Role of HR in Higher Education!

Neglecting human resources are like a person functioning without a heart.

Appreciate the real value of human resources. "Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them; they're not just lying around on the surface." - Ken Robinson

Education is changed dramatically due to technological advances. Gone are the days of a professor lecturing to a classroom full of students and writing notes on a blackboard. For instance, some of the best courses are taught completely online. Others consist of online lectures with team-based projects, flip learning and presentations in a classroom. While teachers are slowly gearing up to the new reality, the administration is still archaic.

Conventionally, the universities' payroll, attendance, and other routine HR work were handled by administrative officers, largely debatable was the role of an administrative officer in colleges and universities. She/he uses to take care of routine HR activities like shortlisting resume, record keeping, benefits, and other HR-related work.

There is no position for HR professionals in higher education due to a lack of understanding of new reality. The new reality is no more students will come irrespective of the quality offering by institutions the quality of teachers, delivery, research, funding is market-based. Best students compete for the best institutes and in the process, the institutions become great institutions.

Hence profession is rising due to the changing needs and demands of the competitive market. Their work has shifted more from the back office to organizational transformation, focusing on strategic and business partnerships. Broadly speaking, most human resources leaders focus on building a workforce that reflects their institution's strategic vision. The expansion of the role of HR in higher education signifies the progress of HR in the corporate world over the last two decades, compared to the earlier role of administrative function now it is more of a strategic and advisory role based on human capital management.

Because of the involvement of HR inside the organization has resulted in the “Best Practices” in higher education, hence the higher educations are increasingly considering the Human Resource for the betterment and survival in the competition.

Increasing demand for HR in higher education has incited the Universities to make themselves ready for this competitive market and start the innovative ideas. The management has started hiring HR to help their organization to move towards the working style of corporate and to develop or recruit skill set that will reflect the image of the university in a much more modern style workplace and showcase the changing trends in education.

Moreover, many higher educations in India is not-for-profit hence they must be strong in these areas for their survival in the market and HR can be very helpful in the supporting engagement, improving performance levels, and leading transformation efforts. Transformation is the process of accepting the changes for the betterment of an organization, the organization who do not opt for the transformation they find it difficult to meet the demand.

It is important to have teamwork and diversity in culture, for an organization to succeed. No doubt handling manpower in the current scenario has become more challenging than earlier, hiring staff from multi-cultural background for a mix of best skills and cultural adaptability has become a challenge for human resources, but also a big reward in terms of the long-term development of the organization.

Diversity in employees not only creates a healthy work environment but kills the organization politics to a large extent improves the learning process when many employees are hired from the same state or through reference employees tends to form the group and support each other for their survival which later on take the shape of survival of fittest and ultimately the organization productivity suffers, there are less work and more gossip and it becomes like a hard rock to break.

Competitive pressures are immense. In addition, we now have more for-profit, proprietary institutions in the mix. The only option left with the Higher-education institutions are to learn to adapt changes to survive and grow.