How much things have changed
In considering just how much things have changed I did some digging in various places and came up with the grand total of around 25 areas where HRM plays a key role in their organisations.
I can’t possibly cover all those areas individually, but there are some groupings that make sense together:
RECRUITMENT TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT - Getting the right people and making sure they know what and how to deliver.
REWARD - Remuneration, pay equity, benefits, workplace flexibility, performance – making sure that employees are being rewarded in effective ways for their contribution to the organisation.
CULTURE - Staff satisfaction, engagement, change management – listening to employees and working together to create organisations they’re happy to work in.
MEETING LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS -
The ongoing issues of meeting legislative requirements, health and safety, wellness – taking care of employees so they can deliver what’s needed and stay well while doing that.
STRATEGY - Using increasingly available technology and analytics to ensure that all these elements work together to deliver the best possible outcomes, as well as a positive return on the investment made in all these diverse people management elements.
Increasingly underpinning many of the above areas is the development and use of an effective reward strategy. Employees who perceive themselves to be paid fairly and equitably are more likely to express satisfaction in their work. As HR professionals we’ve moved away from simple ‘finger in the air’ guesswork in deciding how to pay people. We now want access to information on what markets are paying and which market is right for us so we can be sure we’re not falling behind and disadvantaging our employees. We want to be able to take a structured approach to how we pay, so we can be confident of internal equity and we want to know that we’re paying people equitably whoever they are.
No longer are wages or salaries seen as the only reward for work; now employees want to see flexibility in when and where they work and they want to be recognised and rewarded appropriately for their performance – not necessarily financially. HR is key to developing and implementing reward strategies that will contribute to employee satisfaction and to retaining the employees organisations need to meet their stakeholders requirements. Without such strategies success is much harder to achieve.