. To design and prepare HR systems and actions for implementation so that they can produce maximum impact on organizational performance and
3. To facilitate the development and implementation of strategies for transforming one’s own organization by pursuing values and
4. To create a positive relationship with the customer’s by providing them with the best services; to utilize the resources to the maximum and to create commitment among the people who help the organization to meet the customers needs whether directly connected or indirectly connected to the
5. To identify the learning needs hence to design and develop structured learning programmes and materials to help accelerate learning for individuals and
6. To enable the individuals and groups to work in new situations and to expend \and change their views so that people in power move from authoritarian to participative models of
7. To help employees to assess their competencies, values and goals so that they can identify, plan and implement development
8. He also assists the individual employee to add values in the workplace and to focus on the interventions and interpersonal skills for helping people change and sustain
9. He assesses the HRD practices and programmes and their impact and to communicate results so that the organization and its people accelerate their change and

According to Dave Ulrich HR play’s four key roles.

1. Strategic Partner Role-turning strategy into results by building organizations that create value;
2. Change Agent Role– making change happen, and in particular, help it happen fast
3. Employees Champion Role—managing the talent or the intellectual capital within a firm
4. Administrative Role—trying to get things to happen better, faster and

The role HR in organizations has undergone an extensive change and many organizations have gradually oriented themselves from the traditional personnel management to a human resources management approach. The basic approach of HRM is to perceive the organization as a whole. Its emphasis is not only on production and productivity but also on the quality of life. It seeks to achieve the paramount development of human resources and the utmost possible socio-economic development.

Current Classification of HR roles

According to R.L Mathis and J. H. Jackson (2010) several roles can be fulfilled by HR management. The nature and extent of these roles depend on both what upper management wants HR management to do and what competencies the HR staff have demonstrated. Three roles are typically identified for HR. The focus of each of them, as shown in Figure 1.is elaborated below:

Current Classification of HR roles

1. Administrative Role of HR

The administrative role of HR management has been heavily oriented to administration and recordkeeping including essential legal paperwork and policy implementation. Major changes have happened in the administrative role of HR during the recent years. Two major shifts driving the transformation of the administrative role are: Greater use of technology and Outsourcing.

Technology has been widely used to improve the administrative efficiency of HR and the responsiveness of HR to employees and managers, more HR functions are becoming available electronically or are being done on the Internet using Web-based technology. Technology is being used in most HR activities, from employment applications and employee benefits enrollments to e-learning using Internet-based resources.

Increasingly, many HR administrative functions are being outsourced to vendors. This outsourcing of HR administrative activities has grown dramatically in HR areas such as employee assistance (counseling), retirement planning, benefits administration, payroll services, and outplacement services.

2.    Operational and Employee Advocate Role for HR

HR managers manage most HR activities in line with the strategies and operations that have been identified by management and serves as employee “champion” for employee issues and concerns.

HR often has been viewed as the “employee advocate” in organizations. They act as the voice for employee concerns, and spend considerable time on HR “crisis management,” dealing with employee problems that are both work-related and not work-related. Employee advocacy helps to ensure fair and equitable treatment for employees regardless of personal background or circumstances.

Sometimes the HR’s advocate role may create conflict with operating managers. However, without the HR advocate role, employers could face even more lawsuits and regulatory complaints than they do now.

The operational role requires HR professionals to cooperate with various departmental and operating managers and supervisors in order to identify and implement needed programs and policies in the organization. Operational activities are tactical in nature. Compliance with equal employment opportunity and other laws is ensured, employment applications are processed, current openings are filled through interviews, supervisors are trained, safety problems are resolved, and wage and benefit questions are answered. For carrying out these activities HR manager matches HR activities with the strategies of the organization.

3.     Strategic Role for HR

The administrative role traditionally has been the dominant role for HR. However, as Figure 1.4 indicates that a broader transformation in HR is needed so that significantly less HR time and fewer HR staffs are used just for clerical work.

Differences between the operational and strategic roles exist in a number of HR areas. The strategic HR role means that HR professionals are proactive in addressing business realities and focusing on future business needs, such as strategic planning, compensation strategies, the performance of HR, and measuring its results. However, in some organizations, HR often does not play a key role in formulating the strategies for the organization as a whole; instead it merely carries them out through HR activities.

Many executives, managers, and HR professionals are increasingly seeing the need for HR management to become a greater strategic contributor to the “business” success of organizations. HR should be responsible for knowing what the true cost of human capital is for an employer. For example, it may cost two times key employees’ annual salaries to replace them if they leave. Turnover can be controlled though HR activities, and if it is successful in saving the company money with good retention and talent management strategies, those may be important contributions to the bottom line of organizational performance.

The role of HR as a strategic business partner is often described as “having a seat at the table,” and contributing to the strategic directions and success of the organization. That means HR is involved in devising strategy in addition to implementing strategy. Part of HR’s contribution is to have financial expertise and to produce financial results, not just to boost employee morale or administrative efficiencies. Therefore, a significant concern for chief financial officers (CFOs) is whether HR executives are equipped to help them to plan and meet financial requirements.

However, even though this strategic role of HR is recognized, many organizations still need to make significant progress toward fulfilling it. Some examples of areas where strategic contributions can be made by HR are:

• Evaluating mergers and acquisitions for organizational “compatibility,” structural changes, and staffing needs
• Conducting workforce planning to anticipate the retirement of employees at all levels and identify workforce expansion in organizational strategic plans
• Leading site selection efforts for new facilities or transferring operations to international outsourcing
• locations based on workforce needs
• Instituting HR management systems to reduce administrative time, equipment, and staff by using HR technology
• Working with executives to develop a revised sales
• compensation and incentives plan as new products

It is the era when for the competitive triumph of the organization there is a need to involve HRM significantly in an integrated manner, which demands such capabilities from the HR specialists.

The role of HR shifted from a facilitator to a functional peer with competencies in other functions, and is acknowledged as an equal partner by others. The HR is motivated to contribute to organizational objectives of profitability and customer satisfaction, and is seen as a vehicle for realization of quality development. The department has a responsibility for monitoring employee satisfaction, since it is seen as substitute to customer satisfaction.

According to McKinsey’s 7-S framework model HR plays the role of a catalyst for the organization. According to this framework, effective organizational change is a complex relationship between seven S’s. HRM is a total matching process between the three Hard S’s (Strategy, Structure and Systems) and the four Soft S’s (Style, Staff, Skills and Super-ordinate Goals). Clearly, all the S’s have to complement each other and have to be aligned towards a single corporate vision for the organization to be effective. It has to be realized that most of the S’s are determined directly or indirectly by the way Human Resources are managed, and therefore, HRM must be a part of the total business strategy.

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