Despite the wishful thinking of many traditional Human Resource (HR) pundits for it being the other way round, the fundamentals on which HR function survived in business organisations have been shaken up, of late.Blame it on information technology, communication technology etc., the significance of knowledge, talent and skills in employees is fast diminishing.Many people, especially from the learning and development, performance management and recruitment areas of the HR function, may like to vehemently deny this predicament.Yet the reality is writ large on the wall - the traditional way organisations managed their people no longer holds good.The world was used to a particular way of recruiting, developing and retaining employees in business organisations.This "way" had evolved over hundreds of years of social progression.All the while no one could have visualised the way technological development could outsmart social development, especially in the way it happened in the past few years.The trend is bound to become even harsher in the times ahead.How the socio-technological development arena ended up in imbalance is perceivable.Socially, individuals had to have knowledge, talent and skills to be "successful" in life.So, in functional families (the smallest units of society), the elders, like the heads of the family, played the role of the provider of knowledge, talent and skill to the younger ones.So, mostly, a blacksmith's son became a blacksmith, an undertaker's son became an undertaker and a housewife's daughter became a housewife, all through the process of in-house generation of knowledge, talent and skills, both through nature and nurture.The post-Industrial Revolution world modified this trend into the workers', supervisors' and managers' development using the larger social platforms.The apprenticeship training, most of the on-the-job training etc.Followed this development pattern.The personnel manager-turned HR manager, presumably being driven by the principles of management, behavioural sciences etc., too moved on, trying to manage the stability of the organisation within its structure, ensuring that the required knowledge, talent and skills were available among its people to carry on with organisational activities.In business organisations, while on one hand it was the business activities shaped up by defined or undefined objectives, on the other hand was the organisational system which facilitated such business activities.This way, the fact always remained that business organisations had two components - the business and the organisation, which mostly related to people.It is a different story that in the classical "owner driven" ones, business (and the profit it generated) usually took the upper hand.So, the goal of most business organisations had been profit, gained through business activities, conducted "using" organisations, over a relatively longer period of time.On the other hand, what the organisation had were knowledge, talent and skills of its people that facilitated business activities.It was generally fine till about a decade ago.Till then the pattern of acquiring, developing and maintaining knowledge, talent and skills in the form of people were in place.Then came the technology revolution (or probably just the beginning of it).With this, if you looked just for knowledge, you got it at a click of the mouse (soon going to be replaced by thought!) though in the form of information.Talent (which probably is the ability to utilise knowledge), on the other hand, has become highly perishable, thanks to the rapid pace of development of technology.So, unlike in the earlier times, the lifespan of talent has now become too short.Unfortunately, not many individuals have the time and inclination to constantly upgrade their "talents".The pattern is the same even in organisations.The result is the continuous process of "talent acquisition" (the modern name for recruitment) rather than talent development within the organisation.The use and throw nature of talent is seen most in modern business areas like IT and IT enabled ones, services, operations etc.In many organisations in these areas of business, talent acquisition has broken away from HR function, often assuming a much larger size and significance than the original HR function itself.This predicament has arisen more due to the proven business alignment of talent acquisition as a function, contrasting from the rather clerical and clinical nature of the conventional HR function.Let us now look at "skill".Probably, skill can be viewed as the way talent is put to use to get the final results in terms of achieved goals of the organisation.Skill, the way it is perceived today, is individualistic.The emerging organisational scenario is team-based rather than individual-based.So, even if you have a highly skilled individual, he / she can become redundant if the general work environment (at the basic level, created by teams) does not complement making use of the individual's skills.Of what use then, is the unutilised skill?Generally speaking, a tech-savvy young employee does not have to depend on the elders or superiors for knowledge.Talent then becomes just a mindset or attitude to use the available knowledge at work.So, talent development needs attitudinal development.Skills are useless if the work environment is not conducive.If it has to be conducive, there has to be team-work mindset which is nothing but a collective collaboration.Emotional Intelligence (EI) and relationship skills have large roles in forming attitude and mindset in of individuals and teams.All these take us to the fact that HR function's role is shifting from human resource management to human relationship management.But in a fast-paced work environment with high employee turnover and when most business owners looking for quick profits (ethical or unethical), it is unlikely that the HR managers will get the resources and support to manage human relationships in organisations professionally.This, once again, points to the need to change mindsets at the owner / business leader / corporate head levels.Neglected human relationship factors lead to workplace blues which become detrimental to organisational effectiveness.But in a business environment that cannot have long term goals, hardly any one out of them will have the time and inclination to look at aspects like endearing relationships and work-life balance among employees.Even though it may make many conventional HR professional uncomfortable, with the diminishing significance of knowledge, talent and skill in organisations, the downslide of the significance of HR function is appearing to be (or probably has become) inevitable.With most of the components of the conventional HR function (like recruitment, training, salary and wage administration, performance management etc.) branching out and finding independence (and even outsource-ability), no one should be surprised if HR function itself withers away in a foreseeable future.What probably will remain in a business organisation will be the business operations (BOs) involving the nitty-gritty of the business and business administration (BAs) which involves the way BOs are facilitated by its people.What may rise out of the ashes of the conventional HR function would be the BA function which would encompass the entire range of today's HR, administration and facility management functions.Even though the scenario as described above may appear to be scary to those HR professionals who resist changes, the way HR function is treated by many organistaions these days is reason enough for intellectually forward-looking HR professionals to come together and take the initiative to re-structure the function, make the changes seep through into the business management institutions and get it aligned to the business goals, eliminating the scenario of the dipping significance of knowledge, talent and skills in organisations.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The Diminishing Significance of Knowledge, Talent and Skills in Business Organisations
