Role of HRD in Determining Fit between an Employee and His/Her Role

The previous article on personality briefly discussed how organizations and the HRD function determine the fit between the employee and his or her role. This article looks at this topic in depth with specific reference to the role of the HRD function and the managers in this alignment.

For starters, whenever an employee is hired, there is often a fixed notion of where he or she is going to be placed in the organization. Except in cases of campus recruits and entry level hiring, the HRD function has a clear mandate of finding the right employee for the role. This happens by way of the managers and the division heads publishing their requirements for resources to the HRD department which then initiates the hiring process.

During the hiring process, care is taken to ensure that the employees who are progressing through the various rounds of the interviews actually fit the desired profile for the job or role.

The way this happens is something like this: a matrix is drawn up that matches the skills of the potential recruit with that of the requirements. Only when there is a high percentage of similarity and match between the profile and the recruit will the green signal is given for the HRD function to go ahead and recruit the candidate.

Apart from this, employees are regularly assessed and examined during the course of their stay in the organizations about the fit that they have with the current role. It is common in many organizations for employees to seek a change in the role or a transfer to another department because they feel that they are not in the right role. It is also the case that managers seek a change in the roles of employees depending on their assessment of the fit.

The next aspect that is critical to this assessment is whether the employee is indeed performing to his or her potential. Since there are many candidates who are good interview material who shine in the interviews and then flatter to deceive, the HRD function and the managers have a task at hand when they have to assess whether an employee is indeed actualizing his or her potential. This often involves detailed discussions between the employees and the managers along with the HRD managers to check whether the fit is indeed working.

Especially during appraisal times and the one-one’s between the manager and the employee, there is a need to assess the direction in which the employee is headed and take a call about whether that is the desired outcome or not.

Finally, though the exit option is indeed something that is always available, companies on the whole do not fire employees till they are convinced that the employee is no longer valuable to the company. Often, it so happens that the employee is put on performance improvement programs or on watch to assess whether the employee is making progress towards the goals set for him or her.

In conclusion, there are many instances where the fit between the jobs or the roles and the employees do not match and this leads to friction between the employee and the environment. Hence, the HRD function has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the fit is indeed tight.