Most human resource managers long to be in Frank Brennan's shoes. Unlike his counterparts elsewhere, the group human resources manager at Irish Fertilizer Industries does not need to worry about recruitment and retention: the average age of his workforce is late 40s and the average length of service is just shy of 30 years.

"This is not a mobile labour force. We have very low turnover, a very stable and loyal workforce and very low recruitment requirements," he says.

But though he does not have to worry about one of today's key HR challenges, there are other issues Mr Brennan must deal with.

Staff have to be retrained to keep pace with changing technology. Remuneration systems such as annualised hours have to be implemented to maintain competitiveness in a mature, declining industry. And routine HR administration, record-keeping and employee relations (what used to be called industrial relations) activities have to be handled.

Not too long ago, HR management was more about policing, than valuing, employees. But the rise of the knowledge-based economy and the growing shortage of skilled labour have changed that.

"In the last few years people have become centre stage in organisations," says Mr Mike McDonnell, director of the Institute of Personnel and Development.

"In the 1970s, 1980s and even into the 1990s, the personnel director was the regulator of people at work. The role was about setting terms of employment, dealing with the unions, waiting for problems to arise. It was reactive, not strategic."

Now companies are beginning to see people as a strategic business resource. And the name change, from personnel management to human resources management, reflects that.

"The human resources role has devolved into a strategic role, making sure that the people policy ties in with the business policy and strategy. It's much more about achieving the strategic aims of the company than it was in the past," says Mr Brennan.

At Iona Technologies, HR staff need to understand the company's core competence in software so they can devise appropriate training and development as well as compensation and benefits packages, says Ms Sandra McDevitt, vice president of worldwide human resources.

In an industry where staff turnover exceeds 25 per cent a year, finding new ways to attract and retain people, perhaps by giving them a stake in the business or by providing a flexible range of benefits from which they can choose, has become a crucial issue for the HR department.

"The biggest challenge for us is finding the right people with the right skills, then bringing them in, training them and keeping them," she says.

For Iona, that can mean searching abroad for staff, bringing them to Dublin, providing assistance with transport and housing, dealing with visas and labour contracts in various jurisdictions, and assimilating people with a mix of cultural backgrounds. HR staff have to keep abreast of compensation and benefits packages in different countries and competitor companies, understand and respond to the cultural requirements of people from different ethnic backgrounds, and know about international employment law.

For example, the company recently recruited 15 software developers from India. To help them integrate, HR personnel organised special ethnic food in the staff canteen and talks on religious and other issues, Ms McDevitt says.

With techies thinking nothing of job-hopping every six months to a year, retaining people is perhaps more important than recruiting them. In the IT industry, training has become an essential retention tool. "We develop personal career paths for people," Ms McDevitt says. "We tell them, if you join Iona, this is what we'll do for you and how we'll advance your career. But we also need to be explicit about the needs of the business and say, this is what we expect back from you."

A three-year employment commitment is considered long term in the fast-changing IT world and is about as much as any IT company can expect from an employee, Ms McDevitt says. Not so in more mature industries where staff stay longer, the role of the HR manager is more traditional, yet where the company must still balance staff and business needs.

FOR generations of Dubliners, a job with Arthur Guinness was much sought after and hard won. The company had a reputation for benevolent treatment of its workers, paying wages above the prevailing rate, providing free healthcare, education and sports facilities, even building homes at a time when slum living was widespread.

Now a global operation with more than 2,000 staff, Guinness recently set up a human resources shared services unit to improve the speed and efficient handling of routine HR activities and to free up HR line managers to concentrate on people development issues.

"By putting routine paperwork into the shared services unit, we're trying to give the HR line manager more time to get involved strategically in developing and growing people," says Mr Tom Kennedy, head of compensation and benefits for Guinness Ireland. "We're trying to de-layer the organisation and move to a learning organisation. We're also moving to team working in the brewhouse and fermentation plant and trying to upskill people to do more complex jobs. That involves lots of training."

In many companies, responsibility for dealing with specific employee issues such as absenteeism, poor performance, conflict in the workplace or bullying has shifted from personnel back to the line manager. Increasingly, HR's role is to develop managers with people management skills.

"There is a recognition now that how people are treated day-to-day will affect whether they stay in the company, so the techniques of HR have devolved to the line manager and the line manager is expected to sort them out," says Mr McDonnell.

With the HR department training the managers and the managers minding the people, it cannot be long before HR becomes a stepping stone into general management.

"Human resources is coming into its own as an industry," says Ms McDevitt. "Chief executives see the importance of it for business and the implications if it goes wrong."

(Series concluded)