Best practices for HR procurement.
Demystifying the human resource procurement process.
When did HR and procurement departments become one and same? What exactly does ‘procurement’ mean? Is it really a feature of human resources?
To understand how to improve the HR procurement process, you first need to understand how these two facets of business work together.
What is Procurement?
Procurement is a fancy term meaning “to get.” To procure something means to find and retrieve something, usually an item or a service. Plenty of businesses have their own procurement department. – this is usually a group of dedicated employees who make buying decisions for the business. Whether it’s a buying department at a publishing house who decides which printers around the world to partner with or a procurement officer at a Fortune 500 company who runs a team that’s responsible for sourcing all the office furniture for thousands of employees, procurement is an important job.
What is Resource Procurement in HRM?
This could mean one of two things. It could mean HRM teams that focus on finding good fits for the procurement teams mentioned above. Lots of staffing and recruitment groups focus on finding the right candidates for their clients in one industry – whether that’s creative, marketing, sales, etc. Therefore, there are lots of staffers looking to find good fits for procurement jobs like buyer, procurement assistant, supply chain analyst, contract coordinator, and many more.
In these instances, HR professionals need to really understand the roles they’re filling for, the kinds of industries looking for buyers and procurement specialists, and what kinds of things are being procured. It’s a lot of information, but it’s crucial to finding the right fits for businesses looking for procurement team members.
HR Procurement
But there is another way that HR and procurement work together, and that is with HR functioning as the procurement team. This is two-fold:
Procuring people: People are a resource – many would say a business’s most important resource (and certainly one of the most expensive). Procurement, then, for HR, is the function of their job that makes them the expert in finding and obtaining this resource. This part of HR usually falls under recruitment, with recruiters focusing their time and skills in this area.
Procuring supplies: HR is also often responsible for physically ordering office supplies that the people in the office need and use. Anything from printer paper to coffee to pens (and in many small businesses the furniture, etc.) is often taken care of by a human resource manager. Supplies might also mean the physical needs of a business-sponsored event, whether it’s tables and banners and streamers or food, drink, a guest speaker, and sound equipment.
Whether the work is finding quality people to go on and procure product for their business or it’s the added responsibility of supply ordering to the role of an HR specialist, one of the most important skills that can bring success is an attention to details. It’s important to be able to manage projects, multi-task, and effectively see details to be able to get results in HR procurement roles.
How do you feel about the relationship between HR and procurement? Do you feel like these functions of business tend to overlap more in the modern workforce?
