Nature and Characteristics of HRM
Human Resource Management (HRM) refers to systems or techniques applied in organizations to help in management of people among them employees. Human resource manager has a responsibility of ensuring that all organizational employees’ needs are catered for, carry out selection and recruitment of new employees according to organizational set qualifications. Every organization has set objectives and goals, to enhance success of these achievements, all leaders and employees should effectively carry out their responsibilities. To enhance this HRM manager has to ensure a performance management plan is put in place to help track performance of all employees. HRM is pervasive in nature with a continuous process that, once the process is introduced in an organization it’s functional throughout its existence.According to Singh et al (2012 pp. 651-667) Performance management is one of the main strategy used in managing people important for enhancing organizational success. Human resource manager staffing role and leadership development are some of the HRM concepts applied in managing organizational people to enhance development. With emerging of new HRM trends like workforce diversity, the department is faced by various challenges among them increasing conflicts at workplaces that can be solved by ensuring all employees are held accountable.
Nature and Characteristics of HRM
HRM is managerial in nature as it applies all management concepts, techniques and practices to ensure effective control of human resource. When this process is introduced in any given organization, it has various objectives among them ensuring organizational objectives are achieved and remaining functional throughout,thus making it a continuous process. HRM is action oriented as it’s concerned with solving problems facing employees using rational policies rather than engaging in record keeping practices and following other procedures. This ensures that all employee’s needs, benefits and motivation factors are satisfied to ensure there is effective control of their roles for easy management. It’s pervasive in nature as its present in all business units whether profit making or not as long as it has people working in it. HRM is mainly about people within the organization with desire to achieve the set objectives by applying effective management techniques and tools as discussed by Stone and Dulebohn (2016). As a major department in any organization, human resource management has to remain relevant by ensuring all employees are satisfied and comfortable. Effective delivery of services is a key objective towards enhancing organizational success, employees are the main agents thus they should be taken care of.
People Management Strategies, Tools and Procedures
Zheng (2016) mentioned that the objectives of a HR manager are divided into four prime categories such as social objectives, organizational objectives, functional objectives and personal objectives. Social objectives of a company are intended towards the social needs of the company. On the other hand, the organizational objectives include the part play by the HRM for measuring the efficiency of the company. Again, functional objectives look into the overall maintenance and contribution of the company’s various departments to meet the required needs and demands. Personal objectives are set in order to evaluate the goals of the employees. In this respect, environment also plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the HRM model. Therefore it is important to have an idea about the internal and external environment of the company and find out about the role played by the company’s resources. The external environment consists of the political, economical, legal, technological and social factors whereas; the internal environment consists of employees, trade unions, cultural conflicts and professional authorities.
As per Singh et al (2012 pp. 651-667), the resource based view is a common trend of the contemporary management business. It is an important strategy of HRM where the manager gets the scope to develop his abilities by working on human capital and planning for its development. The HR practice is greatly affected in this manner by leading to collective bargaining by the HR managers. On the other hand, it is also important to to create HR based capability by amending the HR policies. The significance of HR is a pivotal strategic resource in terms of HR policies and practices. An innovation- based culture is also important in this case for putting value to the creative ideas of employees.
Characteristics of HRM are directly influenced by the wellbeing of people working in the organization towards achieving the set goals and objectives. HRM must ensure human philosophy is applied, this ensures that employees are treated like human beings and not like objects or a piece of property to be shared. This recognizes that all people are different with different beliefs and the managers should have social skills to be able to manage each one of them. It’s an integrated form of aspect that is about people, their welfare and management towards achieving the set organizational goals. It’s all about people, their experiences at work and the results they give. HRM it’s about services given and should be regulation friendly, to ensure that service is effectively delivered by employees, regulations applied should be in line with all legal stipulations. This is important to ensure that all regulations enforced are not against employee’s rights. In organizations where human rights are not enhanced, conflicts and unwillingness to deliver leads to underdevelopment, HRM should always ensure that employee’s wellbeing is a priority as they are the main agents of service delivery.
Wider Organizational Implications and Contributions of HRM in Practice
As per Stone and Dulebohn (2016) strategies enhanced in management of people in an organization ensure easy management control of activities carried out towards achieving set organizational goals and objectives. They include; recruitment and selection of employees in to the organization. This is HRM role that is influenced by presence of an employee gap, set of qualifications of the needed employee and hire the right employee. This process ensures that all employees recruited in to the organization are qualified to enhance easy control, organizations that do not carry out recruitment and selection process while hiring employees are faced by issues of inadequacy as their employees might not be qualified. Training and development, employees recruited undergo training to ensure they understand what is specifically required of them. This ensures that apart from the skills they acquire they can also understand the specific job requirements. This enhances performance, personal development and organizational development at large (Zheng, 2016).
