Roles of Hr

A recent survey of business leaders sponsored by the world leading professional service firm KPMG has said that business leaders will continue to view the human resource department as a non-essential department, unless it meets the challenges posed by today’s business environment(1). In order to stay in the same position one has to keep moving, in this wise in order for the Human resource role, and professionals to remain relevant the field and its professionals must keep reinventing itself based on the needs of time and the expectations of businesses in those times. The major criticism pointed out by the C-suite executives is that human resource have fallen short of their expectations in these areas; sourcing and retaining international talent, supporting the firm’s global strategy, supporting an increasingly flexible and virtual workforce, data analytics, perception, promoting employee engagement to prevent turnover and demonstrating their business savvy. Based on the importance of these executives in today’s business environment and the shaping of tomorrow’s, this essay assumes that in meeting these expectations HR would be delving into a number of potential roles.

Today’s organizations collect more HR and business data than ever, but still struggle to use it effectively to predict workforce trends, minimize risks and maximize returns (4). HR analytics is the scientific process of analyzing objective business data (e.g. costs, timelines, quantities, quality, and human reactions such as employee or customer satisfaction) in a meaningful way in order to predict and direct business outcomes. HR is relatively new to analytics and the use of sophisticated tools is not widespread. HR teams are not filled with statisticians, analysts, and data visualization experts yet, and research has shown that only 6% of Human Resource teams feel they are “highly skilled” at data analysis(5). This is unlike other departments in today’s institutions such as finance, supply chain...