Line managers, people managers are the new HR, experts say

As against popular beliefs around responsibilities of Human Resource (HR) personnel, some experts have said that ‘bringing back the human’ in human management, is the responsibility of everyone that has a duty to manage as little as a team of two, and not primarily the  department.

This was one of the views when SIAO, a leader in financial advisory services and business assurance brought industry leaders in the HR space together in an event on Wednesday themed ‘Re-imagining HR: Navigating Our Route To The Future Of HR’ for a knowledge-sharing discussion.

For HR experts, they say attrition will continue to rise and the country will continue to lose its workforce to Canada and other places if the role that HR will play in the future of work is not reviewed.

They also submitted that the primary responsibility of managing people in organisations resides with line managers, MDs, CEOs, EDs, typically everyone else, and that the core HR department must free itself from primary people management responsibilities to concentrate on HR strategy, execution, and implementation for their own organisations.

“HRs have shared responsibilities, not primary responsibilities,” said Yemi Faseun, chief talent officer, YF Talent Partners.

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He added that employees, team members, see and interact with their line managers and team leads most of the day, but when it is time for appraisal ratings, feedbacks, to know whether or not they will be promoted and why, their line managers send them to HR who in turn admit those responsibilities, and once that cycle is completed, send them back to where they belong.

Huge responsibilities rest on the shoulders of leaders and as a result, experts say everyone assigned to manage people must establish a workplace culture that first understands multi-generational differences and responds accordingly.

“Every generation, though they have their sharp differences, has something to bring to the table. The silent generation, the baby boomers, gen X, the millennials, and the gen Z’s,” Jumoke Aleoke-Malachi, lead, people and culture at Frenn said, encouraging stakeholders to explore and maximise these different potentials that are summarily identified as wisdom and agility.

It was also highlighted that business leaders are the ones that should be driving culture in organisations, and Faseun defined culture as what is allowed, what people get used to, what is rewarded, and what is unwritten. As there are visible organisational cultures, there are invisible organisational cultures, he said, adding that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

New HR is not the “almighty” HR department. Every leader is HR, they emphasised. The new workforce generation, according to discussants at the session, cannot thrive in a workplace that is toxic, and people are looking for places with psychological safety, not an environment where the MD comes in and everyone goes mute.

“You’re already sharing your tech talents, and probably already sharing your sales agents,” Gbenga Totoyi, group head, human resource, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance said, in alerting business leaders.

Organisations must tell and show people how humanly they want to be and pursue that. The employee experience must be emphasised and prioritised, and “in final analysis, HR is an employee,” Faseun said.