Hello everyone, in the previous topic we were talking about Human Resource Management (HRM). Today we are going to talk about the Functions of Human Resource Management or HRM, HR Competencies Required, SCAMPER Technique, and Challenges in the Role of HR.

Functions of HRM

The overview of the functions of HRM are as follow-

Manpower Planning or Human Resource Planning

This means determining the manpower requirement of the company both in terms of number and qualities of the HR. So this function basically ensures that the company has suitable access to talent ensures future business success. The main question answered at this stage is how many more people do I require or do I have an excess of them.

Job Analysis

It is a systematic process of gathering, documenting, and analyzing data about the job profile. It produces information on the job in detail such as the roles and responsibilities, work location and pay scale, etc. It also tells what kind of people will do hired for jobs such as what should be the minimum, education, work experience, etc. This job analysis is usually prepared by HR sake with the managers.

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the process by which the potential candidate is informed about the job profile and selecting the right candidate from this pool of candidates is known as selections. In the practices scenario, you will hear the term recruitment for the entire process from informing the candidate about the job’s role to selecting them so don’t get confused.

Training and Development

Many times it happens that there is a gap in the exception of the jobs and competency of the employee than these gaps can be in the competency of a new employee or for an existing employee to fill this gap the employee is trained to upskill them and to develop their skills.

For e.g.- I want to have hands-on ms excel so I would arrange training for them again this can be decided by HR or the request can come from the managers of these companies.

Performance Management System

This function covers setting the exceptions for each job role and measuring and giving feedback on the employee performance.

Compensation Planning and Remuneration

This covers financial and non-financial rewards such as salary, bonus, incentive, food coupon, etc.

Employee Retention and Motivation

This function is important because we don’t want the staff to change frequently thus, HR comes up with interesting and creative ways of motivating employees n such as motivation to work, welfare, health, and safety cover in this function.

Labour Laws and Statuatory Compliances

Every company has to follow the law of the lands that are laws of the country on which the company is operating this function covers laws and compliances such and provision fund or PF, maternity benefits, minimum wages, etc.

Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

HRIS is the function of maintaining data such as recruitment, personal details of an employee, compensation, attendance, training taken by the employee, etc. Earlier it is used to maintain in hard copies nowadays it is used maintained in digital form.

HR Branding

Now we all know that most companies focused on the marketing and branding of their products and service right there are so many marketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. HR branding is similar but here instead of branding products and services, it is the company itself that is marketing, and branding is done with the internship to attract more talent to join the company. HR branding is a new and creative function.

So, for e.g.– You have seen some pictures of companies parties on Linkedin, etc or you can see some testimonials of some existing employees on how good the learning curve for them, or how good the culture of the company is, etc. All these help to join the company and comps under HR branding.

HR Competencies Required

Here are the competencies required by an HR-

Communication

An HR has to constantly interact with the managers of different departments, employees, etc. Hence, communication both in the verbal or non-verbal form is a very important skill that an HR required. This includes proficiency in writing, reading, listening, and speaking.

One of the places where HR needs to use his communication skills are negotiation skills, he is negotiating with the new candidate while hiring them he also makes use of it while conducting team-building activities and giving effective feedback. Interpersonal skills are an important aspect of communication skills.

Let’s say a manager does not have strong interpersonal communication skills and he is rude to his subordinate or team members at times, in such cases HR tries to short such issues between them so that the employee does not take the rude behavior of the manager on his ego and does not think to leave the company, thus strong inert-personal communication skills are important for an HR.

Professionalism

While HR hires more employees for a company he acts as a brand ambassador for the company after all he is the first person that a new candidate interacts with and hence, it is very important that he is professional in his behavior and does what he commits.

For e.g– A new employee joins a company now let’s say the new joinee asks HR for some details or documents such as a salary slip or clarity in leaves and the HR commits that he respond to it within the specified time in this case the Hr should be responsible for completing his task within the committed time.

Else, he should communicate to the person about the possibilities, also as an Hr it is important that you should follow the rules such as coming on time or follow the proper dress code, etc, because you do not follow the rules such as coming on time or follow the proper dress code, etc. because of you do not follow the rules yourself you will not be in the position to keep another employee in check think of it.

