Advancing the HR profession

1. HR as a Value AddedHR as a Value Added
FunctionFunction
Sunil Ramlall, Ph.DSunil Ramlall, Ph.D

2. The HR Value PropositionThe HR Value Proposition
• Knowing external business realities
• Ensuring HR professionalism
• Serving external and internal stakeholders
• Building HR resources
• Creating HR practices
(Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005)

3. HR Practices that Add ValueHR Practices that Add Value
• Flow of people – proper flow ensures the
availability of talent the firm needs to
accomplish business objectives
• Flow of performance management – standards,
measures, rewards that reflect stakeholders’
interests
• Flow of information – collective knowledge
resources
• Flow of work – ensuring high quality results

4. Template for Action PlanningTemplate for Action Planning
-- Defining the HR Practices to invest inDefining the HR Practices to invest in
Action: What
will be done
Resources:
What
resources
are required
to do it?
Responsibility:
Who will do it?
Timing:
When will
it be
done?
Tracking:
Who will
follow up
and how?

5. Building an HR StrategyBuilding an HR Strategy
• Understand the firm’s environment – life cycle stage,
characteristics, competition, etc.
• Specify the sources of competitive advantage and the
measurements for each source of competitive
advantage
• Define the cultural capabilities along with the
behaviors necessary to achieve the desired culture
• Identify the HR practices that will have the greatest
impact on creating sustainable competitive
advantages
• Develop an overall implementation plan

6. Key Issues in the ImplementationKey Issues in the Implementation
PhasePhase
• What will we do?
• Who takes the lead?
• Who else needs to be involved?
• When are the interim reports due?
• When is the final report due?
• Who has the final approval?

7. Transforming the HR FunctionTransforming the HR Function
• Diagnose business strategy and organization
• Align HR and business organization structures
• Differentiate transaction and transformation
work
• Create a project team (if necessary).
• Build transaction efficiencies
• Monitor progress

8. Roles of HR ProfessionalsRoles of HR Professionals
1. Human Capital Developer
2. Employee Advocate (vs. employee
champion)
3. HR Leader
4. Strategic Partner (vs. change agent)
5. Functional Expert (vs. administrative expert)

9. Key HR CompetenciesKey HR Competencies
• Business Knowledge
• Personal Credibility
• Strategic Contribution
• HR Delivery
• HR Technology

10. HRM in the Banking IndustryHRM in the Banking Industry
• A growing body of research, including both
industry-specific studies and cross-industry
studies, investigates the impact of human
resource management (HRM) on firm
performance.
• Positive relationship between branch
performance and employees' satisfaction with
the quality of performance evaluation, feedback,
and recognition at the branch — the "incentives"
dimension of a high-performance work system

11. • Satisfaction with the quality of communications
at the branch was also important.
• The HRM environment can be an even more
important determinant of productivity in the
service sector than in the manufacturing sector,
given the much larger share of total production
costs accounted for by employment, and the
much more extensive direct contact between
employees and customers, in services.

12. • Using a cross-sectional framework that
ignored the role of bank fixed effects, they
found a positive correlation between the
bank's returns on assets and equity and
the existence of profit-sharing and
employment security for loan officers,
controlling for the size and age of the
bank.

13. • In the past, tellers simply processed
customers' transactions. Today, they are
evaluated on the basis of their ability to
sell various financial products or make
referrals to the proper sales personnel.
"Sales is now the name of the game in this
industry." In the new sales-oriented
environment, branches are evaluated
based on their sales of products.