The evolution of HR management

HR management has gone through many iterations, but there is one constant theme.

From its early days as personnel management to its current status as champion of people and capability, human resource management (HRM) has gone through many iterations, but the theme that has been constant through those iterations is the importance of people to the organisations in which they work.

Many years ago,

back in the 1940s and ‘50s in fact – my aunt was the personnel officer at Barker and Dobson’s, one of the UK’S biggest confectionery producers. Her job there included such things as administration and record keeping, but a lot of it was around staff welfare, ensuring the rules were followed and that people were paid. Most people in today’s workplace would not even recognise such a role. The actual influence of the personnel officer on the business in most, if not all, organisations of the time was minimal.

As time went on the world began to see more of a focus on broader people-focused elements in the workplace, such as training and development and the management of performance, and the term Human Resource Management began to replace the old-fashioned title of Personnel Administration. Human Resource practitioners slowly began to be seen as having an important role in ensuring that people

- one of organisations’ most important resources - were effectively managed in order to deliver the outcomes needed by their employers. Interestingly, as this change took place the focus became more on supporting management in order to ensure policies and practices were followed, than on the direct relationship with employees and their welfare. Welfare was still of key importance, but HR’S role was in supporting managers to manage effectively, which included ensuring people were treated fairly. A great deal of HR people’s time was spent guiding managers through performance and discipline issues (the time of the dread visit to HR), as well as delivering training of various kinds. But in those days, HRM was seen very much as a support function, a cost to the business that couldn’t be avoided.

The responsibilities of HR practitioners expanded over time and gradually, particularly since the beginning of the 21st century, we’ve seen that view of HRM as just a cost to the business change to the point where practitioners frequently have a seat at the top table, influencing strategy and affecting business outcomes in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few years before. At an operational level, where we used to see HR Advisors, who would often spend a significant amount of their time dealing with the negative outcomes of people management, we now see HR Business Partners who work with specific divisions or departments to ensure that HR strategy is visible and HR policies are followed across the organisation. They are seen as true business partners, sitting as part of departmental leadership teams and having genuine input into how things are run and often, as a result, able to prevent the negative outcomes we used to see on such a regular basis.