HR practices need to be modern and dynamic

Ramani Kangaraarachchi

The human resource is one of the most valuable assets for any company. It is crucial that human resource management is run efficiently and effectively if employees are to work as a team and the organization is to benefit. Human resources professionals may be responsible for fulfilling training needs, advertising vacancies, interviewing, selection, aptitude testing and disciplinary procedures in the event that an employee not meeting expectations. Training people in personnel management has a huge role to play.

Daily News Business interviewed Business Resource Management Services Managing Partner Wasantha Senanayake for the HR Leader column this week. He holds a Master's Degree in Business Studies from the Kent University in the UK. He is a practising specialist in strategic and corporate management together with human resource management with over 20 years of experience. Here are the excerpts of the interview.

What is your professional background?

I have worked in several well-known Sri Lankan business institutions such as Ernst & Young, Bogowantalawa Plantations, MAS Holdings, Ceylon Biscuits among others. I have also functioned as the Chief Executive Officer of the Skills Development Fund. Over the years I acquired valuable experience in all areas of management. As a Resource Person I was attached to several leading business institutions in the country as well as overseas and has successfully conducted employee skills development projects as well as management consultancy assignments for them.

Q: What is the nature of your company?

A: Business Resource Management Services is a group of multidisciplinary professionals with considerable experience at senior management level in various fields and disciplines and having exposure to working in multinational organizations in the region and have joined together to establish, Business Resource Management Services, to share expertise and experience with business enterprises. It also has a network of Consultants with a proven track record and expertise in leading business organizations both in the private and public sectors.

We offer a wide range of quality services to all types of organizations in Employee Training and Development including Management Development, Management Consultancy, and Establishment of Business Enterprises, Foreign Investment, Project Planning, Feasibility Studies and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR).

Q: What made you to select HR as your career path?

A: HR was never my favourite at the time that I was reading for my first degree and for my Masters. I really did not fancy the subject. In fact my favourite subjects then were strategic and Corporate Management with Marketing. My HR career was very much an accident, which I feel is a sweet accident. I started my career at Ernst & Young working in the Management Consultancy Services Unit. With lots of gratitude, I remember my guru Asite Talwatte to whom I was reporting at the time, and attending to corporate and strategic planning and HR related issues of the clients. This was the time I took a great liking to this most challenging management discipline, 'Human Resource'. From this point onwards I was more inclined to towards HR. I find HR as a management discipline which is challenging, when one needs to optimize the potential of people in an organization. I like challenges. On the other hand I like to work with people, different mindsets, different attitudes, different ideas which is amusing. If one can understand the people that you work with and press the right button at the right time, the potential is amazing. I love being with people, guide them, assist them and help them and also I believe that it is exciting to see how you work with people, of course, with team spirit, set challenging norms, execute the strategies and rejoicing the achievements made. Creating the feeling of togetherness is also rewarding.

Q: Why HR is so important to a company?

A: Well HR today is considered the Strategic Partner in Business.

The most challenging and important factor in a Business Institution today is to manage its people. If anyone thinks that the purpose of business is to make 'money', I may not agree. Most dynamic companies believe that the purpose of Business today, from a Global perspective is to create and retain the customer base. In order to achieve this from a strategic point of view, the scarcest commodity in business is not customers, technology or capital. It is People. We can see more companies today are struggling to optimize the utilization of people. This challenge begins with finding the right people and then turning them into top-flight contributors, and then to retain them, ensuring that they remain loyal within the organization.

To make the situation further difficult the talent, shortage or the shortage of talented people is evident. Let me mention business tycoon Richard Branson. When the entire business world believed and recognized the customer as the king of a business, Richard Branson believed the Employee to be the King of the business.

If the employees are managed effectively, he said the rest will fall in place.

Fast growing and dynamic businesses are as rigorous about sourcing, selecting and shaping employees as they are about designing new products and conquering new markets.

Managing people that begins with recruitment cannot be done any more with traditional HR practices. They need to be modern, dynamic and innovative.

Why I say that is that in this Global business the underlying strategic goal of a successful company is to create an ever improving fit between employee competencies and customers. In order to achieve high performance work system within a business, it needed to find the right talent keep developing them and training them. You are always exposed to your competitors, particularly in retaining the talent.

It is impossible to completely seal off any company from raids by the competitors.

Top quality employees are always receiving good offers; sometimes it's frustrating for the CEO when they experience this.

All this falls within the scope of the HR function of a company. Developing them to be compatible with the ever changing business environment and to make them innovative to stay ahead of your competitors is tough. Aligning the mindsets and attitudes of individuals towards corporate strategic objectives is challenging. On these lines, I believe that the player or rather should play a significant role in organizations by being the driving force or being in the forefront leading to business. Business plans, strategies and effective execution they all depend on people.

Q: What are the significant challenges you face in practising HR?

A: Practising right HR in a company itself is a great challenge. HR is all about creating a conducive culture, where people feel loyal and committed. Performance that brings anticipated results is what matters.

The culture of a company is initiated and created by the owners, Board of Directors or the CEO.

There are many occasions where one may need to challenge certain cultural aspects that either can be unproductive or counter-productive, but created and maintained by CEOs for different reasons, that may not be sincere towards corporate betterment.

From an HR perspective, when creating a culture that suits the business, you may be indirectly challenging the norms set by the corporate owners and CEOs. Changing such unproductive or rather counter productive standards and norms I see as a big challenge and perhaps the biggest obstacle to practice genuine result oriented HR.

One may always need honest and genuine support from the top management together with great understanding of what HR and its contribution towards the achievement of strategic objectives of the business. It is sad to note that not all CEOs appreciate the contributions of HR from its true spirit.

There are many more challenges, but most of the others challenges manageable.

Q: What are the HR issues the companies should pay attention?

A: It is in a global world that we are all involved in doing business today. Therefore, understanding the global perspective of business is extremely important.

In order to provide global or international standard products or services, you need international standard people, strategies and cultures.

This global pressure to conform to high standards and norms. We need to understand in return we need to give a genuine effort together with powerful determinants on performance. Diagnosing of such norms through global bench marking, organizations need to precede action on them on an urgent basis.

In global business, we need to understand that the environment is changing from safe and predictable to a situation of turbulent and risky.

Riding a nervous horse through an unknown terrain is not a wise choice.

That is why the global bench marking on business performance is vital.

Accordingly, we need to be globally dynamic and professionally aggressive, on an urgent basis to conquer the new world of business.