ON Pakistan’s industrial landscape, the HR profession is delivering in terms of organisational, financial and social performance.

However, there are certain challenges in respect of its performance standards and outcome expectations which need to be overcome.

Currently, the main challenge to HR (human resource) profession is lack of its performance standards relating to acquisition, development, maintenance and retention of effective workforce. No two organisations of same size and industry have standard processes and procedure in any HR domain. Because of lack of its standards, its structure, domain of functions, processes, procedures, responsibilities and output measures vary from organisation to organisation and therefore do not appear credible.

Unfortunately, there is no institution at the national level to address this vital area. Our workforce legislation is mainly labour centred, deeply rooted in Industrial Relation Ordinance 1969.

Even the ministry of HRD, basically raised from the ashes of ministry of labour and manpower does not have the expertise to address the complex technical aspects of HR function. These include workforce planning, talent sourcing, recruitment, selection, retrenchment, training/development, job analysis, job design, organisational development, performance appraisal, total rewards, employee relations, legislative and regulatory compliance and change management.

In the absence of national body and professional standards, there is no coordinated guidance for practitioners to harmonise disparate HR practices for the benefit of organisations and employees. It only negatively impacts business efficiency through adverse employee satisfaction and productivity.

HR has no benchmarks to evaluate its performance in terms of staff retention, rates of turnover, accidents, productivity, consumer satisfaction and investor confidence. Due to no benchmark standards, the cost of managing workforce is high as economies of scale are not being applied in the areas of hiring, developing, supporting and retaining an effective workforce. Moreover, business leaders have no means to measure the value or the net contribution of HR towards value creation in an enterprise.

In the absence of HR standard competency framework, there is no defined eligibility requirement to practice, consult, train or teach HR profession. Because of this deformity, HR professionals face a lot of difficulty in marketing their skills globally and finding job opportunities abroad, as compared with any other profession.

Absence of standard competency framework also restricts the internal growth and mobility of company’s talent quickly with less risk and errors. It poses a serious issue to organisational succession management hindering business continuity and disaster recovery management.

Currently, multitudes of software are being used in HRMS. Most of these are incompatible in mutually exchanging data between organisations, regulators and government agencies. HR standardisation can aim to ensure compatibility of different HRMS. Standardisation of HR technology cannot only overcome the present problems but also reduce paper documentation, thus decreasing carbon footprint created by business travel needs and redundant administrative practices.

From employee health and safety point of view also, HR standardisation can reduce cost of investigations and other regulatory responsibilities of government agencies and ministries charged with overseeing workplace practices.

Standardisation of HR profession can contain cost, improve employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and business efficiency.

email: zmubarik@gmail.com