And yet, after 20 years, probably no other function vertical has undergone a metamorphosis, from being an ‘Administration Department’ (the pupae stage) to the intermediary ‘Personnel Department’ (the larvae stage) and finally materializing into the ‘Human Resources Vertical’ (the beautiful Butterfly). What’s more, this transition is neither simply a change of name, nor an introduction of varied & fanciful jargons; rather the very nature of activities and responsibilities of the function has undergone a transition. From the Administration department that ensured the ‘wellbeing’ of the employees to the controlling Personnel department that ensured the execution of mundane activities such as payroll, Time Management, Collective Bargaining, etc., to the Human Resources department that is primarily entrusted with key responsibilities of translating a major chunk of the organizations’ Mission & Vision statement into reality, surely, Plant HR have come a long way in a short span of time.
One of the key responsibilities of the erstwhile Plant HR was to manage the Trade Unions. Now, even though we agree that this was rather a tedious process, but at the same time, an uncomplicated one. A representation of workmen varying from a few hundreds to thousands had a list of common agenda which was then hammered down into actionable items after a long-drawn process of collective bargaining. Now, due to the globalization of workplace & liberalized labor laws, the strength of TUs as a collective force got diminished. The TU regime decline, coupled with the rise of the Knowledge Economy gave Plant HR a new perspective. This brought the change in focus, resulting in creating Systems and Processes towards managing knowledge workers. This transition in perspective is not as smooth as it sounds and was routed with an implicit presupposition that each Knowledge Worker is a TU within himself. Each has a set of expectation, motivational driver, intrinsic needs (Hell! Even the X- and Y-factors for each one of them is different). The task for HR, finally, became unimaginably complex, and interestingly strategic also.
The main question looming over the Plant HR is, “How to engage the knowledge worker in a unit where machinery/technology is prioritized over employees?” Plant HR is different from other line HR verticals (say Corporate HR, Sales HR, etc) in a way that it tries to glamorize the proverbial ‘beauty in the beast’. In a typical Plant set-up, the capability maximization of the technology/process is prioritized over the Human element operating it. Proof? Just compare the CAPEX/OPEX budget of a manufacturing set-up against its core HR budget. HR in a Sales/IT/ITES driven organization has the advantage that the Human Capability dimensions of these Enterprises, per se, propel the realization of the business targets. Hence, their development/retention would be far more critical compared to the manufacturing sector. Thus, the challenge in front of Plant HR is to just not to attract, retain and develop the talent required to run the machines, but also to engage them and maintain their levels of emotional connectivity with the organization as a whole.
One dominant reason for the Plant HR to be ineffective in the past was its learned helplessness towards measuring the efficacy of HR interventions on business results. On one hand, where the line always quantified its performance in order to measure its success, sadly, Plant HR, on the other hand, was never been able to quantify the impact of its HR interventions and display its effect on reaching the overall targets of the business. This is precisely the reason why the line in a plant view all the OD, Engagement and Culture Building initiatives as just another ‘HR gimmick’ in order to fulfill yet another target mandated in the performance contracts, rather than taking it in the right stride. However, in the wake of becoming more effective with a strategic orientation, HR as a function developed tools such as Balanced Scorecard, HR Metrics, Competency Frameworks, etc. This not only made HR initiatives more measurable and effective in driving business goals, but also earned a lot of credibility and acceptance among the Line functions.
A final word. Plant HR is the immitigable past of most successful HR leaders. No HR guy in a manufacturing/operations set-up should ever dream of assuming the HR leadership role without being exposed to a Plant HR role in the past. This is one sublimation that could lead to disaster for the organization and also to the role holder. Being the HR leader of an organization, one is expected to play the role of a strategic partner to the business through understanding the mindset of the majority of his internal customers. Only when he is able to envision the expectations/drivers of these customers, he can juxtapose the same with the overall business strategy and then come up with suitable HR interventions that address the issue of aligning/bridging the employee expectations with the overall goals of the business. Without undertaking this role, a corporate HR manager would need to take an extraordinary leap of imagination when called upon to assume the role of a HR leader.
So, here’s to all the Plant HR guys,
‘Ad astra per aspera’ – To the Stars through difficulty.
