Reflective Essay on HR Management and its Importance in Business

Unit 1: Business Issues and the contexts of HR
Human resource management plays a critical role in the success of any organization. In this unit,
we learnt about various business issues that organizations face. We learnt about various HR roles
as explained by David Ulrich. These roles can be divided into that of a strategic partner, change
agent, employee champion and administrative expert. We applied different theories learnt in this
course to KSUMC which is a leading hospital. We conducted internal and external environment
analysis which helps us in evaluating different stakeholder interests. We also learnt about steps
of strategy formulation and implementation.
As a future HR manager, these learnings would help me become better aware of the human
resources required for the business. If the organization is undergoing a change, then hiring would
be focused on people who can act as change agents. On the other hand, senior level employees
would be hired as strategic partners. Conducting an internal or external environment analysis
including Porter’s model and SWOT would also help in assessing what my competitors are
doing. The step by step analysis would also help me formulate and implement strategies for the
growth of the firm as an HR manager.
Unit 2: Managing and coordinating the human resource function
In this unit we learnt about various human resource functions and how can managers work
towards managing and coordinating between the two. We also learnt about the pros and cons of
outsourced HR and in-house HR service. Another important learning of this unit was
understanding various functions of small and medium enterprises as well as large multinational
organizations.

As an HR manager, it is also important to evaluate the contribution of various HR functions in an
organization. In order to accomplish the same, we learnt about benchmarking, balanced score
cards, service level agreements and key performance indicators. I am sure as a future HR
manager, these parameters will largely help me in understanding the impact of different HR
functions in the organization.
A critical learning from this unit was the importance of employee satisfaction. I learnt different
strategies that can be adopted to ensure and measure employee satisfaction. These include
employee satisfaction surveys, one on one reviews and focus group discussions. A basic
understanding of these measures will help me as an HR manager to ensure employee satisfaction
in the organization and hence ensure increased levels of employee retention.
Unit 3: Developing professional Practice
This was an extremely important unit and helped us understand what it means to be an HR
professional and what are the career stages than an HR professional goes through. We also learnt
about ten professional areas, eight behaviors and four bands of professional competency in the
field of human resources. This model personally helped me identify a large number of skills and
behaviors that I possesses and will help me in my HR career.
Different stages of team work were also identified and analyzed in this unit. This understanding
helped me gain deeper insight about what different team members go through while working in a
team during different stages. As a future HR manager, this unit helped me understand how to
effectively lead a team during its different stages in order to ensure maximum output from all
team members.