In this way how would you feel if the class monitor making noise himself still kept telling you to keep quiet, not good right? Hence it is important that an HR should be professional in his attitude and follows all the rules set for the employee so that the people trust his words.

Empathy

Usually part of the office how goes into solving the issues of the staff. Hence, it is very important for HR to have a strong Empathy for other people. Let’s take an example to understand the importance of this competency, lets’s say grooming urban has an employee Tushar.

Now one day Tushar approaches the Hr restlessly and tells him that his grandma has passed away now what should the Hr do in such a situation? First, he should try to console him, give him strength and up quickly update his manager about this emergency and both the manager and HR should plan for his pending work and quickly grant him leave.  In this situation, one can be flexible with the leave formalities.

For example– he can apply for formal leave in the system later when he joins back. The Hr could also have been natural and extremely formal. In this case but he is proactive in managing his work and in the parable he is empathetic towards the Tushar. Do you see how can he show empathy in this situation there may be various such situations there may be an HR may across in his everyday work.                                                                       

So, HR must understand this case individually and should have high empathy for people.  

Strategic Thinking and Planning

This is again a very important competency for HR. Since the human factor is involved in the HR role and we know how dynamic that is a lot of time HR may not have a standard solution to this problem. Hence, it is very important that we are able to think strategically so that we can co-relate the different factors and think from a long-term perspective.

One example of this let’s say that there is training available for the marketing team the Hr analysis the pros and cons and realized that even those this is costly training it will lease to a competitive advantage for the company in the long run so in such as the HR can plan for such training this was an example of strategic thinking and planning.

Another example of this can be when various components are added to the salary to motivate employees to perform better. So, let’s say an employee has a salary of 6000 p.a. Now the company may say that on the basis of the performance of the company and the performance of the employee at the end of the year the company will give him 5000 p.a. extra. Now the two factors on which the extra amount will be given are-

• Performance of the company
• Performance of the employee

Right, why did the HR add these two factors so the performance of the employee will motivate the employee to work hard and perform better while the performance of the company factor is there so that the employee can feel like he is a part of the company that all the employee are part of the organization this is an example of strategic thinking and planning for employee motivation.

Domain Expertise

It is very important for HR to have very good domain knowledge about labor laws, payroll processing, soft skills, employee motivation techniques, etc. A lot of times only HR has knowledge of some areas such as labor laws and statutory compliances.

Hence, if an HR has a stronghold on the subjects he or she can save a lot of penalties for the companies which are imposed by the government the company does not follow the labor laws and compliances usually the founders of the companies do not have knowledge about the topics like labor laws and hence, they are dependent on the HR for such expertise.

Learning Acumen

The HR domain is an ever-evolving domain and will remain so because of the human factor involved in it. It is very important that HR will keep himself updated with the latest research in motivation techniques such as how to engage a workforce of different age groups and with the different lifestyles, training and development methods, HR branding, HR analytics, etc.

Adaptability

Since grooming urban is a start-up they are always short on resources well actually it is the same for all companies. So, HR has always a limited budget for hiring new employees also if HR plans to arrange a training season for the marketing team but he does not have enough funds or enough space. You may also face such challenges when you entered the industry but it is important that you take this to find the challenges positively and this to find the solution for the same this will greatly have an impact on your success as an HR.

Business Acumen

It defines as the keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with business activities in a manner that is likely to lead to a good outcome. In other words, having a knack for business is known as Business Acumen. Basically, HR must be quick in connecting dots to understand the business. He need not be an expert in it.

Let’s say HR is having a discussion with the founder on senior managers on the business tracks. Now if HR does not understand the business the competitors the key terms related to business like revenue, margins, turnover, etc. How will he or she will able to understand or give away inputs for the business technology, therefore business acumen is an important competency to be a successful HR.

Cultural Awareness

With globalization and people traveling across the country to work we see a huge diversity in the workplace. Hence, it is important for Hr to be sensitive and have cultural; awareness. It is the same in grooming urban where the employee from south India, north India, and a couple of them even from Nepal in such a case it is important that the HR of grooming urban is sensitive towards people and was culturally aware.

