The world continues to change as a result of developments in globalization, demographics, technology and regulation. These disruptive forces require organizations to change rapidly – and they need their people to be agile and adaptable to that change.

Human Resource (HR) is becoming a prerequisite competency for leadership, functional and operational decision making, and strategic planning but business need to accelerate the growth of this competency beyond the HR function to continue to drive its value.  A company’s workforce drives growth and performance; and success is intrinsically linked to the workforce’s skills, talent, knowledge and ability.

Overtime there have been many changes in the HR function especially the last decade has seen various new things in HR with special emphasis on linking HR with overall organization’s strategy. HR leaders are being challenged to mobilise and manage talent to help businesses grow and it appears that HR has a long way to go in persuading business leaders that it’s up to the challenge. Down the line some of the major changes include transformation of ‘appraisal’ to performance management system, more emphasis on training and development, building up human capital through proper job analysis and so on.

A company should have two strong “halves” of HR: administrative-driven that can smartly allocate talent resources and contain costs, and strategic driven that can find the right professionals to execute the company’s strategy. The case of HR being strategic partner is becoming stronger; there is ample evidence that how human capital is recruited, developed, organized and managed has a direct and strong influence on organizational performance.