Strategic People Resourcing Essay Example

Strategic People Resourcing Essay Example Strategic People Resourcing Essay Strategic People Resourcing Essay People resourcing or human resources can be defined as the ‘available talents of energies of people who are available to an organization as potential contributors to the creation and realization of the organization’s mission vision, strategy and goals’ (Jackson of Schuler, 2000, p 37). Schuler and Jackson (1999, p 52) defined Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM) as ‘the pattern of planned human resource development and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals’  Ã‚   Armstrong and Baroon (2002, p 41) defined SHRM as ‘a general approach to the strategic management of human resources in accordance with the intentions of the organization on the future direction it wants to take.   It is concerned with longer term people issues as part of the strategic management processes of the business’. We can say therefore that SHRM is trying to look at the long term management of people and how it mergers with business strategy.   There are two theories used in human resource management.   These are the Michigan approach; also know as the ‘hard’ approach and the Harvard approach also known as the ‘soft’ approach. The Michigan model sees employees as resources and in the same way, as any other resources.   It further elaborates that hence human resource should be ;obtained as cheaply as possible, used sparingly and developed and exploited as much as possible’. The Harvard model sees employees as resources that are fundamentally different from other resources so have to be managed differently. As a result of this the Harvard approach outlined that the following areas should be included in a HR policy. These are the HR flow (recruitment, selection to termination), reward systems, employee influence (levels of authority and responsibility) and la stly work systems (work definitions and design) (Colbert, 2004). Today, HR is seen or recognized as a competitive advantage to the business.   This shows that the strengths of weaknesses of a company’s HR dept can affect business continuity. It has thus become a strategic resource that needs to be incorporated in the business strategic plan. Handling people is a very sensitive job as people are complex resources.   No mathematical formula can be applied to them so as to come up with the best solution to handle them, the way we do with other resources. People are also a resource that cannot be eliminated or substituted with another resource and if handled wrong, they can adversely affect business continuity.   According to Jackson of Schuler (2000 p 37) human resource is †the available talents of energies of people who are available to the organization as potential contributors to the creation of realization of the organization mission, vision, strategy of goals†.   Today most human resources departments follow Theory Y. Managers have realized that HR is not just handling individuals but it needs to go strategic and incorporate business objectives into its functions. Due to this, HR departments are now bigger and have more duties to carry out.   They have to incorporate more issues in their everyday activities and hence have faced challenges. HR departments have to now be sensitive about environmental issues as well as internal issues faced by the business. Some of these challenges that HR departments now face include employee career and self development, change management, coaching and mentoring, motivation and staff retention, performance management, recruiting and staffing, team building among many others.   The HR department has to find a way of incorporating all these issues so that they best enhance business continuity. Recruitment of the best in the market and their retention has become a major challenge in HR departments today. Organization would like to recruit the best possible employees who will contribute greatly to the organization goals and increase its success.   To attract good staff, the human resource department must have for example, good reward schemes that can attract the extremely talented people.   The firm should ensure that it has a fairly attractive package when compared to its competitors.   The aim of the department should be how to recruit the best staff especially in its core areas of business. Another challenge is employee turnover and retention. When too many employees leave a firm, word goes out and potential employees get a negative attitude towards the company.   Even current employees get de-motivated and start looking for new jobs.   For the firm’s best interests, the human resource department should try and prevent this by conducting job-leaving interviews to find out why the person is leaving (Priem Butler, 2001) and also having current employees do reviews on the firm in general working conditions.   Employee turnover is a symptom and not a problem. To keep employees one has to motivate them, and make them feel that working for this particular firm, is the best thing ever. Employees leave because of various reasons. These include poor or no motivation, lack of promoted or recognition, poor employee-manager relationships among others.   Research shows that 70% of workers apply for jobs during office hours (Nankervis, Compton McCarthy, 1999). This shows that employees are not only using company resources ineffectively but are also not happy where they are. McClelland interviewed a group of engineers and clerical staff and asked them when they felt they had achieved job satisfaction. Their results brought him to the conclusion that workers have three types of motivational needs i.e. motivation to achieve, motivation for authority and motivation for recognition (Schein Bennis 1965). McClelland theory is critised as critics say it can not be applied to non-professional groups and also that some of its wordings like ‘job satisfaction’ are debatable. Worker retention schemes include having a well structured organization chart where one is rewarded both monetary and also by position or promotion.   An employee should know which level he is currently are and where they should aim to get to or promoted to.   This motivates them and gives them a sense of purpose and recognition.   An advantage of this method is that is makes the promotion method straightforward and easy to implement and adopt. It also very open and cases of unfair promotion are minimized. It also provides systematic promotion and one cannot be promoted two places higher in the hierarchy. They have a follow the organization chart hierarchy. A disadvantage is the case where a very talented employee has to wait many months for promotion hence his talents are getting wasted and his motivation level dwindling (Schuler Jackson, 1987). Another way to retain employees is to make them engage in decision making.   This makes them feel a part of the organization and this helps incorporate their views into the company. This is a way of practicing participatory leadership where decisions are reached as a team and not as orders from above. A good firm is one that allows its employees to engage in various projects voluntarily like new product development, customer enhancement projects and many such others, This way an employee can contribute engage in corporate goals in a way he or she feels they are best suited. Advantages of this method include that the worker feels important and recognized. Also the firm gets to benefit from diverse ideas hence gets to implement the best of them. Disadvantages include too much time is wasted making a decision. Should it have been a one person decision it would have been made faster. Quality of decision can be wanting as the employees who came up with it may just be too incapable of m aking such a decision. Training is another way to retain employees. When a worker’s academic welfare is taken care of, he tends to concentrate on his work and look for ways to get promoted within the company.   