Time Management

When people are more organized in their work it cuts a lot of unproductive time out of their work hours, and hence they are more productive. Since, the Hr of grooming urban has so many functions to care such as manpower planning, job analysis, recruitment and selections, training and development, HR branding, and more it is important that he had the scale of time management.

Thinking out of the box

As we know that HR’s usually short of resources such as money, budgets, manpower, etc. Hence, it is important for them to be creative and efficiently use the resource at hand.

Let’s do an exercise to build on our creativity. Let us assume you have a coffee mug now take 15 seconds and think of creative ways in which you can use this mug.

For e.g– You can use it to grow plants now you think of more such please write it down in the comments well. We thought a couple of them we can use to make a toothbrush holder or even a spoon holder. We are sure you have thought of a few too.

What we do right now is an example of brainstorming all we simply thought about the uses of a simple mug right. HR does such activities in the office when we have come up with a creative solution to our problems. Now there is a very popular technique used for brainstorming. This is the SCAMPER technique. 

Before we see what it is.

It is important to understand that “ no idea is a bad idea and we must take inspiration from other ideas to create more ideas”.

Once, we apply SCAMPER   we can decide which ideas are worth taking forward. Now let us understand what is this SCAMPER technique.

SCAMPER stands for-

Substitute

Combine

Adapt

Modify

Put to another use

Eliminate

Reverse

Let us now again take the coffee mug as an example and use the SCAMPER technique on it.

Starting it with SCAMPER

S– Substitute- We can substitute products, services, materials, place, time or process, etc. with something else. Can we substitute the commonly use ceramic material for something else for making something useful such as flavor coating is a fully medieval mug and add a layer of some insulating material for making it still hot for longer.

C– Combine- To assemble or combine can we combine a coffee mug and make something useful.

A– Adapt- Means changing according to the external adverse condition can we change something in a mug to adopt the extreme adverse in the condition such as the extreme coat perhaps add a small battery at the bottom to keep the beverage warm for a longer duration.

M– Modify- So can we modify the shape of the mug to make it more interesting or maybe we can add two handles add on each side so that it can hold it easily.

P– Put to another use- Can we put the mug for another use can we change its purpose maybe we can use it as a paperweight or photo frame.

E– Eliminate- Can we eliminate something from the mug to change it. Maybe we can eliminate it to make it a pen holder.

R– Reverse- Can we reverse it in some manner to take it to use. Maybe we can use it upside down to use it as a decoration piece or we can use reverse it back to use it how it was used earlier.

So, you see we thought of so many ideas with the help of SCAMPER techniques.

Tech Savy

We all know how rapidly technology grows today and everything becomes digital slowly. Since most of the data is now stored digitally it is important for HR to be tech-savvy.

For eg- you have to be good at ms-excel, etc other times you can learn data validation, v lookup, and pivot table in MS PowerPoint you can learn to work on smart art, animations, graphs, etc.

HR Analytics

HR Analytics means logically analyzing the HR data such as data about recruitment, talent management, employee engagement, performance appraisal, etc to ensure better decision-making in these areas. Let us look at a few examples to understand them better. An example for it is can be while hiring now HR uses a lot of job portals while hiring the candidate such as Naukri.com, Shine.com, Times jobs, LinkedIn, etc.

So, he looks up at the data and sees which of these portals is working out best for it that is using which portals he able to hire maximum and good qualities candidates, he can also look at the data to understand which training is gives to best results in developing the competency of the employee all these are uses of the HR analytics.

Challenges in The Role of HR

Challenges the HR has to face are as follow-

1. The HR role is not seen as a revenue-generating function.

2. Difficult to quantity their work.

3.   Practical knowledge of the HR domain is limited reasons limited practical knowledge of HR domain-

• Information related to the HR field is confidential.
• The gap in the theory taught at educational institutions and the practical situation on the ground.
• The size of the HR team is small and hence opportunities to learn from others become limited.

So, that is all for today guys see you in our next blog. If you like our article please don’t forget to share it with others & follow our Instagram page for your daily dose of Motivation.

Thank You,

Regards

Grooming Urban

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