Greetings,
The Business Units are run by leaders . the talents work closely with them . Hence they are the ones who manage them through every crest and ebb . But then , they would require the custodians and think tanks with specialised knowledge who can give them a solution as a third party view at the time , when decision making for Talent.
Suppose a Business Unit is closing down. The BU Head would call upon HR to conduct an assessment and request for recommendation on the talents. It is true that the BU Head is clear about whom he would be let go . But for rational decision making which is free from Biases, he would need to run a standard assessment based on the set parameters. If it is a very small organization, and all the assessment centre is computerised the BU Head might not need anyone. But then would the productive time spent by a BU Head justify the time spent by him in assessing the talents.
Moral of the story is, HR is a support function. It acts a custodian championing different areas such as Employee Champion, Strategic Business Partner and etc. When a company allows HR to handle these function rather than letting the business/ operation leadership manage it , It saves on valuable productive hours of these executives. Incase an organization doesn’t bother that cost, it will lead to micromanaging by the leaders, which would increase their accountability exponentially.
Software are an enabler not the core of HR Functions. Even if the company have spent heavily on the softwares they would still need some to run it! Mindlessly entering data and drawing results will lead to a calamity! Even to understand if the software is running fine, one would need to understand the HR Functions! That itself defeat the process to an extent. On the top, process improvement are a must , given the changing need of every business. Hence not just one needs to know the HR functions, but needs to be an expert as well!!
Hence it is wiser to hire specialised people to manage the function rather than letting everyone do everything!
Your answer to the question might differ as you may have experienced it differently. But just an eg, think about it , the firms that produce cars don’t make the mechanical experts sell them to the customers.
Getting back to division of labour, Specialised talents perform duties within their area much effectively than the non-specialised ones. In terms of individual learning, getting exposure of different areas in management adds value . But that should be focussed on how that experience will strengthen the core ! There are companies who practise job rotation where a leader can understand different functions within the company and then return to their core function. This helps them make a balanced decision, and not to start working on and running every function !
Regards,
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