IF YOU wanted to get a good picture of what is happening in personnel management, a stroll through the Lyrath Estate Hotel near Kilkenny this week might have provided some insights.
Whether you call it personnel, people management, human resources or strategic HRM, successfully engaging with employees is the growth area in Irish management. It is on an upward curve similar to what sales and marketing experienced in the 1990s.
The annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) this week provided concrete evidence of the growth of this specialism as it attracted over 340 participants.
Personnel management ranks among the fastest growing occupations over the past decade according to the Central Statistics Office. The professionalism and growth is evident from the CIPD membership figures which have risen from 1,012 in 1987 to 2,273 in 1997 and then 6,246 last year, a sixfold explosion in 20 years.
But the HR function is plagued with insecurities reflected in the debate over the real benefits of people management practices.
This alignment between personnel and business results was given a huge impetus by the insights of University of Michigan's Prof Dave Ulrich which gave rise to the moves to have "shared services", internal "business partners" and increased personnel roles for line-managers.
This has been a major management buzz for the past 10 years and was intended by many senior personnel managers to allow them to think strategic thoughts.
It has not all worked out as planned as explained by the CIPD's director of research and policy, Linda Holbeche.
"Our recent report, The Changing HR Function, suggests that over 80 per cent of HR functions have undergone some form of change in the last five years. Much of the change is to achieve greater alignment between business and HR strategy and to drive more cost-effective and improved delivery."
Leading people management innovators are beginning to argue that the traditional personnel function needs to define its scope. At issue is whether this should also include employer branding, talent management, organisational development, corporate social responsibility and internal communications. This is a far cry from ensuring that staff did not take a day's unauthorised leave; came back from lunch on time; or that copies of new recruits' Leaving Certificate results were on file.
The big question is whether professional management competency in getting the best out of people in a work environment can really produce positive results.
In Ireland, for over 30 years, we conducted an experiment, albeit a costly and unintended one, which at least shows that the absence of quality human resource management in a large organisation can have a detrimental impact on effectiveness and service delivery.
Our health service, with the establishment of eight regional health boards in 1971, was created without any serious human resource management input. A study by the Labour Relations Commission six years ago highlighted how casual personnel officers glided in and out of the role as part of their "jobs for life" as health administrators.
By having a "common recruitment pool" very little outside talent influenced how our health services were managed. The end result is, at least, a negative proof of the merits of HRM.