Advantages of this method are that the firm gets highly skilled staff Secondly, the worker becomes highly motivated. Coaching and mentoring is another way to retain workers.   Although senior management has access to professional coaching, staff in lower levels often have to coach and mentor themselves. This is sad because the senior management should act as the role models of the junior staff and this ensures that there is more top-down communication taking place in the organization and everyone is involved. The aim of mentoring according to Milkovich Boudreau (1991, p49) is to ‘enhance the work commitment, attitudes of employees’ and this brings about the sense of belonging in the organization. Advantages include that this technique brings about enhancement of team work, a feeling of belonging and increases loyalty of the employee to the organization. Another challenge of the human resource department is how to monitor performance and enhance it. Time is money thus organizations have to ensure that employees input the most during working hours. Performance management is very vital and an organization should ensure it has policies that do this. The performance management should be people friendly and hence not make employees feel like they are being scrutinized or over-watched.   Nobody likes being judged and even managers may find appraisals a threat to their subordinates’ loyalty.   All in all ensure your performance monitoring brings about employee skill development and organization improvement for it to be termed as successful. Downsizing is never a pleasant thing both to the employee and employer.   However, sometimes down sizing is vital as it can be an organizational only hope for survival but it should be used sparingly. Downsizing should be done with care and professionalism as it can destroy an organization. Another thing to look out for is to ensure that the firm’s intellectual capacity is not affected. Also, downsizing should never be put down as an achievement in managerial reports. To avoid litigation, downsizing should be given to the legal department to handle.   Above all, firms should learn to downsize with dignity so as to preserve their corporate image. Handling of employee terminations can lead to several law suits against the firm.   Terminations are highly sensitive issues and should be handled with care and very sensitively.   Whatever the cause of termination, be it firing or downsizing, it should be done in a professional manner and making sure very few wounds are created.   Management should handle down sizing as a project where all details are documented.   Have an interview with all to be dismissed and explain to them the reasons for dismissal.   Answer all questions they ask even irrational ones and let the one who is handling them be a professional who can answer difficult questions. Also the firm should take necessary precautions like changing security codes or passwords to computers and sensitive company documents.   Downsizing also affects current employees. It is essential that the firm also hold meetings with current employees to re-assure them that they should not get demoralized as no additional lay off s are warranted soon.   Assure them that the previous down sizing was warranted.   As of the legal implications, make sure that the terminations conform to the company regulations and that the proper procedure has been carried out.   Engage the services of the legal advisor of the company and let him approve that all is well. Another challenge that is often faced by the people resourcing departments face is the issue of globalization.   A firm is finding it has various branches world wide.   Each country has different laws thus it becomes increasingly difficult to have a harmonized or standardized human resource policy.   The human resource is part of traditional management functions we learn about in management classes.   Even though each company appoints a human resource manager, reality dictates that all managers should act as resourcing managers as they are handling people. Other issues are outsourcing.   This is the recruitment of another firm to perform some company work.   Some of these recruited companies do not have an acceptable human resource policy and instead engages in sweat shop technique of enslaving the employee and keeping all the profits.   Associating with such firms gives the company a bad reputation and thus affect company image. New concepts are being incorporated in the way firms are now doing business. Foer example, job design is changing and firms should ensure they integrate these new techniques of job design into their firm.   Today, people are not necessarily coming into the office but are working from their homess of such companies include many multi nationals where employees like the sales team, log on remotely and update their records on sales made for the day.   They only visit the office should need arise. With the onset of technologies like video conferencing, meetings can now take place across borders or seas.   Company branches world wide can take part in a meeting without ever leaving their countries.   This is shown like in BBC where the head office in London holds video conferences with journalists the world over.   Flexible working hours have also to be tolerated today because the world has become a global village and a twenty four hour market place.   Business is today conducted twenty four hours a day either through the internet or via shops located around the world.   A company has to thus structure its hours to fit into this concept.   The human resources department should be able to negotiate with it employees to see who can work which hours and thus make everyone happy to work their shift. With all that has been said, we can thus come up with the best human resources theory to follow.   The Harvard theory of treating employees differently from other resources in the organization.   Employees are not materials bur humans who can reason thus judge the way they are treated.   Other resources are not alive, and hence are useless unless put to use by the human resource.   Other resources can be substituted but not the human resource.   This shows that the human   resource,   should be treated differently and very cautiously as their performance affects the overall performance of the organization. Trying to see how the human resource can fit in with the long term goals of the company is the way forward for all people resourcing departments. Conflicts have arisen as to how to fit HR with strategic goals of the firm.   Does one create HR polices that fit business strategies or ones that correspond to the firm’s life cycle (Colbert, 2004). In conclusion, the HR departments should remember that their focus or goals have changed.   HR is no longer about serving people individually but about using people to achieve the firm’s strategic objectives (Priem Butler, 2001). Strategic human resource management is about achieving organizational excellence and continuity hence human resource management, should be viewed as a source of competitive advantage and hence handled seriously.