Pros And Cons Of Delegating Human Resources Management Essay

A line manager is responsible for an employee or a work group who do not have any managerial responsibility. Some of the daily duties that a line manager undertakes are people management, dealing with customers/clients, monitoring work process, measuring operational performance, organising allocation and rotas and monitoring absenteeism. Although line managers play a vital role in bridging the top level management and the lower hierarchical staff on a daily basis, it is seen that most of the line managers, however, may not have formal management education because he/she is generally promoted from within.

Due to the daily and frequent contacts between the line managers and the staff to whom he/she is responsible, it has been a more common practice to see the line managers undertaking several human resources responsibilities including recruiting and selection of employee – the function otherwise used to be exclusively of the human resource department in the past. This is widely practiced lately mainly because of the fact that the line managers have a better understanding of the job that needs to be carried out in order to match the corporate strategy and operations strategy of the organisation. With the prevailing frequent communication between the line managers and the employees, it also contributes towards increased morale in the employees ensuring a higher productivity and competency of the employees and enhanced focus on customers.

Since most of the line managers do not have formal management education, they might not be fully reliant on the managerial tasks that they perform and hence they have drawback in their undertaking of human resources tasks although they have added value to the human resources professionals by allowing them to invest their time on more strategic issues.

Pros and Cons of Delegating Human Resources roles to Line Managers

Cons

Increased speed of decision making

Line management responsibility for people issues

Local management accountability

Potential cost savings

Strategic role for central HR/IR

Short lines of communication

Lack of time to perform HR duties

Increase in line manager’s workload

Additional costs of training managers

Increase in grievances/tribunal cases

Potential for HR/IR to be marginalized

People management not considered to be part of the line manager’s job

Pros:

Increased speed of decision making:

Line management responsibility for people issues

Local management accountability

Potential cost savings

Strategic role for central HR

Short lines of communication

B. Cons:

Lack of time to perform Human Resources duties

Increase in line manager’s workload

Additional cost of training line managers

Increase in grievance/tribunal case

Potential for HR to be marginalised

People management not considered to be line manager’s job

The people and performance research carried out for the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) by a team at Bath University (Hutchinson, 2003) found that the line managers played a vital role in terms of implementing and enacting HR policies and practices. They found that where employees feel positive about their relationship with their line managers they are more likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty which are associated with higher levels of performance or discretionary behaviour. Discretionary behaviour is defined as that which goes beyond the requirement of the job to give extra performance which can boost the bottom line. Line managers also play the strongest part in structuring people’s actual experience of doing a job.

According to an online survey of 121 organisations, collectively employing almost a quarter of a million people, shows that four in five (80.2%) organisations have devolved responsibilities such as managing flexible working requests and handling grievance and disciplinary procedures to line managers over the past few years. And two in three predict the role of line managers will take on even more HR functions over the next few years. (Williams, 2008)

Also, another interesting finding was that the line managers claimed to be satisfied with the HR responsibilities that have been devolved to them and are keen to take on activities that relate explicitly to the development of their team. Most line managers report working closely with their HR counterparts and see the configuration moving towards a partnership. The line managers’ main concern is that a lack of support from HR during the delivery of the service can detract from the overall effectiveness. They also note that junior level line managers are likely to feel less supported by HR and comment that it is merely their high level position that drives the HR-line partnership in their situations. (Susan Whittaker, 2003).

The role of line managers in both public and private organisations has changed quite significantly in recent years. The line managers have been allocated more responsibilities and are accountable not only for budgeting and allocating of resources, but most importantly for people management issues as per Hoogenboorn & Brewster (1992.). According to some sources such as Storey (1992: 190), he argues that line managers may well “be playing a far more central role in labour management” than HR personnel. Whereas another source, Hales (2005) traces the greater involvement of line managers in HR issues to two developments. He argues that the line managers have been taking on the role of a ‘coach’ , ‘conductor’ or a ‘leader’ of a highly motivated team as a result of the spread of Human Resource Management and the adoption of more participative forms of management concerned with securing high performance through commitment rather than control.

Human Resource Devolvement has led to line managers acquiring middle management functions and becoming “mini-general managers” accompanied by the loss of supervisory functions downwards to work teams. It is hence more appropriate for line managers to take responsibility for people development since they operate alongside the people they manage and therefore it is argued that that their reactions are more immediate and appropriate (Whittaker and Marchington, 2003).

Initial research indicates some positive support for line manager HR involvement. Hutchinson and Purcell (2003) found that line manager involvement in coaching, guidance and communication positively influences organisational performance. Likewise, a case study of line manager involvement in HR in the NHS by Currie and Proctor (2001) found that line managers are important contributors to strategic change when provided with discretion in implementing HR strategies within their own work groups.

Whittaker and Marchington (2003) maintain that line managers increasingly welcome HR responsibilities and are prepared to take them on as they add variation and challenge to their work. Gibb (2003) argues that requiring line managers to be more involved in the HR issues may also lead to a transformation of managers own attitudes towards HR, organisational change and thus a transformation of human relations at work (Gibb, 2003). By increasing line manager involvement in HR, it is argued that better workplace conditions will result as line managers have better understanding than specialists of the type and range of interventions needed. In this pursuit, line managers are assisted by more effective and user-friendly human resource information systems, new technologies and Human Resource call centres, making it possible for line managers to handle some HR work without the assistance of Human Resource Department.

It is seen that a speedy resolution of conflicts and lower rate of employee turnover is possible by moving Human Resources responsibilities closer to employees through line managers. Indeed, providing greater authority to line managers and encouraging greater initiative taking may address a long-standing criticism levelled at HR departments; namely a lack of appreciation of the immediacy of the line manager’s problems (Harris, L, Doughty, D. & Kirk, S. (2002).