Despite the wishful thinking of many traditional Human Resource (HR) pundits for it being the other way round, the fundamentals on which HR function survived in business organisations have been shaken up, of late.Blame it on information technology, communication technology etc., the significance of knowledge, talent and skills in employees is fast diminishing.Many people, especially from the learning and development, performance management and recruitment areas of the HR function, may like to vehemently deny this predicament.Yet the reality is writ large on the wall - the traditional way organisations managed their people no longer holds good.The world was used to a particular way of recruiting, developing and retaining employees in business organisations.This "way" had evolved over hundreds of years of social progression.All the while no one could have visualised the way technological development could outsmart social development, especially in the way it happened in the past few years.The trend is bound to become even harsher in the times ahead.How the socio-technological development arena ended up in imbalance is perceivable.Socially, individuals had to have knowledge, talent and skills to be "successful" in life.So, in functional families (the smallest units of society), the elders, like the heads of the family, played the role of the provider of knowledge, talent and skill to the younger ones.So, mostly, a blacksmith's son became a blacksmith, an undertaker's son became an undertaker and a housewife's daughter became a housewife, all through the process of in-house generation of knowledge, talent and skills, both through nature and nurture.The post-Industrial Revolution world modified this trend into the workers', supervisors' and managers' development using the larger social platforms.The apprenticeship training, most of the on-the-job training etc.Followed this development pattern.The personnel manager-turned HR manager, presumably being driven by the principles of management, behavioural sciences etc., too moved on, trying to manage the stability of the organisation within its structure, ensuring that the required knowledge, talent and skills were available among its people to carry on with organisational activities.In business organisations, while on one hand it was the business activities shaped up by defined or undefined objectives, on the other hand was the organisational system which facilitated such business activities.This way, the fact always remained that business organisations had two components - the business and the organisation, which mostly related to people.It is a different story that in the classical "owner driven" ones, business (and the profit it generated) usually took the upper hand.So, the goal of most business organisations had been profit, gained through business activities, conducted "using" organisations, over a relatively longer period of time.On the other hand, what the organisation had were knowledge, talent and skills of its people that facilitated business activities.It was generally fine till about a decade ago.Till then the pattern of acquiring, developing and maintaining knowledge, talent and skills in the form of people were in place.Then came the technology revolution (or probably just the beginning of it).With this, if you looked just for knowledge, you got it at a click of the mouse (soon going to be replaced by thought!) though in the form of information.Talent (which probably is the ability to utilise knowledge), on the other hand, has become highly perishable, thanks to the rapid pace of development of technology.So, unlike in the earlier times, the lifespan of talent has now become too short.Unfortunately, not many individuals have the time and inclination to constantly upgrade their "talents".The pattern is the same even in organisations.The result is the continuous process of "talent acquisition" (the modern name for recruitment) rather than talent development within the organisation.The use and throw nature of talent is seen most in modern business areas like IT and IT enabled ones, services, operations etc.In many organisations in these areas of business, talent acquisition has broken away from HR function, often assuming a much larger size and significance than the original HR function itself.This predicament has arisen more due to the proven business alignment of talent acquisition as a function, contrasting from the rather clerical and clinical nature of the conventional HR function.Let us now look at "skill".Probably, skill can be viewed as the way talent is put to use to get the final results in terms of achieved goals of the organisation.Skill, the way it is perceived today, is individualistic.The emerging organisational scenario is team-based rather than individual-based.So, even if you have a highly skilled individual, he / she can become redundant if the general work environment (at the basic level, created by teams) does not complement making use of the individual's skills.Of what use then, is the unutilised skill?Generally speaking, a tech-savvy young employee does not have to depend on the elders or superiors for knowledge.Talent then becomes just a mindset or attitude to use the available knowledge at work.So, talent development needs attitudinal development.Skills are useless if the work environment is not conducive.If it has to be conducive, there has to be team-work mindset which is nothing but a collective collaboration.Emotional Intelligence (EI) and relationship skills have large roles in forming attitude and mindset in of individuals and teams.All these take us to the fact that HR function's role is shifting from human resource management to human relationship management.But in a fast-paced work environment with high employee turnover and when most business owners looking for quick profits (ethical or unethical), it is unlikely that the HR managers will get the resources and support to manage human relationships in organisations professionally.This, once again, points to the need to change mindsets at the owner / business leader / corporate head levels.Neglected human relationship factors lead to workplace blues which become detrimental to organisational effectiveness.But in a business environment that cannot have long term goals, hardly any one out of them will have the time and inclination to look at aspects like endearing relationships and work-life balance among employees.Even though it may make many conventional HR professional uncomfortable, with the diminishing significance of knowledge, talent and skill in organisations, the downslide of the significance of HR function is appearing to be (or probably has become) inevitable.With most of the components of the conventional HR function (like recruitment, training, salary and wage administration, performance management etc.) branching out and finding independence (and even outsource-ability), no one should be surprised if HR function itself withers away in a foreseeable future.What probably will remain in a business organisation will be the business operations (BOs) involving the nitty-gritty of the business and business administration (BAs) which involves the way BOs are facilitated by its people.What may rise out of the ashes of the conventional HR function would be the BA function which would encompass the entire range of today's HR, administration and facility management functions.Even though the scenario as described above may appear to be scary to those HR professionals who resist changes, the way HR function is treated by many organistaions these days is reason enough for intellectually forward-looking HR professionals to come together and take the initiative to re-structure the function, make the changes seep through into the business management institutions and get it aligned to the business goals, eliminating the scenario of the dipping significance of knowledge, talent and skills in organisations.
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