ER, HR and their conundrum!

I have come across a number of HR professionals who get classified as “HR” or “ER” professionals merely based on their work environment and the nature of people they deal with. Simply put, professionals who have predominantly worked in a factory environment get categorized as “ER” and the others as “HR” (or Talent Management) professionals. I have always been intrigued by this approach, often wondering whether these are really different.

Employee relations in an earlier older context, in the traditional Industrial Relations approach of the past was restricted more to union management, and hence was significantly different from the other streams of HR. However, in the current context, where employee relations transcends the boundary beyond just union management and adopts a more relational approach towards treating individual employees and their representatives (where applicable) as equal stakeholders is as much about talent management and organizational development as in any other work organization context.

With a younger aspirational workforce, HR professionals need a business partnering approach not very different from what is expected in a non- manufacturing (or non-unionized) context. Managing such a workforce requires a holistic HR approach not restricted to signing of wage settlements, welfare or grievance redressal. Presence or absence of a manufacturing context does not change certain ground rules. Of course, change of industry or profile of people brings in their own context, but at a very fundamental level the approach to foundation HR processes (Merit based talent acquisition, progression, career development, performance assessment, remuneration, etc to name a few) should not be different. Designing a sales incentive scheme is as much a compensation problem as designing a productivity incentive scheme for shop floor employees.

As a young HR professional more than 15 years back, getting into an organization that offered a factory role was a dream come true. One had always heard your seniors say, “the real grounding happens in a factory”!

It is unfortunate that a number of youngsters today are shying away from working in factories. On one hand there are issues of less glamorous locations, working spouses, etc but one the other hand there is, perhaps, the larger issue of perception. Perception that ER is not HR, perception that ER does not deal with compensation management, talent management, capability building etc. This perception is contrary to the reality where factory experiences actually offer priceless learning, not only professionally but life lessons as well.

We must make efforts to correct this perception issue to be able to produce good HR thought leaders for tomorrow.