The nature and characteristics of HRM
The relationship between human resource management and the competitive advantage are hotly debated topic among many scholars. The importance of the human resources within an organisation is becoming progressively comprehended in currently ever-changing and uncertain business environment (Crawley, Swailes and Walsh 2013, pp. 52). For the firm to assist its workers in assisting the organisation to release its planned corporate objective, active human resource managers commonly collect job connected data in a job description and analysis, which will be vital in re-designing or creating jobs which offers workers with a high level of job fulfilment (Crawshaw, Budhwar and Davis 2017, pp. 12).
In the globalisation era, organisation must keep itself along with other firms on being globally competitive. Organisational competitive advantage does not only rely on the firm’s financial resource, but human resource too. It means that for the organisation to accomplish its competitive objectives, the workers involved in the operations must also be competitive (Council 2014, pp. 15). Depending on human resource to select the qualified personnel, designing suitable and suitable training programs and instituting successful retentions programs can give a company a competitive edge (Blackman and Hay 2016, pp. 25). While the opponents skirmish with upholding experienced and inspired workforces, business can concentrate more on output and improved transactions when HR plays a central role in staff growth (Harris and Short 2014, pp. 28). The application of the resource-based view is mainly to form strategies so that a competitive advantage can be gained by the organisations. The main reason for organisations to be heterogeneous is that it possesses resources that are unique to one another. Therefore, it is necessary the role of HR in the application of the resource-based view and forming strategies remain crucial. The focus of resource-based view is that the managerial attention of the firm as well as internal strategies helps in the identification of assets and liabilities within a firm.
Human resource management (HRM) is involved in recruiting, managing and directing workers in a firm. Managing people has become more complex especially in firms that are operating globally. Improving workers performance will result in increased performance and success in the business (Ho, Nguyen, Lo, Mclean and Teo 2015, pp. 69).
Motivation is one of the most important features of a good human resource management. This involves motivating employee in an organisation or firm in order to attain a better production. Managers should recognise employees’ success in achieving organisational goals and therefore, the employees should be rewarded accordingly. Organisations motivate their employees through giving prizes, reviewing and increasing salaries, offering required training and giving their employees letters of recommendation (McGovern, Canning and Bärnighausen 2018, pp.25).
People management strategies, procedures, and tools
Performance strategy is the other feature of human resource management, which deals with managing performance of employees in an organisation. Human resource support managers to understand how to describe duties in the light of industry drivers and how to categorise the capabilities needed for the job.
Job security and job design help to ensure that right people are selected for the right jobs (Salleh, Rosline and Budin 2015, pp. 7). Managers, often believe that their employees need rewards such as good working condition, good wages security, and promotions. However, there are other things that employees need from their jobs such as challenging work, participation in decision-making, recognition for their good work, and understanding for their personal problems, good wages and job security. These needs can be attributed to Maslow’s need hierarchy theory in which the basic demands of people are satisfied in a systematic manner. People want to satisfy the need for a safe and secure job so that they can assist their family by earning good wages as well as recognition for the work done. If the above desires are not provided, they tend to pursue somewhere else.
An organisation should design an effective appraisal and development process. For a process to be motivating for those involved, it needs excellent interview and counselling skills. In some organisations, leaders do not create time to assess their employees’ routine well (Yücel 2016, pp. 6). Success of this process relies on manager and workers relationship. For example, manager and workers relationship need to be based on mutual trust and support for one another. They should be in a relationship where discussing performance does not seem to be a threat to the employee. Human resource strengthens the connection between personal improvement and the business approach.
Human resource management is involved in selecting and recruiting employees in an organisation. Recruitment and selection involve policies such as development, job design and reward (ShRola-Rubzen and Burgess 2016, pp. 41). Enrolment is part of a general career management tactic of getting a qualified staff for specific.
Another feature of human resource management is remuneration. Remuneration involves comparing terms and settings of hiring and remuneration gauges. These include terms of a contract, structure of share options, incentives and bonus schemes. In human resource management, remuneration adds worth to employee’s yield and the trade.
