The roles of Human Capital Management

Once again, it’s not about who or whom. It’s all about what and why. It’s 100% about the system and not the persons involved.

Basically it’s just a hand note on today’s lecture, and since I have no experience in Human Capital Management at all, I found it so attractive that I would like to share it here.

All that I know about HCM is just the hiring, firing, rotating, promoting and payroll functions. I couldn’t think of any other function that HCM can have… I mean not in the term of academic talks. But Professor Umezu had really inspired me to even know more about how strategic HCM can be functioned.

To make it easier, I’ll use the graph below… originally built by Dave Ulrich to explain HCM roles in an organization. So clear that even a rookie like me can get the message in no time.

Four brackets shows the fields (2 objects and 2 focuses) that HCM should be involved with and the four green ellipses shows HCM functions in accordance with connecting and synchronizing  an object to a focus.

HCM as a strategic partner gives value added to the organization by characterizing professional abilities that an organization needed to achieve its strategic / future goals. On the other hand, HCM also actively ensuring that organization will hire only those that fit the organization’s strategic / future goals.

HCM as a change agent is the function to connect organizational strategic and future goals and translate it into what kind of real action that an employee should do accordingly, especially in transformation process. On the other hand, values that the employee had can also become an input for an organization to set its future goals and strategies.

HCM as an employee champions, is the role where HCM can transforms employees aspiration to the line managers and vice versa. A lack of this function is easily marked by the needs of the employee of a labor association or likewise.

HCM as Administrative Experts, is the very basic function as I mentioned before. At least every HCM should run this function. Unlike a “traditional” HCM,  a more advanced HCM should run all of four functions in balance.

So, what kind of function(s) that your HCM has?