People Management is key

Christina Lattimer 21 Feb 2012

As a Manager for over 20 years before moving into an HR role, and subsequently an HR Strategist. I found that the clarity around the function of HR and the line manager was frequently blurred. As a line manager, I valued the HR function in 3 distinct areas: 1. To provide protection via expertise and up-to-date knowledge on employment law. 2. To provide a strategic organisational development function aligning people skills, recruitment, performance management with overall business objectives and strategy 3. To develop corporate policy enabling managers to undertake local restructure, redundancy, performance management, hiring nad firing etc. so that as a manager I could flex locally, whilst maintaining consistency corporately. In my experience within the HR function, I sometimes found that managers valued HR for intervention within transactional functions which were really their responsibility. The classic situation where managers are attracted to the role because a) they are good at the task, b) it is a means of career progression, dilute the skill required to actually manage people, which infact should be their main function, not an add on. HR need to make sure that Managers don't depend on them for the transactional parts of their job and during the recruitment process, attract managers who actually are expert at managing people and their performance primarily. I often wonder if HR in their desire to prove their worth have been unwitting conspirators in sapping the confidence of managers to manage people. Only when the roles are clear and recruitment to managerial roles are carried out with a clear professional requirement for good people management will the problem resolve itself.
 CHANDRAMALA
 PGDM 2ND SEM.