Human Resources - Reflection Blog #2 (COM 610)

I believe that in the past 40 years, the definition of Human Resources has greatly changed from being one of a sounding board for employees to encompassing all facets of employee well being and benefits. Original human resource departments were built with the intention to manage the actual feedback itself and it’s direct impact on the employees (Miller, p. 43). With this shift, employees were given an opportunity to voice concerns to those with the organizational knowledge (and power) to make those decisions, instead of employees just complaining to management in hopes that something would change.

Human resources has become an incredibly broad field in the years since its popularity emerged and has become integral in any company’s success. However, the basic needs of a successful HR program have significantly changed. Looking at the show “The Office,” it depicts what the stereotypical HR representative looks like: one guy, filing paperwork and representing “corporate” at certain meetings. Now, as I’ve previously mentioned, human resource groups are moving into a new relationship with their employees, providing extended benefits and ultimately a larger “stake” in the company.

They sometimes provide the link between specific benefits like insurance, payroll, recruiting, and the usual HR expectations (complaints, compliance, and feedback). More and more companies are adopting external benefit lines, departmentalizing certain aspects of the human resource “process,” and outsourcing the management of their employee relation processes to “employee consulting” firms. This proves our text’s point when it states that the human resource approach doesn’t provide “pragmatics or politics” for the approaches application, loosely defining what a successful HR program would look or operate like (Eisenberg et al., p. 85). I currently work for an external benefit line that manages FMLA, STD, and LTD benefits for a major company and work directly with six other departments that work directly with the employee, none of which is the actual human resources department. Actually, within this company, you couldn’t actually get a member of “HR” on the phone since they work as an internal department. They have a department to answer basic questions and refer them inwardly should their requests be more specific.

References:

Eisenberg, E.M., Goodall, H.L., Jr., & Trethewey, A. (2010). Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint (6th Edition). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Miller, K. (2006). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.