Training and development is an important strategy in an organisation. Training and development improve procedures that are considered as cost-effective. Training employees lead to development in an organisation through an increased level of product innovation, improved market share and increased returns on investment (Syed and Kramar 2017, pp. 23). Training improves the skills of employees hence improving their productivity. Human resource manager should make sure that employees are offered duties that make the best use of their ability and elevating the workers to the right work.
Wider organizational implications and contributions
Change and organisational structure is the other human resource management feature. This involves understanding how an organisation works and be able to identify where the changes may occur in enabling the business to achieve its goals. Managers need to be enthusiastic to evaluate the fitness of the group that needs to be prepared to cope and being prepared to increase the organisation’s competence.
Human resource management strategy helps to put policies in the right parts such as ways to retain performing staffs and ways to dismiss underperforming ones. Ways to recruit the best employees and designing ways the business will accomplish the desires of its workers, and ways the personnel will meet the need of the firm in realising the objective of the organisation. Organisations should create a favourable working environment for their employees to improve their productivity.
Nankervis et al (2013) definition for human resource plans, ‘the intentions of the corporation, both explicit and cover, towards the management of its employees, expressed through philosophies, policies and practices’ (pp. 16). Human resource management has six common elements. These elements include careful recruitment and selection, wide use of communication systems, involvement in decision making, team working with flexible job plan, performance evaluation with tight relations to liable pay while emphasising on training and development.
Integrating human resource management with the business strategy helps to manage employees effectively leading to an improvement in the organisational performance. This is also known as Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) in which employees are retained for the benefit of both the employees as well as the employers. If human resource strategies are operated as a separate set of priorities, it may not be effective enough to have a good management for the business activities. Hence, integration of human resource strategy and the business approach improves the success of a business. Companies should make their approaches to what they do finest. Perspectives such as normative perspectives on HR provide a distinct difference between the hard and soft skill. The concept provides a link between the workforce as well as the organisational strategy that is considered as a major concern for the organisations. At the same time legal legislations that is needed to be followed, performance evolution of the employees as well as the planning regarding labour force are determined with the help of the strategies. These are considered as the hard HRM strategies that need to be taken into consideration. The assets and resources that exist in an organisation are considered as soft skills that need to be taken into consideration while planning. The assumption in this context is that benefit of an organisation can directly benefit the employees.
Current patterns and trends in HRM
Provision of a sense of direction by managers in a firm creates a challenge. Strategic direction in an organisation should involve a situation where the current is driven from the future and but not seen as an extrapolation from the past. Employees are expected to know aims of the business, know the need of what is expected of them, to effectively contribute towards achieving goals of the business. In an organisation, the business direction should be made clear in both planned and corporate plan.
A strategic human resource should have various roles related to the growth and retention of talent. This involves contending for the most qualified workers through creating advanced careers methods and payments (Nankervis, Baird, Coffey and Shields 2013, pp. 17). In an organisation, quality of management should be an important element. It should introduce tough and effective assessment procedures to ensure the leadership in an organisation meets the required need. The organisation should be able to understand how high performance is built and maintained. The firm also should be able to detect and eradicate obstacles to high performance. This can be achieved through addressing organisational life features that adversely affect employees’ motivation.
As the firms grow, they become more diverse. Employees of these firms have to adapt to their human resource practices to replicate those changes. There are organisations which have developed workforce diversity programs (Yücel 2016, pp. 9). They hire, promote and retain minorities, provide diversity training for employees and encourage vendor diversity. Workforce diversity needs the firm’s employees to be more complex to the differences that each team brings in the organisation (Nankervis, Baird, Coffey and Shields 2013, pp. 18). For example, an employer may move from handling everyone the same to identifying those individual differences and reacting to them in ways that will retain employees and better production. According to the Equity Act, 2010 human resource management should avoid any action that can be seen as an exercise of racism, sex violation or offensive to any group of people. Employees should be assisted by employers to manage work-life problems.
