NEXT GENERATION HR - CIPD

NEXT GENE
The growth option: turbo-charging HR’s
CONTEXT AND OVERVIEW
impact in Asia
Despite the relative immaturity of much of the HR profession in Asia, this research indicates
the beginnings of a silent revolution in Asian HR practice. The revolution is emerging as HR
helps organisations come to terms with four unique challenges (insight, community, purpose
and performance) that will define the success of the growth aspirations of the region.
Faced with this, traditional (Western) HR orthodoxy is a double-edged sword. Instead we
have witnessed the development of a much more agile and business-centred version of HR
in some organisations as HR steps outside of its conventional space and starts delivering
HR solutions that are essentially Asian in feel and deeply relevant to their context. You will
not find this so-called ‘next practice HR’ in any textbook – and therein lies its strength. It is
a wonderful example of practice on the ground getting ahead of academic thinking, and
appears to offer a template for turbo-charging HR’s impact in a growth region such as Asia.
Western HR orthodoxy
It is relatively well documented 1 that in many parts of Asia, HR as a profession is in a
state of flux and can be less mature and more emergent than in Europe or the US. For
example, in some countries HR operates more as a business specialism, rather than a fully
fledged profession with its requisite qualifications and professional status. There are also
organisations in which ‘business partnering’ concepts are still evolving and the function
invests a lot of its energy in traditional ‘services’, supporting the business in areas such as
payroll, recruiting and training.
For many companies, especially international and multinational corporations, the solution
is to put in place structures, processes and ‘ways of working’ that reflect best practice HR
internationally. Words such as ‘business partner’, ‘specialist teams’ and ‘service centres’ are
unsurprisingly becoming common parlance throughout Asia. On the face of it, this makes
good sense (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The best practice option
Developing
or emergent
profession
Implement
international
best practice
1
This gap has been identified by a number of authors, for example Zhu and Warner (2004) talk about ‘a lag in
practice that still exists in reality’.
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NEXT GENERATION HR