Transitioning to a Governance Role in HR: How Can I Effectively Embrace My New Responsibilities?

Presently, I am working with a small company with a workforce of around 30 employees as an HR. The management has moved me into a governance role, but I am not familiar with the responsibilities associated with it. I kindly seek your assistance in understanding the job responsibilities and acquiring new ideas to enhance governance and control within the organization. I am seeking guidance on how to commence this new role effectively. Our organization follows specific access control policies for communication. Your help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

Governance Divisions in the Company

The company has divided Governance into various parts: People Governance, Assets Governance, and Transaction Governance.

People Governance

People governance can include Time Office activities.

Assets Governance

Assets governance involves auditing the company's asset records.

Transaction Governance

Transaction governance ensures that trade-related work adheres to policies.

The main issue is that I do not have any authority; the management instructs me to only note down observations without taking any action. How can I make this role more valuable?

Bhavya, you are rightly confused since the word 'governance' is seldom used to assign job responsibilities to HR. Nevertheless, it includes laying down HR policy guidelines and HR processes for the organization, communicating the same to employees, and managing compliance. This ensures the governance of people as per some standard norms which are transparently shared in the environment.

Steps to Start with Governance in HR

I suggest you may start with the Leave Policy (including attendance, holidays, working days, and working timings) and get the same approved by your management before sharing with all employees. Other aspects will include preparing job descriptions for all job positions (if not existing already), followed by reporting channels based on organizational structure.

Like this, you can move forward. And in case your management favors e-governance to exercise better controls, you can look for 'EmpXtrack' on the web as a useful tool.

Regards,

Thanks, Mr. Bhatia, for your reply, but all these things are already implemented in the organization. It's just that people are not following them. We have a policy of wearing zone tags, but they don't adhere to it. We have access controls while communicating with other employees and must follow our zone. However, as these employees are either senior or beneficial for the business, HR tends to ignore their mistakes or doesn't take any action. In my role, I just observe and do not have any authority to take action.

Understanding Governance in HR

What I understand from my readings on the subject is that governance is a higher function and a more solemn responsibility than a mere HR functionary.

The object of governance is to safeguard the interests of all stakeholders, i.e., employer, employees, and organization, by:

• Establishing systems, mechanisms, procedures, principles, and practices for effectively carrying out HR functions and initiatives. For example, setting up a grievance redressal system for time-bound redressal of grievances or designing an objective PMS, etc.

• Ensuring transparency about HR policies by informing employees about their rights and responsibilities.

• Ensuring fairness and objectivity in implementing HR policies. For example, evaluating employee performance objectively or granting rewards strictly based on eligibility norms without showing any favoritism.

• Fixing accountability at various levels for implementing policies fairly.

• Enhancing the value and stock of all stakeholders by designing suitable training programs to build skills so that their productivity grows for the overall business growth.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & IR Advisor