Экономические науки/ 5. Управление трудовыми ресурсами

Докторант PhD, 2 курс Байырбекова Р.Т.

Евразийский государственный университет имени Л.Н. Гумилева, г.Астана, Республика Казахстан

Role and place of HR managers in the structure of company management of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

A new trend in the structure of company management has recently become the transition from personnel management to human resources management (HRM). Different from personnel management, HRM stimulates individual professional development caused by mechanisms of personal interest and responsibility and completely meets work staff demand of organization.

For proper understanding of the role of HR managers in organizations we should state the difference between two staff management directions, personnel and HR management:

· HR management is quite strategic and makes staff policy more significant and active;

· the responsibility for realization of more active staff policy is also conferred upon linear managers; accordingly, the work of all teams HR managers is integrated into the system of staff management;

· the technology of HR management is aimed at efficiency improvement and HR investment returns increase, while traditional HR management policy aims to minimize such expenses;

· personnel management stresses its attention on average executives, while HR management replaces its accent on managing staff;

· strong and adaptive corporate system plays an important role in HR management [1].

Nowadays the main problem of domestic HR managers (specialist of HR management) is indeterminacy of final powers and distrust of company's directors. In practice HR manager can implement various functions. He/she can be HR administrator (assisting), HR-specialist (taking part in personnel management), HR business partner (close interacting with linear direction) and HR strategist (complete influencing on staff policy of organization); sometimes all these functions can be combined. Authorization of HR specialists is first of all the prerogative of the company's top management. Top managers should decide whether HR managers can realize their plans in HR work in full volume. The following important criterion is the level of HR manager's position in company's hierarchy. Variants of organization and top management team can be different. Usually HR managers occupying top positions have quite natural competition with other top managers for resources for their direction development. Here budget, technical maintenance, office premises, etc., can be included. But it is exactly high position of HR manager that gives him/her a chance for getting a strategic role in his/her organization, for realization of long-term projects and the most favorable conditions for his/her subdivision development. There are such companies where HR director has a leading role in management team and becomes a driving force for business development.

Kazakhstan market does not have any representatives of HR management in corporate management bodies, Board of Directors and Administrative Board. Number of HR managers amongst top management of domestic companies is also insignificant. First TOP HR managers were assigned in some representative offices of foreign companies, where HRM practice is taken from corporate international level and transferred to regional representative offices. .[2]

Such weak presence of HR managers in top management and system of strategic decisions taking can possible be explained by too significant diversity in the level of current staff management workers in Kazakhstan. In the majority of companies HR managers function as assistants and HR administrators and they are not involved into strategic HR management.

Interrelations of HRM and top management depend on various factors. One of them is the stage of business development. On initial stage of company or HR department creation the management team tends to willingly accept all proposals of a HR manager and aims to allocate resources for this direction development. When the establishment stage is over, here starts the everyday routine, where realized results are required from HR-managers. In this context a lot of things depend on professionalism and foresight of HR manager. HR management department should properly provide expense budget, testing and attestation results, expert opinion and should also demonstrate positive work results. So, there is a question arising: why the role of Kazakhstan HR manager is so insignificant? A possible reason is not that top management does not want to employ HRM specialist, but that HR specialists do not want to occupy such a responsible position. Occupying such strategic position in top management is first of all responsibility and compliance with occupied position, and than also all privileges pertaining here. International CEO-Club top management training institute has elaborated a row of key questions for assessment of top manager and his/her team efficiency.

Top 12 CXO Strategy question:

1. Do we have a big growth idea?

2. Do we have the right growth engine (business model and infrastructure)?

3. Does your operation efficiently and effectively support our performance targets? How?

4. Which vendors, partners, clients and employees are delivering the real value? How do I get more out of rest?

5. How can we build a sustainable competitive advantage through your function (Strategy, initiatives, programs, projects)?

6. What are the key performance targets for your function?

7. Do you have the appropriate resources (budget, tools, process and people) in place to meet those target?

8. How can we improve governance, control and reporting functions?

9. What are the key risks in your function and how do you manage them?

10. Do we really need to invest in this initiative/project? What is the ROI? What is the cost of lost opportunity?

11. Are all recourses (people, processes and tools) are properly aligned and connected?

12. How do we communicate our plans to better create awareness and win support? [3].

As you can see, requirements are very high, therefore, our domestic HR managers have a difficult task to treat all questions with high professionalism, and this often confuses the majority of HR specialists. The reason is in lack of basic professional background and lack of knowledge in the field of general management, Mathematics, statistics, trade management technology, business and company strategy administration rules. Possessing this knowledge, HR manager can successfully work with colleagues from top management team and even can pretend on one of managing positions. Actions that should be taken by HR manager and his/her team are the following:

· improvement of knowledge of corporate and strategic management;

· permanent improvement of managing skills, operating such strategic tools as talent development, personnel recruitment, key staff keeping, which is an important factor of success for a company;

· correction of their plans and priorities and efficient self-promotion. That means no manipulation, no change of concepts, tasks and management levels. In practice we often can see that HRM services play the role of advocates for workers instead of defending business interests. Such position contraposes a worker and top management, and that is wrong business strategy.

· assistance in personnel management. The majority of top-managers feel themselves confused in personnel management issues and they want HRM service to release them from some liabilities regarding their staff, which is actually a direct liability of top management. But this release should not cause development of "punitive" skills possessed by HR managers.

Finally it should be noticed that nowadays there is a world trend of increase of HRM service role in corporate management. HR managers already work in two directions of corporate management. One of them is internal management including linear and staff management within a corporation, corporate culture and internal corporate labor market; the other is external management consisting of consulting services, external labor market system, knowledge, innovations and personnel training. This world trend has a very positive effect on domestic HRM, but the issue of HR managers' strong position in corporate top management depends directly on HR managers' readiness to professional development.

References:

1. Graham H.T., Bennett R. Human Resource Management. Moscow.: Unity-Dana, 2003/ 135 pg.

2. Bulletin № 1 / 2010 Professional HR Association of Kazakhstan. Almaty 2010 / www.hra.kz/ 14 pg.

3. International Institute of Management, top - management training and development/ Executive Education Courses (Accelerated Experiential Workshops) / http://www.iim-edu.org/executiveeducation/executiveseminars/index./ 6 pg.