HR Is Not Your Hammer But Your Strategic Partner.

17 February 2017

HR has been known for long time as the bad part of the organization, its where discipline, termination and warning happened to employees, top management and supervisors have been using HR as their hammer on employees which let the HR been perceived by employees as their enemy and executioner, but this is not the top management and supervisors fault alone its also the HR fault that they agree to been perceived in this way by the employees rather than as their partner.

HR has come long way than before where the admin work is only the main thing and major role for HR staff, today HR professional are providing professional work for the organization including the normal admin work, succession planning and management, training need analysis, performance management, talent management, leadership program are all HR programs that lead by HR professional. This fact is so true that today HR has become in many successful organization as strategic partner like finance and marketing where before HR has no place or business to do with top management meetings or discussing strategy of the organization, but today HR is the main role player in the organization strategy, business operation and even finance.

Although HR has been as cost unit and still many organization still treat HR as a cost unit and try to cut their staff short, the program and training and any program related to HR to cut the cost, but at the same time they cannot ignore the fact that HR today is strategic unit that has strategic role in the organization. Organization today mostly the successful ones are not using HR as their hammer anymore or just occasionally when its really necessary and needed, they let the HR to take the strategic role and lead the organization program and support HR staff to perform their duties and responsibilities as they do to the marketing and finance staff, which in return provide them with the best performance and output of the employees and obtain competitive advantage among other competitors.

When you see an organization using HR as a hammer you can immorality conclude that this organization has high turnover, unstable rate of production, high unsatisfied employees and high presser and stressful atmosphere and less creative and productive environment. This kind of organization you can also conclude that HR manager position is always has high turnover in HR manager position as well, since it has high negative aspect that make it hard for a human to continue doing it for long time, the organization will always face problems, crisis, and even bankruptcy if it continued in this path of using HR as a hammer in a world that HR and human become the capital for the organization to successes, business continuity and competitive advantage.

Dave Ulrich quote state the importance of HR "People will change when they see that the change will help them reach their goals. If the CHRO sees that the HR transformation that others desire will help the CHRO reach his or her goals, then there will be more support. Absent this reasoning, the CHRO may go through the motions, but the transformation will not be sincere or lasting."

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development