Competition for talent in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries can be intense. As a result, HR focus is evolving from administration, regulation and support to driver of corporate change and success. Medzilla explores some of the opportunities for HR departments in transition, how HR can actually enhance company success and change, and what can be done to foster the evolution of HR staffing functions.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Groutage
Company: MedZilla, Inc.
Title: Director of Marketing & Development
Phone: 360-657-5681
Email: mgroutage@medzilla.com
URL: http://www.medzilla.com
Human Resources: Staffing function key to corporate change and success.
Marysville, WA (PRWEB) October 10, 2003-- Competition for talent in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries can be intense. As a result, HR focus is evolving from administration, regulation and support to the driver of corporate change and success.
It can be difficult to combine both the staffing and regulatory functions in the same individual or department," says Frank Heasley, PhD, President and CEO of MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. As a result, some corporations feel that their HR departments may be out of sync with the company becoming more aggressive, and that can hamper recruitment of talent."
There are several reasons some HR departments may have trouble making the transition," says Roger E. Herman, CEO, the Herman Group, consulting futurists that specializing in workforce and workplace trends. The first has to do with what the various stakeholders of the organization expect from HR. The second and third are related to competency and the CEOs engagement of HR at the appropriate level.
Corporate Expectations of HR
According to Herman, lead author of the new book Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People (Oakhill Press), HR departments in many companies take more of a reactive, staff-support function, charged with keeping the employees happy and the records straight. This is more akin to the old model of personnel. But there are still a lot of companies that work in that mode because their management group has come to expect that," Herman says. The more enlightened companies expect HR to play a much more far-reaching role--more assertive, more strategic, and more proactive than reactive or responsive."
HR competence is key to recruitment success
The challenge today, Herman says, is that many HR people have developed their skills within the confines of HR, with little exposure to learning what running a business is all about. Herman says that HR professionals who need more general business knowledge should consider advancing their educations with an MBA or by taking business practices courses.
He notes, however, that if an HR department is to rise to a higher level, it needs to have corporate encouragement and support. If management doesn't insist that HR people perform higher levels, then a lot of the blame for having a stagnant HR function falls on the leaders shoulders. The key is to have the strategic staffing plan integrated with the corporate strategic plan, so the hiring function is deliberately focusing on bringing in the kind of talent that is going to be needed today and tomorrow to achieve the objectives," he says.
Leadership plays a key role in a companys HR development, says Arlene Vernon, president, HRx Inc., which offers HR consulting and professional speakers. Different CEOs provide a different level of respect for what the HR department can provide. The [question is]: Is HR viewed as a partner with leadership or are they strictly viewed as an overhead function just meeting the requirements of the law and bringing in and exiting employees. The more responsibility that a human resource department is given as a partner, the more effective it can be in all its functions, including recruiting," she says.
Evolutionary trends driven by technology
The last three or four years have been years of phenomenal change for the recruiting industry in general, just because of the advent of online recruiting. It has fundamentally changed the game. It allows for much more direct and easier access to candidates by employers and to employers by candidates," says Peter Carley, vice president, human resources, Euro RSCG Healthview, a pharmaceutical and biotech advertising and communications firm.
To capitalize on the possibilities with technology, HR departments should not only be open to using the technology but also to driving the change of the HR function.
Keep up or else…
Back when HR was called personnel, it was largely an administrative function. It was designed to process transactions. There was little strategic involvement, Carley says. Now, because of the talent wars of the mid to late ‘90s," all of a sudden, recruiting became a much more integral and essential part of the strategic equation for the success of the company. Its always essential to get and keep the best talent possible. If you are relying on sort of run-of-the-mill and old-fashioned recruiting methods, youre going to get beaten. Your competitors will reach talent more quickly and effectively than you will," he says.
According to Carley, another mistake many companies make in their recruiting process is that they focus too much on cost per hire. He says that while companies should keep an eye on their costs per hire, the more important metric is quality per hire. A sharp, motivated performer might cost more to recruit.
However, by incorporating online technology into the mix of recruiting methods and by taking the focus off cost per hire, Healthview, which has about 500 employees, has actually been able to reduce advertising costs while increasing the quality of new hires.
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About MedZilla.com
Established in mid 1994, MedZilla is the original web site to serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain about 10,000 open positions, 13,000 resumes from candidates actively seeking new positions and 50,000 archived resumes.
Medzilla® is a Registered Trademark owned by Medzilla Inc. Copyright ©2003, MedZilla, Inc. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute this text in its entirety, and if electronically, with a link to the URL www.medzilla.com. For permission to quote from or reproduce any portion of this message, please contact Michele Groutage, Director of Marketing and Development, MedZilla, Inc. Email: mgroutage@medzilla.com.
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