Managing Human Resource‎

By Omar H Hussain Omar Hashi, Hargeysa, Somaliland

Human resources management concerns a broad range of important company functions, including the recruitment, selection, training, development, compensation, retention, administration, time and labor management, and promotion of personnel within an organization.

Comparative advantage

Responsibilities have expanded, and greater prestige is associated with the leading HR positions. Majority of the top human resource management (HRM) executives now report directly to the CEO. More importantly, progressive HRM activities are now considered to be major sources of competitive advantages.

We believe that HR processes such as hiring and maintaining the most effective and efficient workforce are growing in importance relative to other potential sources of competitive advantage for an organization. We are not alone in this belief. Management scholar notes: "Traditional sources of success, i.e., speed to market, finance, technology can still provide competitive leverage, but to a lesser degree now than in the past, leaving organizational culture and capabilities, derived from how people are managed, as comparatively more vital. "

Human Resources Management activities are often faddish and disjointed, giving little consideration to the organization 's mission or goals and the ultimate effect on customer satisfaction. Companies often adopt some procedure simply because they learn that some competitor or successful company was using it. Many HRM systems and activities are not systematically evaluated.

The damaging effects of such practices are well documented. Many organizations do not assess either the short-term or the long-term consequences of their HRM program or activities in terms of meaningful criteria. Many decision-makers in HRM are neither qualified nor motivated to properly evaluate the effectiveness of an HRM system, program or activity.

Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), also called HR modules, shape an intersection in between human resource management and information technology. It merges HRM as a discipline and, in particular, its basic HR activities and processes with the information technology field, whereas the planning and programming of data processing systems evolve into standardized routines and packages of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) software.

All in all, the HR function is still to a large degree administrative and common to all organizations. To varying degrees, most organizations have formalized selection, evaluation and payroll processes.

Efficient and effective management of the Human Capital Management (HCM) has become an increasingly imperative and complex activity to all HR professionals. The HR function consists of tracking innumerable data points on each employee, from personal history, data, skills, capabilities and experiences to payroll records.

To reduce the manual workload of these administrative activities in Somaliland based companies, organizations should begin to electronically automate many of these processes by introducing innovative HRMS technology. Due to complexity in programming, capabilities and limited technical resources in our country, HR executives have rely on internal or external IT professionals to develop and maintain their Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS).

As a result of the high capital investment necessary to purchase software, these internally developed HRMS were limited to medium to large organizations able to afford internal IT capabilities. The advent of client-server HRMS authorized HR executives for the first time to take responsibility and ownership of their systems.

Challenges

A growing number of organizations look at HRM functions and systems as major contributors to accomplishing the organization 's mission. We believe in the 21st century, this new conceptualization is essential for Somaliland business. Twenty-first century HR roles are those of strategic partner, administrative expert, employees' champion, and change agent. The responsibilities are to provide deliverables in all the four areas. These deliverables must be responsive to an increasingly competitive and global marketplace and must be closely linked to business strategic plans.

Finally, the pace of technological change is so fast that sometimes it seems the world will be completely different from one day to the next. It won 't. But we should be prepared for change. One major responsibility of the HR professional is to foresee as many of these challenges as possible and to react in order to exploit them for competitive advantage. Flexibility is a key to meeting this responsibility.

Omar Haji Hussain [omerhashi@gmail.com]

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