Human Resources: Staffing function key to corporate change and success.
Competition for talent in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries can be intense. As a result, HR focus is evolving from administration, regulation and support to driver of corporate change and success. Medzilla explores some of the opportunities for HR departments in transition, how HR can actually enhance company success and change, and what can be done to foster the evolution of HR staffing functions.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Groutage
Company: MedZilla,
Inc.
Title: Director of Marketing & Development
Phone:
360-657-5681
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URL: http://www.medzilla.com
Human Resources: Staffing
function key to corporate change and success.
Marysville, WA (PRWEB)
October 10, 2003-- Competition for talent in the pharmaceutical, biotech and
healthcare industries can be intense. As a result, HR focus is evolving from
administration, regulation and support to the driver of corporate change and
success.
“It can be difficult to combine both the staffing and regulatory
functions in the same individual or department,” says Frank Heasley, PhD,
President and CEO of MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and
professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. “As a result, some
corporations feel that their HR departments may be out of sync with the company
becoming more aggressive, and that can hamper recruitment of
talent.”
“There are several reasons some HR departments may have trouble
making the transition,” says Roger E. Herman, CEO, the Herman Group, consulting
futurists that specializing in workforce and workplace trends. The first has to
do with what the various stakeholders of the organization expect from HR. The
second and third are related to competency and the CEO’s engagement of HR at the
appropriate level.
Corporate Expectations of HR
According to
Herman, lead author of the new book Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few
People (Oakhill Press), HR departments in many companies take more of a
reactive, staff-support function, charged with keeping the employees happy and
the records straight. “This is more akin to the old model of personnel. But
there are still a lot of companies that work in that mode because their
management group has come to expect that,” Herman says. “The more enlightened
companies expect HR to play a much more far-reaching role--more assertive, more
strategic, and more proactive than reactive or responsive.”
HR competence
is key to recruitment success
The challenge today, Herman says, is that
many HR people have developed their skills within the confines of HR, with
little exposure to learning what running a business is all about. Herman says
that HR professionals who need more general business knowledge should consider
advancing their educations with an MBA or by taking business practices
courses.
He notes, however, that if an HR department is to rise to a
higher level, it needs to have corporate encouragement and support. If
management doesn't insist that HR people perform higher levels, then a lot of
the blame for having a stagnant HR function falls on the leaders’ shoulders.
“The key is to have the strategic staffing plan integrated with the corporate
strategic plan, so the hiring function is deliberately focusing on bringing in
the kind of talent that is going to be needed today and tomorrow to achieve the
objectives,” he says.
Leadership plays a key role in a company’s HR
development, says Arlene Vernon, president, HRx Inc., which offers HR consulting
and professional speakers. “Different CEOs provide a different level of respect
for what the HR department can provide. The [question is]: Is HR viewed as a
partner with leadership or are they strictly viewed as an overhead function just
meeting the requirements of the law and bringing in and exiting employees. The
more responsibility that a human resource department is given as a partner, the
more effective it can be in all its functions, including recruiting,” she
says.
Evolutionary trends driven by technology
“The last three or
four years have been years of phenomenal change for the recruiting industry in
general, just because of the advent of online recruiting. It has fundamentally
changed the game. It allows for much more direct and easier access to candidates
by employers and to employers by candidates,” says Peter Carley, vice president,
human resources, Euro RSCG Healthview, a pharmaceutical and biotech advertising
and communications firm.
To capitalize on the possibilities with
technology, HR departments should not only be open to using the technology but
also to driving the change of the HR function.
Keep up or
else…
Back when HR was called personnel, it was largely an administrative
function. It was designed to process transactions. There was little strategic
involvement, Carley says. Now, because of the talent wars of the “mid to late
‘90s,” all of a sudden, recruiting became a much more integral and essential
part of the strategic equation for the success of the company. “It’s always
essential to get and keep the best talent possible. If you are relying on sort
of run-of-the-mill and old-fashioned recruiting methods, you’re going to get
beaten. Your competitors will reach talent more quickly and effectively than you
will,” he says.
According to Carley, another mistake many companies make
in their recruiting process is that they focus too much on cost per hire. He
says that while companies should keep an eye on their costs per hire, the more
important metric is quality per hire. A sharp, motivated performer might cost
more to recruit.
However, by incorporating online technology into the mix
of recruiting methods and by taking the focus off cost per hire, Healthview,
which has about 500 employees, has actually been able to reduce advertising
costs while increasing the quality of new hires.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/10/prweb83818.htm