Human Resources Management

In the case of ABC Ltd which was taken over by an international company after more than 70 years of operating and tremendous changes were needed. In addition, the HR had an important role in implementing those changes. According to the five strategic roles as defined by Ulrich the HR Manager had fulfill during this process the following roles:

An employee advocate is responsible for the protection of employees during a process of a change in an organization and he is interested on employees needs. An employee advocate focuses on today's employee. In this case we can see that the HR manager has fulfill this role since she was working side by side with the CEO and Senior Management team and she was advise on the communication rollout of the change and language to be used in order to relate to those affected the mostly by the change, employees. She was an advisor for employees so she cared about their needs.

A developer of human capital focuses on how employees prepare for the future. We can say that the HR Manager had this role also as all trainings that were taking place was to prepare them for the changes that were going to happen in the future for implementing and achieving the company's plans. Also those trainings for managers were long lasted but their target was to fully understand and gain a sense of ownership.

The functional expert role is also valuable for a Human Resource Manager. In this role the HRM develops and implements programs to support career development and training. It also includes recruitment, adult learning, employee relations, diversity compensation and benefits. We can see that the HRM in this case has also fulfill this role as she was conducting trainings for senior and middle management teams using learning exercises, group exercises, role plays, group discussions and debate which were vital for their future in their workplace and for their relationship with their colleagues.

A strategic partner is a business expert, change agent, knowledge manager and consultant. As it is clearly written in the case study the HRM had become a coach for the middle manager and advisor for employees and had a more strategic business partner position.

A leader of the HR function is the sum of the four above roles and leading the HR function, collaborating with other functions, ensuring corporate governance and monitoring the HR community. In this case were the HR is a single manager and there isn't any department for the HR function and because she was fulfilling all the above roles we can say that she was a leader in the HR function.

Question 2:

According to this case study one key pivot point was the fact that they were adopting the employee engagement process in this change. They have made a commitment to all employees and union officials of an engagement process. Another point was that the wanted to ensure that all people will be aligned