Performance management is another strategy of management, it involves the manager carrying out a performance evaluation. It can be done daily, weekly, monthly or annually depending on organizational rules and objectives.According to Grafton, Lillis and Widener ( 2010 pp. 689-706), this is important to ensure that employees carry out their roles as expected, sharing of challenges they may be experiencing to get support from other employees and leaders as well. Employee engagement is a strategy advocating for employees to take part in organizational activities, this can be done by asking them questions or by them giving views about some aspects. This helps the employees to feel a sense of ownership and responsible towards enhancing achievement of the set goals. Recognition and rewards is a management strategy that is meant at appreciation of those who have done well. Using performance management evaluation plan, the management is able to analyze all employees achievements depending on their role specialization, the best should be recognized and rewarded to motivate others to work hard.
According to Grafton, Lillis and Widener ( 2010 pp. 689-706), the HR managers of a company play a pivotal role in motivating and encouraging the valuable employees of the company in addition to the required culture of the working environment. It is the responsibility of the HR managers to absorb skilled and knowledgeable employees who has better understanding of customer preferences. It can be stated that performance management strategies will be ineffective without gaining knowledge about customer preferences. Therefore it is important for the HRM of the company to have varied levels for affecting the interest of the employees.
Current Patterns and Trends in HRM
TribeHR app is one of the highly used people management tool in an organization, it has features like organization charts, performance plan evals, time management and recruitment aspect. This is a great tool that enables the HR manager work to be easier and goal oriented. This can be challenging for small organizations as the app is very expensive. Though it’s an effective application, it can be at times manipulated to give biased information, to prevent this managers should remain aggressive towards maintaining its effectiveness. In the current enterprise market, people management tools are influenced by the level of digital advancement, to ensure its effectiveness, organizational leaders should ensure the users understand advantages and disadvantages of using it and the consequences of each. Management procedures give details on employee’s responsibilities and other relating factors, some include employment acts, management directions, safety and wellbeing. According to Roberts-Phelps (2000 pp. 73-115) these procedures are important to both the employee and the manager as they help to understand their roles clearly, safety of the employee as well as their rights. These procedures are important for management of people in an organization but can only be successful if organizations ensure a balanced contribution from both the employee and the leaders, none should favored.
According to Alzola(2018 pp. 835-853) HRM concepts influence strategic human resource management, that is, to develop strategic management in an organization, human resource concepts should be put in place. Some of these concepts include; Human resource has the responsibility of ensuring that all employees’ needs are catered for, managed and directed as required. In recruitment and selection process, the HR manager should set qualifications of the employee to be recruited, this is important to ensure that employees selected and recruited are skilled as required by the organization. The manager has authority to make decisions for guiding employees to enhance productivity for organizational development. Performance management is an important strategy to ensuring all employees remain productive and are rewarded respectively to enhance their motivation. As per Roberts-Phelps (2000 pp. 73-115) this HRM concepts are important in an organization to ensure employees management process is a success, enhance organizational growth and development.
Armstrong (2006) stated that Strategic human resource management (SHRM) refers to the ability of an organization to realize and analyze its internal abilities and weaknesses to external threats and available opportunities to help achieve competitive advantage. SHRM objectives and goals are important to help define ways and procedures towards improving business performance. Innovational strategies in an organization are important to enhance flexible means of achieving the set goals by applying the right procedures. It also executes procedures and policies that enhance employee behaviors and competences that are positive and enhance achievement of the company strategic set objectives. Strategic planning in every organization is very important as it ensures all factors of production are balanced. Labor being the main factor towards achieving the set organizational goals, employees are well taken care off to ensure they remain productive. Organizations with a weak SHRM are likely to face challenges regarding to management of people and activities as there is no strategic definition of what is the main priority, internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to external opportunities. Strategic planning of human resource activities are key factors of enhancing a competitive control at workplace (Armstrong, 2006).
