Illustrate the significance of human resource in Re-engineering process?

 HR can provide valuable guidance and direction as a project unfolds. HR's expertise can encompass a wide range of areas. They include:

1. Shaping the process: Although senior management may lay down the general guidelines and direction the reengineering effort will take, HR often can play a major role in determining whether it will succeed. At many companies—including Minneapolis-based IDS Financial Services, Monterey, California-based CTB and Palo Alto, California-based Syntex—HR helped create the selection criteria for members of the steering committee. HR also can interview and evaluate candidates. Even as the process filters down through the organization, HR can play a key role in determining how team leaders and team members are selected.
2. Creating job statements and role descriptions that reflect the new corporate order:It isn't enough to plug existing job descriptions into new positions created from reengineering. It isn't enough to use existing methodology to create new positions. Reengineering requires serious introspection about what the company is trying to achieve and what job and role responsibilities will help realize the goals. "It's a whole new way of thinking. The idea is to write job statements instead of descriptions, to outline roles vs. tasks, and to structure work around the customer rather than a specific function or department," says Mary Layman, vice president of HR for CTB.
3. Working out compensation issues:Pay scales and rewards must be structured to create the desired results. For example, a company that wants to focus on customer service must measure and compensate the work force based on that criteria. Likewise, HR must think about whether it should pay employees for specific tasks they should perform from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or offer skill-based or knowledge-based pay. "Too often, there's a disconnect between the basic strategy and what HR actually does," says Caldow.
4. Training the new work force:"A company may have award-winning training programs, but they probably aren't going to have a lot to do with the overall reengineering strategy," says William A. Wheeler, a partner at the consulting firm of Coopers and Lybrand in New York City and co-author of Business Process Reengineering: Breakpoint Strategies for Market Dominance. Experts agree that it's important to provide plenty of training on specific skills employees will need in the newly reengineered company, but that teamwork, decision making and trust building must also be heavily emphasized over a period of time.
5. Molding the new corporate culture:Stories, ceremonies, awards and rituals all have a major impact on how people behave. Caldow insists that human resources can alter thinking by helping form a new ethnography. It must be consistent throughout the organization, and it should be backed by plenty of symbolism. Yet, the change won't occur overnight. It may take weeks or months before a real breakthrough in thinking takes place.
6. Facilitate communication in the work force:Nothing is as frightening to a work force as change, and nothing changes a work force as much as reengineering. Newsletters, videos, letters, E-mail messages, and companywide and departmental meetings are all useful tools in quelling anxiety. Moreover, good communication can help a work force understand how reengineering may benefit it in the future.

Thank You for the invitation .. I will agree with answers that really covered your question... Variety of correct info and opinions ... Nothing to add !

Thanks for invitation

I amagreeing with my colleague’s answer Ms. Loriane

Process Improvement

Process improvement is at the opposite end of the process management continuum to reengineering. Where reengineering seeks radical change through designing whole new processes (revolutionary), process improvement looks for incremental, step-by-step, continuous improvements to existing processes (evolutionary). While reengineering is implemented top-down, process improvement is usually a grass-roots bottom-up approach. Where a single process reengineering project sweeps broadly across many functions or the whole organization, process improvement efforts are often within single teams or a few functions. While process reengineering drives behavior change through structural change, process improvement does it through training and shifting "the culture" (the way we do things around here). And where process reengineering throws everything out and starts fresh, process improvement tries to analyze and standardize (get everyone consistently using the agreed upon procedures and make the process reliable) and improve upon the existing process.

Process improvement is a broad term that''s used to label many kinds of activities. It''s often called continuous improvement or Kaizen in quality improvement initiatives. In his international bestseller, Kaizen, leading Japanese consultant, Masaaki Imai writes, "Kaizen strategy is the single most important concept in Japanese management -- the key to Japanese competitive success. Kaizen means improvement... ongoing improvement involving everyone (his emphasis)-- top management, managers, and workers."

An example of process improvement work is process value analysis or business process assessment. This approach takes an existing process and starts to analyze it by working back from "the voice of the customer" and looking at each step being performed by everyone in the organization through to external suppliers. The objective is to seek out and destroy non-value added work. Osh Kosh B''Gosh is taking this approach through Activity-Based Costing (ABC). A profile is developed for each business process and then it''s analyzed for how much time is involved at each step, what those steps cost, and the ''value-add'' of each task. Every task is categorized as either 1) customer value-added, 2) business value-added (meeting a government regulation or internal requirement which the customer doesn''t see or care about), or 3) non-value added. Improvement teams then go to work to "take the crud out and streamline the process to it''s essential tasks and steps."

I agree with Ms. Loriane answer and have voted for her.

An organization is made up of people, processes and products, and if one is altered, all three need to be aligned if you want to achieve growth and improvement.

They provide inputs of the organization wholly 

I agree with Ms. Loraine Domingo answer.

In a re-engineered organization, all people shall function as process owners and reinvent processes. As people understand the vision of re-engineered processes, they will be able to contribute positively to make the organizational vision a reality.

Full Agree with answer given by mr. Loriane