Process mapping is an activity of modeling common business functions, to understand how they work and to identify ways to improve them. The article discusses about the issues and challenges involved in HR Process mapping.

Henry Ford neither invented automobile nor the assembly line but still has his ubiquitous presence felt in the global corporate history. The mantra of his historical success was his stern belief that "everything could always be done better than as it is being done." The continuous process improvements that he brought in automobile manufacturing brought cars in reach of common man ("he democratized the cars") by reducing the prices and having economies of scale with mass production. Similarly, Lee Iacocca, Ray Kroc, Tom Monaghan, Jack Welch etc., carved niches for themselves by having process improvements and standardization in their respective terrains.

Process improvements or "reinventing the wheel" are nothing new in corporate lingua franca. Time and again new processes emerge and get replaced by better ones. Worldwide management gurus have always kept themselves busy in selling old wine in new bottles under the canopy of complex and confusing jargons and thus attracting the corporate attention. Especially the 1990s can be marked as the decade of turmoil in the world of business. The years witnessed a lot of seismic tremors that led to a total topsy-turvy of corporate functioning. In 1993 Hammer and Champy published a book "Reengineering the Corporation", the book was a great blockbuster and overnight the author duo were christened as corporate messiahs. The theories and practices accented in the book were considered to be sacrosanct sermons and became the de rigueur of the corporate world. As one more management fad, reengineering soon lost its luster but took its toll by wiping off the middle management layer and thus severing many jobs. Although reengineering - as a concept got lost in the oblivion but it left behind a legacy of Process Mapping.

HR Process, HR Function, Process mapping, modeling, business functions, issues, challenges, HR Process mapping, HR, human resource, strategic HR, reengineering, middle management layer, corporate world, Reengineering the Corporation, corporate functioning, Process improvements, corporate lingua franca, automobile manufacturing.