In every work setting, there are contingent workers. The above workers are supposed to be treated differently in terms of performance and policies. Human resources management should ensure contingent employees do not identify themselves as second-class employees because they are not given numerous services such as health and paid leave benefits (Kraatz, Sanchez and Hampson 2014, pp.5). If contingent workers are not treated like any other full-time employee, they may think their jobs is not critically significant, hence, they will be less motivated, less commitment and less loyalty to an organisation. Human resource management should be able to recognise the temporary workers. The temporary workers are the part time workers that are recruited on a contractual basis so that they can aid the organisations during the time of peak business demand.
Key HRM issues and problems
Currently, human resource has moved beyond managing employees activities such as administration of payroll and benefits, to developing people strategy and supporting the organisation’s goal (Rola-Rubzen and Burgess 2016, pp. 12). This has been due to a high level of efficiency in human resource in administering its work by use of technology.
Looking at the case of Unilever plc one of the largest dealers of fast moving goods in the realm. The business runs internationally with divisions around 100 nations. The corporation has more than 400 products but its processes are mostly concentrated on 14 major trademarks, which contribute total revenue of one billion Euros. Having spread its operations globally, Unilever has demonstrated its real human resource management plans that it is one of the best managers in the world (Unilever.com 2015).
Unilever has set examples of competent human resource managing. The firm has put more emphasis on human rights throughout its process. The corporation has done self-assessments of employees, training and external auditing to learn more about the perception of the workers (Evans, Edwards, McGregor, C.A.R.M.E.L. and Upton 2016, pp. 33). The strategic management of Unilever has created a favourable environment for its employees, which has directly influenced the production hence the success and growth of the business.
Unilever has introduced several campaigns all over the world that has strengthened HRM strategy, which has motivated its employees. Unilever held an international “winning with integrity” week in 2013 that involved interviews and surveys about human rights (Unilever.com 2015). This encouraged their suppliers to operate within the company’s standard. The campaign continued in 2014 and it helped the corporation understand more about the employees around the world (Unilever.com 2015).
The corporation launched a ‘social impact Hub’ on their employees portal in 2013 (Unilevergraduates.com 2015). This moved employees to another step where it introduced them to social activities. This positively affected the society and connected the firm with its corporate social obligation. On the hub, there was information concerning human rights, which helped the workers to learn more about their rights in work.
Unilever Corporation has mounted a device that traces workers’ stimulus and job contentment every day. The information is transmitted to the supervision, where they identify whether the worker is pleased or not.
In a highly competitive business environment, it may tend to increase fluid the workforce. This has created a big problem of retaining valuable workers. For example, high-skilled workers demand more for the job undertaken by them, as they are the specialists in their field of work. With every success of the company, the employees demand an increase in salary so that they can continue to work for the betterment of the organisation. To avoid such challenges Unilever has been keeping their motivation levels high to reduce employee turnover. This will lead to high job satisfaction and commitment to an organisation, which will help the workers from moving to other companies.
Unilever has been emphasizing on the motivation of employees. The corporation has implemented advanced ways to make sure high worker motivation. For example, it implemented Unilever Klev (Unilevergraduates.com 2015). This involved widespread use of software knowledge to ease communication within the company. Tracing workers’ gratification and dissatisfaction and easing communication in an organisation by use of software technology has helped the corporation managing device impact human resource plans, no matter the scope of the organisation.
On the other hand, an organisation such as Ryanair Airlines treats its employees poorly. It lacks motivation as well as support for the employees. Despite this, the company continues to make profit and is one of the most sought after international airline in the world. Therefore, managing people need to be done using skills so that it helps in the effective implementation of the talents of the individuals as well as ensure that growth and development of the company takes place.
Conclusion
Clearly, human resource is one of the most important parts of the organisation. Human resource function helps the organisations to be more effective in achieving competitive advantage. Integrating human resource management strategy with the business strategy helps to manage employees resulting in improved performance of the employees, hence leading to an increased level of production. It is good for an employee to know the aims and goals of the firm they are working towards success. The roles human resource should be carried out properly and in a systematic manner. They include recruiting, staffing, training and development, maintenance and motivation. The human resource management is required to recruit the qualified staffs, train and develop the workforce. Managers should also recognise the success of their employees in achieving the goal of the company and reward them accordingly.
References
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