The Strategic Role of HR in a State Government Essay Example for Free

The Strategic Role of HR in a State Government Essay In a growing number of organizations human resources are now viewed as a source of competitive advantage (Human Links, 2007). For human resource to be competitive, it entails competencies that are â€Å"obtained through highly developed employee skills, distinctive organizational cultures, management processes and systems† (Human Links, 2007). The presence of these distinctive competencies marks most of the high-performance organizations. But the need for such organizations is not limited only to the private sector. Government organizations, particularly state and local governments, â€Å"are becoming increasingly accountable for results and the cost-effective use of taxpayer money spent on programs and services† (TechRepublic, 2007). Government organizations are like businesses; businesses that may not be run for profit but rather are organized to meet a social goal in an effective and efficient manner (Mathys, 2006). Such said, â€Å"Government organizations must be responsive, use their resources well, and provide good value to the user and account ­ability to the taxpayer† (Mathys, 2006).   It is in this context that strategic human resource management has become just as important in the public sector. Strategic human resource management has been defined as ‘linking of human resources with strategic goals and objectives in order to improve business performance and develop organizational culture that foster innovation and flexibility’ (Human Links, 2007). The whole process of strategic human resource management includes the measurement of the impact of actions and decisions.   Pressures on governments around the world have contributed to the rising adoption of â€Å"performance management and measurement† – a focus on program and service outputs and outcomes, and on â€Å"managing for results† (TechRepublic, 2007). One method that has had significant demonstrated success to improve process efficiency, timeliness, and customer satisfaction in business is the balanced scorecard (Mathys, 2006). The Balanced Scorecard is a â€Å"performance measurement that seeks to combine strategic planning with performance measurement† (Rogers, 2007). Robert Kaplan and David Norton published works on the Balanced Scorecard in 1991 and considered four areas in assessing the effectiveness of an organization in meeting its vision and strategy. These four areas or â€Å"perspectives† include: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, and Learning and Growth. According to Mathys, Kaplan and Norton’s model explains that visions and strategies are translated into objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives that answer the questions in each of the four categories: Financial, the main question is: â€Å"To succeed financially, how should we appear to our shareholders?† Customer, the focus is: â€Å"To achieve our vision, how should we appear to our customers?† Internal business process focuses on the question: â€Å"To satisfy our shareholders and customers, what business processes must we excel at?† Learning and growth category focuses on answering the question: â€Å"To achieve our vision, how will we sustain our ability to change and improve?† Essentially, this framework â€Å"balances the value of strategic inputs (leading indicators) with financial outputs (lagging indicators) to enable an organization to improve the way it plans, measures and communicates success† (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). It is now being applied by hundreds of successful organizations, in the public and private sectors, to align people, strategy and performance (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). In 1999, the State of Illinois embarked on a strategic planning initiative (SPI) to initiate change using the balanced scorecard (BSC).   The initial goals were performance management and public accountability, which required viewing the Illinois public as a customer whose opinion of government performance was of paramount importance (Lang, 2007). The State of Illinois translated its goals and strategy into different measures of success Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, Human Resources Systems Development (learning and growth). In this context, the Human Resources (HR) Department has a critical role in facilitating the whole process of instituting a comprehensive public governance system using this measurement system. People management is an important function of the HR Department and can play an important role in an organizations financial performance as well as the service it offers its customers (Yahoo! Answers, 2007). People management includes managing recruitment selection, turnover issues, employee benefits, and acting as an information resource in HR issues for the organization (Yahoo! Answers, 2007). First, it is important that the HR department views the state government as well as its constituency as its customer. The HR Department ensures that loyalty among employees towards the organization is intact and also that the final constituents or the general population of the state government therefore are benefited. Second, the HR department looks into the other departments within the state government and assesses their goals and strategies as well in contributing to the achievement of the primary goal of the state government. This can be viewed particularly on learning and growth concerns such