The labour market is evolving, and HR must be versatile, disruptive and diverse to net top talent
By GORETTI KIMANI
Recruitment is broadly described as the process of attracting; interviewing and hiring the best-qualified fit either from within or outside of an organisation for a job opening in a timely and cost-effective manner. Efficiency, effectiveness and positive impact is everyday headache for both HR and Talent managers. Innovation, timeless and ingenious designs must be employed by progressive recruiters if the ambitious 21st century corporate goals are to be achieved and sustained. With the fading away of personnel management, great recruiters must justify to the business planners and strategists the value that will be realised for every employee hired on one hand, and convince the hires to be, that their organisation is a great haven to build their careers on the other hand.
Competitive edge with HR Metrics
This article intends to demonstrate how a versatile, disruptive and diverse HR metrics that employs intuitive recruitment criteria stimulate organisations success positioning it to have a competitive edge in their industry segment. It is a call for human resource managers to incorporate other departmental managers in the development of both the job descriptions and specifications especially because the modern business integration systems make every hire an indispensable link that will impact the organisation either positively or negatively. The road to creating a great team is daunting and murky as the 21st century’s ideal hire is hidden in a complicated matrix. Gone are the days where organisations hired directly from the universities or simply poached from competitors in the same industry. Best practice in HR is now replaced with next practice and disruptions to keep the competitors guessing.
According to Bijaya Sundaray of the Regional College of Management in India, Human Resource Management has outlived its value as it has failed to exhaustively address how human capital can be integrated with business strategic goals. Sundaray quips that Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the way to go as it involves the productive use of people in achieving the organisation’s strategic business objectives, employee satisfaction and fulfilment of individual needs. Indeed, the changes in the business environment with increasing globalisation, changing demographics of the workforce, increased focus no productivity and profitability through growth, technological changes, intellectual capital and the never-ending changes that today’s organisation has to contend with calls for urgent revolutionary approach to human capital management. Bijaya view the Human resource departments in India and indeed globally as highly administrative and lack cognizance of their role in business strategy seriously missing out on the utilisation of labour to thrust the organisations ahead of their industry peers.
The modern worker
Today’s workers are a distracted lot, they are influenced by such factors as globalisation where they can source for any information they require at the touch of a button, new and old laws, technology, social values and adverse economic conditions from within and without the organisations’ objectives, strategy, culture, structure as well as job-security threats by artificial intelligence among others. It is for these reasons that SHRM must devise both employee and organisation’s centric designs to recruit, develop both employees’ careers as well grow the organisation. The business world today is unsettling, and the HRs should resolve to stay on course and retain learners’ attitude to delve in to the unfolding world of business. It is said that ‘in times of change, learners inherit the new world while experts are left to deal with the world that no longer exist’. Hence, continuous learning is paramount.
Efficient, effective and impactful recruitment
Recruiters’ role in any organisation is arguably one without which organisations will jump off the cliff as oblivion becomes their label. Good recruiters equal great enterprises and the converse is true. Sadly, there are those who wear an indifferent attitude and simply view their role in the mediocre universe where HR’s seldom sat at business strategy meetings to discuss both human capital and talent management to ensure corporate visions and missions are realised. Some of the vacancy adverts received are even dated 2010 or even earlier to the detriment of HR planning and its impact in the attainment of the businesses’ bottom lines. Remember that poor recruitment exercise can never beget great teams to stimulate business success, it only provides fodder for frustrations to both employees, customers and enterprises.
Efficient, effective and impactful recruitment therefore calls for a multidisciplinary strategic approach that include not only HR managers but other relevant managers to find talent both on-and-off- balance sheet since evidently, traditional recruitment has been replaced by talent acquisition and business managers must awaken and smell the coffee as today’s and the future is a total revolution of the yester-workplaces. Adding to the complexity, the accelerating pace of technology offers a dizzying array of new solutions, coupled with the consciousness of academics, soft skills as well as personality fits to bring onboard star-recruits that will take our organisations to stardom. We must always remember, that organisations’ performance is as good as its human capital and as good as its strategic human resource management teams.
Goretti Kimani is a Full Member KIM, IHRM, WOBN and the author of The Career Code-A Contemporary guide to building an awesome career. Email: gorettikimani@gmail.com
