The Role of Hr

Human resources are involved in a myriad of functional areas including recruitment, staffing and training. For decades HR practitioners have undertaken their responsibilities as administrators, but with the changes in the business environment, there is a growing awareness of the value of human (Gilbert and Jones, 2000). The human resources profession has developed during the last two decades and continues to change in both roles played by human resource function and its practitioners. The increasing harsh business environment and amounting competitive pressures force HR to change its roles in response to the trend in the market and to help organisations to achieve effectiveness and competitiveness. Therefore, HR function is more and more regarded as a special role (Macky, 2008) and it seems likely that the efficiency of a company's human resources is more and more related with the performance of the whole organisation. Ulrich(1997) stated that the role of HR gradually shifts from operational aspect to strategic aspect, from policing to partnering. Organisations which hope to effectively manage the changes appear in the market have to continuously adjust their strategies, systems and cultures to adapt to the complicated and dynamic environment in current business world with a lot of uncertainty. In this sense, HR function is required to have more multifaceted and there is a trend for HR function to transfer towards more value added roles (Holbeche, 2006).

Ulrich(1997) indicated that HR professions mainly play their roles in four ares: administrative expert, employee champion, change agent, and strategic partner. These roles of HR functions basically reflect HR's focuses on operation and strategy. As to the focus on operation, HR practitioners mainly take participant in recruitment and selection process and personnels' recording keeping. These information are important for managers to judge an employee's performance but they seldom tell about the strategic meaning behind the data. On the other hand, strategic role played by HR is more involved in business planning and strategic designing. HR practitioners, in this sense, have to know about the future trend and direction of the company and according to the long-term benefits as well as strategies of the company to conduct their works.

Operational roles

Regardless of the labor market conditions, outstanding employees are