as how the various capabilities of various employees can be built up and enhanced so they can very well respond to the goals of the organizations, among others. This entails for example employing a Training Needs Assessment (TNA) tool so that employee capabilities may be surveyed, consolidated and aptly tapped. Knowledge of employee skills, abilities and aptitude could save the organization from investing on capability building trainings that do not address the real needs of employees. Third, in terms of internal business process, the role of the HR Department is to â€Å"indicate how much each employee contributes to the organization such as revenue generated minus the cost of salary, benefits and training† (Yahoo! Answers, 2007). This basically looks into the productivity of the individual employee as well as the consolidated output of such individual productivity levels with which the HR Department also has that function to design a merit and rewards system to increase again such productivity. This is vital to keep the bureaucracy lean. Fourthly, in financial terms, the HR Department shall be able to perform a rationalized system of recruitment because it sees fit which employees to hire based on the scope of work and job specifications. Aside from recruitment, HR also could do regular employee performance evaluations so as to determine which employee has actually continually met the specifications of the job. Again, this saves the state government from unnecessary hiring of staff and checking of redundancy, among others, since the staffing needs of the organization has been streamlined. With the HR Department using these four perspectives, it helps the government administration to keep â€Å"track the value of activities (e.g. human resource development) which previously had not been audited effectively and had not been regarded as contributors to the bottom line (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). As in many private corporations, HR Departments of state governments shall have to use hard data in measuring performance. This can be done by linking â€Å"employee competencies with behavioral objectives to align job specifications, recruitment, promotion, appraisal, and reward systems† (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). A number of HR measures or benchmarks can be employed to check on performance and these include: â€Å"Applications per vacancy, Internal promotions, Hours training, Peer group reviewing, Cross-functional projects, Knowledge sharing, Employee turnover, Cost per hire, Employee satisfaction,† among others (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). The HR Department can also assist the various departments of the state government in targeting and developing milestones that keep its focus on the goals.   The goals of the state government must be cascaded to every department with the help of the HR Department. In the end, some of the following questions may serve to measure the four perspectives: Customer/Constituency. What services have been delivered to the constituents in order to secure their welfare and how do these relate to people’s expectations towards the state government? Learning and Growth. Have the skills and competencies of officers and staff have been upgraded and in what manner? Internal Business Processes. What desirable levels of effectiveness and efficiency have been achieved in serving the constituents? Financial Resources. What revenue generating options have been tapped and which government services have already been provided at a reasonable price? In all these, the role of HR should be to facilitate rather than dictate the targets and outcomes. Keeping the measurements simple allows it to be more understandable and adaptable. If it is not seen to be fully integrated with the business imperatives of the Chief Executive it will not be given the attention it deserves by operational managers (Strategic Management Partners, 2007). List of References Chaturvedi, Siddharth. October 2007. Strategic Human Resource Management. Retrieved October 2007 from http://www.humanlinks.com/manres/articles/shrm/htm. Lang, Sandra S.   January 2007. The CPA Journal. â€Å"Balanced Scorecard and Government Entities Moving Forward at the Illinois Department of Transportation. Retrieved October 2007 from http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2004/604/essentials/p48.htm. Mathys, Nicholas. February 2006. Managing for Performance Results Series 2006. â€Å"Using the Balanced Scorecard: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Postal Service and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.† Retrieved October 2007 from http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/MathysReport.pdf Rogers, Martha. June 2007. â€Å"Balanced Score Card Usage in Local Government Audit Shops.† Retrieved October 2007 from http://www.governmentauditors.org/content/view/311/123/. Strategic Management Partners. January 2007. Briefing Papers: Using the HR Balanced Scorecard. Retrieved October 2007 from http://www.consult-smp.com/archives/2005/02/using_the_hr_ba_html. TechRepublic. October 2007. Whitepapers: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Improve State and Local Government Performance. Retrieved October 2007 from http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/webcast.aspx. Yahoo! Answers. October 2007. What is Balanced Score Card in HR?. Retrieved   October 2007 from http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070927202545AAwkQix.