What is driving HR transformation? What does it imply for the HR teams?

There are few things that are contributing to a large transformation of HR as a function. Globalization of Indian conglomerates; a trend started with the software and outsourcing industries, but a reality in most Indian organizations today. As a consequence, organizations are feeling the need for more and better talent to grow and capture the domestic and international opportunities. The role of the HR team is hence evolving where the main responsibility of the function is to solve the people challenges of the business.

As a result of this transformation, HR is no longer only looking at activities like hiring, payroll, attendance etc but focusing also its attention on attracting and retaining top performers for the organization while remaining accountable for delivery of all HR-related processes and services, even if it is outsourced.

As a consequence, we see a migration of routine and repetitive tasks outside the team while accountability and ownership remains with HR. The implications of this change in the HR teams will be the following - we will need more HR professionals who have a higher value in terms of the role they play and the support they bring to the CEO. We have seen that happen in the US and we are seeing the same trend catching up at a faster rate in India.

At the organizational level, we will see a shift of how things get done with this change. HR team will continue to be accountable while the team will not be delivering a lot of the routine and repetitive. HR will be responsible to find the vendor, manage it and assessing the quality of service delivery. The areas likely to be outsourced are hiring, especially when it involves volume hiring, training, payroll and any extension of these activities. Increasingly, we will also see the creation of new benefits as retention becoming more important.

What are the new competencies that HR must acquire?

The competencies required by HR will transform dramatically in this new reality. Colleges and universities will need to re-look at their curriculum while graduating professionals for the HR field. Companies will have to arrange for training people in-house on these new competencies. And we will perhaps see a new industry arising from this gap.

HR will not only need to master the traditional HR competencies but also get a deeper understanding of business domains like finance, marketing etc as HR will need to understand the implications of different strategies on the organization and the talent strategy. Finally, vendor management will be another important competency going forward as HR teams will need to identify, assess and monitor product and service of vendors.

What are the new competencies that HR needs in this new scenario?

Along with the traditional HR competencies, HR will also require a more holistic understanding of other business functions like finance, marketing etc.