How could HR Department become the best partner of Business Departments?
Apr 18-2013
----First Seminar of BiMBA HR Club Successfully Held
On the afternoon of May 9th 2011, the first seminar of BiMBA HR Club officially kicked off at Zhifuxuan Classroom, National School of Development (NSD). BiMBA invited Mr. Wei Xu, HR Executive Director of ICBC Leasing Ltd, and also a MBA FT2000 alumnus, to deliver a speech entitled “How could HR Department become the best partner of Business Departments?” and share his HR experiences with over 20 HR-related alumni and specialists. Professor John Yang, Dean of BiMBA, Ms. Lucy Liu, Assistant Dean of BiMBA and the Director of Alumni & Career Development Dept., Ms. Maria Chai, Deputy Director of Alumni & Career Development Dept., and Ms. Helene Wang from Alumni & Career Development Dept. all attended this opening seminar.
Maria first briefly introduced the goal of BiMBA HR Club and its mission. HR Club is established on the basis of 2010 HR Salon event with the great efforts by nine founding board members who are all human capital related BiMBA alumni. The theme of HR Club is “Learning, Sharing, Influence”, and it aims to build an influential and powerful industry dialogue platform.
Next, Lucy addressed warm welcome to everyone on behalf of BiMBA Alumni & Career Development Dept. Lucy spoke highly of this seminar’s theme, regarding it not only practical, but also profound, not only fits into MBA’s education and career development service, but also helps to build a professional HR platform.
After gracious and enthusiastic welcome from Lucy and Maria, Mr. Wei Xu shared with attendees his opinions on “How could HR Department become the best partner of Business Departments?” Over ten years’ accumulation of HR experiences enabled Mr. Xu to have some original thoughts on this topic. From his perspectives, HR Department plays four key roles inside the company:
a. Strategic partner of Business Departments;
b. Engine for organizational restructure;
c. Human resource experts;
d. Employee relationship management.
Despite presenting his views, Mr. Xu also illustrated four vivid examples from his on-job experiences to show how the four roles could come into play.
After interpreting the HR roles, Mr. Xu began to analyze the relationship between Business Departments and HR Department. In his opinion, Business Departments are the inner clients of HR Department. Therefore, HR Department should make efforts to become a consultant, partner, and also fireman for Business Departments. Being consultant means to contribute ideas and solutions for Business Departments’ talent plan; being partner means to enhance the inter-department communication and trust; being fireman means to timely solve employee conflicts and emergencies.
The seminar went smoothly into round-table discussion after Mr. Xu’s insightful speech. All the audiences expressed their views no matter agree or disagree around the topic. Some guests launched a heated discussion on the change of values of today’s talents. They think that nowadays young talents think more on who am I working for, so their focus changes from simple monetary benefits to higher psychological demands such as job achievements and growth. Some guests discussed their opinions on Mr. Xu’s “HR Department is the engine of organizational restructure”. They consider it difficult for foreign companies’ HR Department to initiate an organizational change due to the elaborated division of labor and incompatible duties. Usually HR Department will offer support after Business Departments express their specific needs. In addition, some guests shared their experiences on how HR Department could become a best partner. They suggest HR Department to outsource its administration work so as to earn more time for itself to provide better strategic HR service for Business Departments. Meanwhile, HR Department should communicate actively with Business Departments to earn their respect and trust.
In the end, Professor John Yang spoke highly of today’s seminar. In his opinion, such a professional industry platform could add value to industry participants through exchange of experiences and thorough communication. He reminded HR specialists to pay attention to the changes in market environment, talent values, and enterprises themselves, and meanwhile focus on the payment structure, motivation demand and development platform for attracting talents. At last, Professor Yang, on behalf of BiMBA, gave a beautiful souvenir to the speaker Wei Xu, and appreciated his generous sharing in today’s seminar.
The seminar lasted for almost four hours, all the participants including BiMBA alumni and HR friends enjoyed very much this opportunity to communicate and exchange ideas via this professional industry platform. Some of them think that HR Club is not only very helpful in expanding their thoughts and developing their professional career path, but also creates a wonderful opportunity for them to build extensive network, and they sincerely look forward to the next seminar of HR Club. The first seminar of BiMBA HR Club came to a successful conclusion with a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere.