According to Maxwell and Watson (2006), business partnerships between HR specialists and line managers have emerged as the dominant model for Human Resources operations within organisations. Similarly, Ulrich (2005) outlines the role of HR Strategic Partners as working alongside line managers to help them reach their goals by crafting strategies to maximise productivity through alignment of corporate resources to these goals.

We can hence understand that devolving HR responsibilities to line managers offers a number of benefits to organisations. A greater freedom to HR specialists to engage with strategic issues is provided enabling them to forge closer relationships with line managers and a partnership model towards managing employees is developed. Similarly, line managers understand and appreciate the complex nature of dealing with the employee issues and become more encouraged and involved in everyday workplace management tasks.

However, line managers have pointed various issues concerning HR involvement despite the above mentioned benefits of participating in HR activities. It will obviously increase their workload by getting involved in HR tasks. Increased workload leads to feelings of incompetence among line managers and reluctance to take responsibility for devolved HR activities. Indeed, this has led to feelings amongst some line managers of being “dumped upon” (Renwick 2003: 265) or “pushed upon to take new HR responsibilities” (Harris, L, Doughty, D. & Kirk, S. (2002):) due to a climate of fear and mistrust driven by HR. The experience and ability of line managers to take responsibility for HR issues may present a major barrier to devolvement. Both Whittaker and Marchington (2003) and Hailey, V.H., Farndale, E. & Truss, C. (2005) suggest that line managers’ skills and competence in HR practices may be limited and a lack of training in this area will undoubtedly affect a line managers’ overall effectiveness. Incapability and misunderstanding of HR practices on the part of line managers will prevent the organisation from developing a strong learning culture (McCracken and Wallace, 2000) with McGovern et al. (1997) arguing that a lack of training may lead to inconsistencies in implementing organisational HR policies potentially exposing the organisation to lawsuits and employment tribunals. Their research though, indicates that management development is not a priority for the top management and reliance on the notion of “trial-and-error” is prevalent in organisations. Furthermore, the failure of organisations to take a long-term developmental view is exposed by a reluctance to set aside a specific budget for training and the belief that management development is the individual’s responsibility.

Many line managers get under pressure to meet operational targets, and often struggle to fulfil their people management duties. This is partly because they are not equipped with the tools, skills and knowledge they need to be effective. As a result, managers sometimes effectively abdicate responsibility for aspects of people management. A commonly used phrase is “that’s HR’s job” often tends to be heard a lot in many companies – whether relating to employee development, managing an individual’s performance or dealing with absenteeism issues.

Recent research involving nearly 3,000 employers by the Work Foundation and the Institute for Employment Studies found that organisations with a comprehensive, structured approach to people management, covering areas such as recruitment, development plans and employee appraisals, perform better than those without, as indicated by higher profits per employee, higher profit margins and ultimately higher productivity.

Sometimes it’s easy to be critical of managers, but often they’re not properly equipped to be effective. Investment in management training requires clearly set-down policies and procedures. There appears to be lack of clear guidance and easily accessible information, it’s not surprising that many line managers’ response when an issue arises is either to pick up the phone to HR or to ignore the problem and hope it would goes away or transfer responsibility to someone else.

It is interesting but to be fair to line managers, sometimes part of the problem may also lie with the HR department itself. For all the talk about wanting to devolve more responsibility to the line, in practice HR professionals are sometimes reluctant to trust line managers to manage. They are unwilling to give managers the tools and information they need to do the job effectively: after all, knowledge is power, and by being the gatekeepers of all information relating to employees, policies and processes, HR may feel that it has power. This is clearly not in the long-term interests of the HR function.

HR teams must realise that if they are to fulfil their potential and be true partners to the business, then they need to trust their managers with the day-today stuff. This doesn’t mean being unsupportive but continued support to line managers to assist them with responsibility for the way that people are managed. It does mean defining strategies and policies and then putting in place the frameworks and the systems that enable managers to take accountability for the day-to-day execution – but in a controlled, informed and effective way.

Line managers must aim to be more accountable whereas HR professionals being more strategic could assist when working together. Better solutions are needed to support key people management processes and it’s likely that intelligent use of technology is likely to represent at least part of the answer. Technology-based services offer organisations the potential to give much greater support to their line managers, but in a highly cost-effective way. Line managers can be given tools to walk them through common processes, access to comprehensive information about their employees, guidance on how to manage effectively, and prompts when tasks or actions are due – all accessed via a single web-based service.

In view of the above, making line managers responsible for the delivery of HR can be complex. Line managers may not possess the required skills needed to implement HR initiatives and may feel ill-equipped or insufficiently trained to accept responsibility for day-to-day HR tasks. Devolving HR responsibilities may also represent a lack of appreciation of the workloads, time pressures and overall priorities of line managers threatening the overall standards of HR delivery across the organisation and diminishing the value of HR.

It is found that getting line managers involved in HR tasks is a step towards achieving a more strategic, value-added approach to managing employees. Line managers play an important position in the organisational hierarchy and can directly affect the quality of front-line services. It will greatly increase the existing pressures of excess workload and the need to deliver on short-term priorities by devolving line managers with HR responsibilities. It will also mean the requirement of display of a higher level of HR competency by the line managers which calls for the need for high-quality training programmes for line managers to ensure that they feel confident in discharging their new HR responsibilities. Such training may help organisations avoid costly litigation and damage to their public reputation.

Therefore, HR professionals must engage with line managers and develop a partnership to bring about a speedier resolution to workplace conflicts by allowing line managers to seek guidance and advice whenever required thereby making line managers more responsible for HR.