There has been a marked decline in managers’ perception of the value and influence of HR in the last year, leading to renewed calls for the function to “justify its existence”, a new research report has said.

Results from Roffey Park Institute’s Management Agenda report 2011 showed a marked fall in the number of line managers who recognised HR’s influence on the business, from 69 per cent in the 2010 research to 56 per cent this year. The number of line managers who agreed that HR adds value to the business also dropped, from 68 per cent last year to 59 per cent.

Even some HR professionals had doubts about their own status and effectiveness, with 71 per cent describing themselves as influential, and 87 per cent agreeing that they add value.

To assess what had driven down positive perceptions of HR, the researchers looked for a link to HR’s role in recessionary measures such as recruitment freezes, pay freezes, pay cuts and redundancies. However, they found only a “very weak relationship”.

In fact where people-related cuts were handled well, HR was seen as more influential, proactive, strategic, credible, customer focused and as adding more value to the business, said the report.

Researchers said that HR’s reputation appeared to be “significantly related” to engagement and employees’ experience of managers at work.

The report concluded: “With declining perceptions of HR overall and fewer benefits achieved from HR business partnering this year, we suspect HR may face renewed calls to justify its existence.

“While our evidence shows that HR does make a valuable contribution, especially when organisations are going through redundancies, we expect the gap between HR and non-HR managers’ views of the function to widen. As a result, the fate of HR departments in the year ahead may hinge more on proving their value than on maximising their contribution.”