giv eme $2$ action stretic plan to implement employee image of hrm

Recent complaints about the HR function have touched a nerve in a large, sympathetic audience, particularly in the United States. The most vocal critics say that HR managers focus too much on $$administrivia$$ and lack vision and strategic insight.

These feelings aren$$t new. They$$ve erupted now and in the past because we don$$t like being told how to behave$$and no other group in organizational life, not even finance, bosses us around as systematically as HR does. We get defensive when we$$re instructed to change how we interact with people, especially those who report to us$,$ because that goes right to the core of who we are. What$$s more, HR makes us per$$ form tasks we dislike, such as documenting problems with employees. And it prevents us from doing what we want, such as hiring someone we $$just know$$ is a good fit. Its directives affect every person in the organization, right up to the top, every single day.

The complaints also have a cyclical quality$$ they$$re driven largely by the business context. Usu$$ ally when companies are struggling with labor issues, HR is seen as a valued leadership partner. When things are going more smoothly all around, manag$$ ers tend to think, $$What$$s HR doing for us$,$ anyway?$$

This doesn$$t mean that HR is above reproach. Quite the contrary: It has plenty of room to improve, and this is a moment of enormous opportunity. Little has been done in the past few decades to examine the value of widely used practices that are central to how companies operate. By separating the effective from the worthless, HR leaders can secure huge payoffs for their organizations. But it$$s important to understand HR$$s tumultuous history with business leaders and the economy before turning our attention to what the function should be doing now and in the future.

The $$Personnel$$ Pendulum

How top executives feel about HR pretty reliably re$$ flects what$$s going on in the U$.$S$.$ economy. When the economy is down and the labor market is slack, they see HR as a nuisance. But sentiments change when labor tightens up and HR practices become essential to companies$$ immediate success.

Think back to the Great Depression. People would put up with nearly anything to stay employed. Line managers complained that personnel departments were getting in the way of better performance, which they thought could be achieved with the $$drive$$ sys$$ tem: threatening workers and sometimes even hit$$ ting them if they failed to measure up$.$

Similarly, business leaders didn$$t put a lot of stock in HR during the $2001$ and $2008$ recessions, be$$ cause employees$$keenly aware of how replaceable they were$$stayed put and more or less behaved themselves. Because companies had a large pool of job seekers to draw from, wages stayed flat and productivity rose. More employees were working harder for the sake of security. And that remains true in our $$jobless recovery$$ from the latest financial crisis. Although $83\%$ of people in a Salary.com sur$$ vey said they would look for a new job in $2014,$ the number who are actually quitting has not yet spiked. So it$$s still easy for leaders to push back on all those annoying HR policies. They seem superfluous.

Consider, in contrast, times when labor wasn$$t so plentiful. In the $1920$s$$when the economy was booming, and keeping workers was both hard to do and crucial to business$$personnel departments started to make supervisors treat their employees well. And after World War II$,$ U$.$S$.$ industry suffered a talent shortage unlike anything since. Many of the men $($it was always men$)$ who might have gone into business had fought instead. It didn$$t help matters that talent development had received little or no at$$ tention during the Depression. The postwar question

$$What happens if the boss gets hit by a bus?$$ pointed to a huge concern. About one$$third of executives died in office$$many of them from heart attacks$$ and no one was around to take their place. A lot of small companies went out of business, and many big ones had to be sold.

In that leadership void, modern HR was born, ushering in practices such as coaching, developmen$-$ tal assignments, job rotation, $360-$degree feedback, assessment centers, high$-$potential tracks, and suc$-$ cession plans. They sound routine now, but they were revolutionary then. And they arose from an urgent need to develop and retain talent in the $1950$s$.$

In that $$gray flannel suit$$ era, $90\%$ of positions $($and virtually all those in the top ranks$)$ were filled from within$$and $96\%$ of large companies dedi$-$ cated an entire department to planning for work$-$ force needs. Those numbers reflect an intense commitment to development, which paid large divi$-$ dends. HR was a powerful function, voted the most glamorous area in business by executives.

Things have changed quite a bit. Only a third or so of today$$s hires are internal. Companies engage executive search firms to fill most senior$-$level vacan$-$ cies. One in f