The human resources executive emerges as an internal consultant, a business effectiveness agent for purposeful and progressive change. His background of training and development point to a generalist orientation as contrasted with the more narrowly focused point of view of a specialist.

Modern management at top organizational levels is beginning to recognize the need for high-level staff help in the solution of corporate problems-a great many of which can be traced to deficiencies in human resource management. Thus, though the staff role of the human resources executive used to be restricted to policy formulation and routine, traditional personnel activities, general management now looks to him to take an active role in stimulating change. His role as passive onlooker is a thing of the past.

The modern personnel director has enlarged the scope, responsibility, and context of his position to include all professional, administrative, managerial, scientific, and technical personnel as well as hourly, union, and clerical employees. His role as the new internal consultant can be well justified when an organization becomes so large and so complex that the policy group cannot alone control all major facets of the business. His catalytic role as a change agent puts him in a position where he has to be a good listener, an encourager of new ideas and innovator in his own right.

– He must suggest, review, and mediate solutions to problems, processes, or procedures. He stimulates organizational and individual behavior while developing or helping to foster a creative environment.

– He provides moral, physical, and psychological support to managers experimenting with change, encourages reasonable suggestions and the establishment of short-range organizational goals; he vetoes ineffective procedures and regularly reports progress toward goal attainment.

– He is highly sensitive to people problems. He helps others to understand these problems by defining them more precisely.

He assists in placing proper priorities on problems and giving consideration to a variety of possible solutions. He convinces management that decisions determined by consensus are insured the necessary supportive action. He literally initiates change and follows through to implementation.

If the human resources executive appears to have a clearly defined role, why is it that so many companies fail to blend staff and line efforts to reach a common objective? Many an organization that is about to achieve a major breakthrough in technology or human relations fails to translate knowledge into action or results from staff to line.

Because modern management procedures have brought staff people into more direct contact with the traditional roles of line managers, both plans and results require a much closer working relationship. No doubt this trend will accelerate. It should be recognized, but often is not, that no matter how potentially valuable a management tool-be it long-range planning or managing by objectives – it is useless if the staff man fails to adapt his approaches to the needs of the line man or if the line manager is unwilling or unable to use the staff man input.

From the standpoint of the line manager, the bright staff man is a know-it-all who insists with a degree of arrogance that his approach is exactly what is needed to solve a problem, without regard for the realities of time and cost or for the reactions of employees when their norms and life style are infringed upon. As an example, a new graduate of a management training program proposed a solution to a chronic absenteeism problem that literally would have forced the plant to shut down. The facts were these. Every year at the start of the deer-hunting season absenteeism zoomed. Management had long since become reconciled to this unofficial community holiday without pay. But the staff man, ignoring local custom, chose to regard this as a flouting of work rules and urged that penalties be meted out to all absentees. (The union contract had never been invoked on this issue.) Had his proposal been adopted, work would have been brought to a halt by a wildcat strike. The company would have been better advised to make the annual event an official holiday without pay.

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Category: Business
Keywords: Business, Organization, Structure, capital, Development, Credit, Sales, Communication, Resources, Em