A gap in the tertiary education of HR aspirants is marginalising the profession now and poses a serious threat to its participation in senior business decisions in the future, writes Wendy Attwater
A gap in the tertiary education of HR aspirants is marginalising the profession now and poses a serious threat to its participation in senior business decisions in the future, writes Wendy Attwater
I had an interesting discussion with a number of senior human resources managers recently. We talked about the ways that human resources had changed over the past decade or so and talked about some of the changes that were likely to occur over the next decade. Our conversation was prompted by a number of interesting articles we had read that looked at the rapidly changing face of human resources. A theme running through these articles was that the focus of human resources activities was moving to organisation development and change, strategic planning, employee and management development, career planning, remuneration and rewards, performance appraisal and HRIS.
No longer is human resources being seen as a standalone personnel function, often a centre of administration – the rapid improvement of human resource information systems and employee self service have moved the focus of much of the lower levels of human resource activity from a transaction base to more value-added activities. Human resources staff at all levels are now much more involved in the ‘business’ of the organisation and so human resources is seen as a key activity in many organisations. The term ‘strategic partner’ is being used by many to describe this new role. In Australia in particular, workplace negotiation has replaced dispute settlement via conciliation and arbitration and a centralised wage fixing system. These changes mean that the skills required of human resources staff, particularly junior human resources staff, are changing.
In recent years I have had the opportunity to recruit and manage quite a number of junior human resources staff. I did not specifically look for human resources graduates. From my experience, there was nothing in the human resources education they had received that meant human resources graduates were better equipped for a human resources role than were graduates of other courses. I looked more for an aptitude for the business world, someone who had a strong desire to succeed, a problem-solving mindset and a customer-service focus. From my experience, these competencies were not those being developed in human resources courses in universities today.
So what is actually being taught in human resources courses in our universities? Do these courses properly equip students to deal with the workplaces of today and of the future? With Dr Beverley Lloyd-Walker from Victoria University we recently conducted a study of the human resources courses on offer around Australia and found some interesting omissions in what we teach our future human resources professionals.
Areas well covered in the courses studied included a general understanding of business, organisation theory and behaviour, and industrial relations. However significant gaps were identified in areas which have developed as a result of the move to decentralised workplace negotiation and the need for human resources managers to become strategic partners: negotiation, strategic planning skills and rewards planning skills. Specifically, we found that many of the courses studied could be completed without the inclusion of any strategic planning subject, without a change management subject, and without any study of performance management or rewards management.
In my own research, conducted over the past two years, I interviewed a number of the most senior human resource managers at the top 50 companies on the Australian Stock Exchange as well as a number of directors and senior consultants to these companies. One of the interesting findings from this research was the trend in some areas for high level human resources advice to boards to be sought through external consultants and not from the human resources department in that company. There appear to be two main reasons for this. Firstly, as investor scrutiny in many of these companies increases, directors have sought external advice in order to be able to point to ‘expert and external’ advice, thus increasing the perception of independence. There was a general feeling that advice sought internally could be construed to not be independent.
Secondly, there was a general feeling from directors that the human resources department inside companies was sometimes more concerned with process rather than advice and guidance that supported the strategic aims of the organisation. Is this a fair criticism of human resources? It’s impossible to say specifically without further research, however my own experience tells me that in some cases it is probably right. In many cases quite junior human resources staff are often put into positions where they have frequent contact with senior managers in organisations and these managers often have expectations that these junior staff members will know more about strategy and planning than they do. As internal human resources staff are excluded form high level decision-making and planning activities in favour of external consultants, they don’t get an opportunity to develop these skills. Without the opportunity to develop these skills and build expertise, human resources will continue to be excluded.
Of course, no one undergraduate course can fill all needs. Strategy and planning skills are generally built up over time through experience and practice. However, with a solid theoretical base, human resources graduates would be better equipped to build their skills and develop these competencies more successfully. They would better understand the language of strategy and the influences and constraints on organisations in this area.
It would be interesting to survey human resources managers to find out what they expect their new human resources graduates to have been exposed to during their studies. Certainly there is a need to look at the courses on offer around the country and start to make some changes now.
Dr Wendy Attwater is a specialist remuneration and HR consultant, McNeill Dowling Parry, and a sessional academic, Victoria University of Technology and Deakin University. Email: [email protected]
