Different scholars and experts have had a debate on the roles and responsibilities of the human resources function in an organization. The debate is on how the HR function can contribute to the organizational development and growth by being a centrepiece. Various scholars came up with frameworks that seek to restructure and reconfigure the HR functions from its traditional roles of recruiting, hiring, staffing, managing, supervising, compensating, training and development of workers. Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) are among these experts who believe that HR need to evolve from its traditional roles and align with the current technology development and globalization. This aspect inspired Ulrich (1997) to develop a new model on the roles that HR function should play in enabling an organization to realize its objectives and help the organization gain a competitive advantage. On his book Human Resource Champions He stated that HR function must perform four roles - strategic partner, administrative expert, change agent, and employee champion – to add value and contribute to the organizational competitiveness (Bratton & Gold, 2017). However, together with Brockbank, they revised the human resource roles and developed a new framework. This paper assess the utility of the Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) model and determines whether it has common themes with other popular HR function frameworks.
Since its conception, Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) model utilization have become a popular trend in many organization across the globe. These scholars focused on redeveloping the human resource function to fit within the modernized and globalized workplaces. The scholars revised HR roles identified in Ulrich (1997) model and configured it into five roles namely: strategic partner, employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, and HR leader. Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) notes that the reconfiguration was in response to the changes occurring in the modern workplaces.
Strategic partner
HR professionals are essential in the crafting of the organizational strategic policies. Under this role, they bring along their knowledge on business, consulting, change and learning to the line managers. The HR experts work as strategy formulators and play three significant roles (Boxall, 2007). One, the act as the reactive devil advocate by questioning the company strategy’s accuracy and its ability to realize them. Second, they have a central role in the development of strategies and bring forward their knowledge on the current and future clients (Boxall & Purcell, 2016). They ensure that the strategies explore on how the organization can align the customer demands with its resources. As strategic partner, they also have the developmental role where they help in raising the standards of strategic thinking among the management team. The HR act as change agents and strategy implementers whey they enhance the alignment of the HR systems by assessing the organization problems, causes, and symptoms. They set the future agendas and develop plans for realizing them (Boxall, 2007)). Essentially, they HR professionals play a strategic role in change management by being masters of practice than though leaders. Their roles help the organization to be ready for future challenges and issues earning it a competitive position.
Employee advocate
Despite the changes in the workplace, listening, caring and responding to employees is still a significant function of the HR department. Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) recognizes this reality by stating that one of the HR function roles is being the employee advocate. The role involves the development of a solid human infrastructure in the organisation. Under this role, HR function performs various activities such as ensuring safe and health policies, fair terms and conditions, and discipline in the workplace (Bratton, 2017). The HR also ensures effective rewarding of employees based on their contributions. Other roles include ensuring that employee are comfortable and feel free to share and discuss their points of view by managing diversity and mutual respect while dealing with any emerging discrimination. Any organization that seeks to remain competitive must have a HR department that puts the employees’ needs at the centre of its policies and decisions (Boxall & Purcell, 2016). Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) notes that HR professionals need to ensure that the employer-employee relationship is one of the central values in the organization if it will gain a strategic value proposition and competitive advantage.