HR at the crossroads
The HR
function in large companies is now faced with a stark choice: either to evolve
and make a significant, and strategic, contribution to the future prosperity of
the organisation or be diminished and dissolved back into the business. In the
end, virtually all HR administration could be outsourced, according to a new
report from business advisory firm Deloitte.
Deloitte’s
report Shaping Up: Evolving the HR function for the 21st century suggests
that few HR departments are equipped to adapt to the strategic role of advising
business leaders on re-sizing their organisations whilst retaining its key
talent. This is the challenge that will characterise the role of the HR
function in the next few years due to rapidly changing economics, reduced
growth and an increased numbers of redundancy programmes, the report
says.
Aaron
Alburey, a director in Deloitte’s human capital consulting practice and one of
the report authors said: “HR is at a crossroads. It needs to become capable of
contributing to board level discussions and make transactional HR a secondary
function. If it fails to do so its functions will be handed over to individual
businesses within the organisation to manage for themselves and corporate
strategy will continue to be determined without any significant input from HR.
“If these fundamental challenges are not addressed
who can blame the business from wrestling control of the people agenda.” Aaron
Alburey said.
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29 September 2009
