CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.6 Recommendations
Based on the empirical study and the literature review this research could offer the following recommendations in relation to HR departments as SBPs in organisations:
Organisations should ensure that the prevailing organisational culture is compatible with the roles of SBPs before attempting to implement or execute the HR department as a SBP in the organisation. The importance and impact of organisational culture require that organisations undergo culture change to establish a culture within which HR departments could thrive as SBPs and at the centre of that culture employees should exist as the major source of organisational competitiveness. If employees were not the source of the
organisation‟s competitiveness there would be no need for HR departments to be SBPs.
HR departments should have HR professionals working closely with line managers to ensure that: all HR issues could be identified quickly and resolved, employee‟s needs and well-being were well taken care of because organisations thrive when its employees were motivated and well equipped to do their jobs. This was the critical role HR should be playing in the organisation.
Despite the push for HR departments to focus more on strategic issues it is important for HR to not abandon their primary administrative roles, because these roles, when done efficiently and effectively, added huge amounts of value to the organisation. However, if HR departments failed to deliver their primary role efficiently and effectively the organisation‟s leaders would be highly likely not to allow HR to be represented at the strategic table because if the departments failed to execute administrative roles, how then would it be able to deliver strategic roles.
HR departments should have HR professionals dedicated to working with production leaders on the shop floor or production line, to ensure fast responsiveness to employee concerns, to avoid work interruptions or delays in resolving employee concerns which may lower their motivation or even lead to more destructive actions such as strikes. HR should walk the floor and HR should not be seated in the head office. If possible HR should have an office alongside line leaders‟ offices close to production employees.
Since well led employees thrive, the HR departments should also ensure that the organisation‟s leadership bench is good, by identifying and developing future leaders.
All the HR departments in organisations should measure their contribution in the organisation by looking at the impact the HR department has on business success and organisational profits.
HR professionals should work like engineers in delivering their HR function, they should ensure the human assets of the organisation was well serviced, was well
prepared, and properly developed to keep up with the business trends and customer demands.
Recommendations for future research on the HR department as a strategic business partner in organisations identified in this study are as follows:
In order to understand the challenges of having HR as a SBP, it is recommended that attention also be paid to those organisations that decided to outsource their HR functions as it is necessary to understand the opportunities and challenges which resulted because of those strategic decisions.
Further research should be done to determine ways in which the HR department‟s contribution to the organisational profit should be measured or determined in organisations.
5.7 Concluding remarks
This study aimed to identify the challenges and opportunities HR departments had as strategic business partners in organisations. The literature review revealed the following: the functions of HR departments, challenges facing HR departments, the strategic business partnership model, roles and competencies of HR strategic business partners, and the impact of organisational culture on the implementation and execution of business partnership functions in organisations. The empirical study conducted uncovered important findings around the existence, implementation and execution of HR departments as strategic business partners in organisations.
The empirical results of this study revealed that it is beneficial to have HR departments as a strategic business to get the best out of the organisation‟s human capital. However the implementation and execution of HR departments as strategic business partners was greatly challenged by various factors and the most salient of them included the lack of business knowledge on the part of HR professionals, the need to transform the mind- set of line managers to view HR as a credible partner who could actually enhance organisational success, and above all the lack of strategic business partnership
competencies in the HR department. This study also revealed that organisational culture had huge impact on the implementation and the success of HR departments as strategic business partners in an organisation. On the one hand, the culture which promote HR departments as strategic business partners included high learning culture, innovative culture, collaboration culture, teamwork culture, and on the other hand the cultures which are bad for the implementation and execution of HR departments as strategic business partners were bureaucratic cultures, risk averse culture, and individualistic culture.
This study also sought to identify the future opportunities and challenges for HR departments in the organisation. The empirical results of this study revealed that HR departments are at a cross-road of relevance in organisations. The HR departments which are adding value to the organisations would continue to be relevant, and those HR departments which were not adding value towards the goals of their organisations could be heading for closure and their HR functions will be outsourced to independent contractors. This study also revealed that HR departments can only continue to be relevant in organisations if they became strategic business partners helping organisations to achieve their objectives through effective management and utilisation of the organisation‟s human capital.
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