Key HRM Issues and Problems for Management
Due to technical advancement in healthcare, HRM practices are adopting new trends to help enhance service delivery as one of the most important sector. These trends are in line with employee management, recruitment activities as well as development activities. They include;
Digital recruitment software. According to Bae, Chen and Rowley(2011 pp. 700-722) with increasing costs of employing new personnel in the health sector, retention of the current employees is a more serious issue. As the organizations try to control costs while meeting the increasing demand, they are forced to retain the old employees to cover for longer hours or durations at work as discussed by Yang and Lin(2009 pp.1965-1984). This is a problem as the increasing demands of cost and attention requires the sector to recruit more personnel but at a lower cost. Digital recruitment software refers to an application where required employees can be selected from, be interviewed and recruited. This is important to help improve on the services given, save time, cost and engage a new set of employees at work.
Employee training advancement.Bal, Kooij and De Jong(2013 pp. 542-572)argues that, health care givers in the sector are well trained individuals who are able to give services as required. To enhance their skills to cater for the increasing needs in the sector and emergence of new health issues, HRM should enhance training activities to advance their skills. This is a trend that allows the sector to remain relevant as it caters for the arising health needs in the community. This have also enhanced growth and development of the sector and of the community at large as people have trust with the personnel involved as they can give appropriate services.
Data business practices. Human resource leaders in the health care sector have larger data numbers or information to handle about employees and other people in the sector. To improve on functions, they have adopted data business practice trend that includes easier recording saving and retrieval using the easiest time possible. This is important to help safe keep of records important for ensuring ultimate care of the people. This activities have been supported and activated by the senior health care leadership bodies in the world like WHO to ensure effective service delivery in the HR departments of various health institutions (Miliki? and Jani?ijevi?, 2009).
Health care sector is one of the major areas that has more concern and attention than others as it contributes to the wellbeing of people in the community. As a result, it’s faced by many issues and challenges in the process of achieving its goals. These challenges include increasing healthcare issues where new ailments and diseases are being discovered on daily basis. This results to need for more specialized employee and training activities to advance employee skills. According to Vermeeren, et al (2014 pp.35) human resource in this case has a role of ensuring that the identified need is catered for by understanding it, come up with employee requirement to fill the gap, select, recruit and train the employee to provide the services needed. Advancing employee skills from time to time is important to ensure they remain relevant. Poor record keeping in the health sector is also another problem that is affecting quality of services given to those in need (Brown, Patrick and Pasupathy, 2013). To improve on this, human resource department has a role to ensuring all records regarding people within the organization are taken care of. This can be done by using big data practice application that ensures all data is recorded appropriately and can be easily retrieved. It is okay to say that, health sector cannot appropriately function without human resource management activities and thus, the department should be well established and supported to enhance positive growth and development of the sector.
Case Study Illustrating HRM Points
Conclusion
Human resource management practices are very crucial to ensure people management in organizations for easier management control activities. If employees and all people in a given organization are well catered for, services delivery will be enhanced. HRM is a continuous process that once adopted it should not be dismissed, this is important to ensure that the current trends are also incorporated to enhance service delivery. As a major sector for development, human resource management in health sector should ensure rapid service delivery when needed by creating appropriate environment for the same. All organizations should enhance HRM activities to enhance actualization of the set goals and objectives.
References
Alzola, M 2018, ‘Decent Work: The Moral Status of Labor in Human Resource Management’, Journal Of Business Ethics, 147, 4, pp. 835-853, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 April 2018.
Armstrong, M., 2006. A handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Bae, J., Chen, S.J. and Rowley, C., 2011. From a paternalistic model towards what? HRM trends in Korea and Taiwan. Personnel Review, 40(6), pp.700-722.
Bal, P.M., Kooij, D.T. and De Jong, S.B., 2013. How do developmental and accommodative HRM enhance employee engagement and commitment? The role of psychological contract and SOC strategies. Journal of Management Studies, 50(4), pp.545-572.
Brown, G.D., Patrick, T.B. and Pasupathy, K.S. eds., 2013. Health informatics: a systems perspective. Health Administration Press.
Grafton, J., Lillis, A.M. and Widener, S.K., 2010. The role of performance measurement and evaluation in building organizational capabilities and performance. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35(7), pp.689-706.
Miliki?, B.B. and Jani?ijevi?, N., 2009. HRM trends in transition economies: Two reflections of the shared background. Sociologija, 51(2).
Roberts-Phelps, G 2000, ‘Chapter Four: People management’, Companies Don’t Succeed — People Do!pp. 73-115.
Singh, S., Darwish, T.K., Costa, A.C. and Anderson, N., 2012. Measuring HRM and organizational performance: concepts, issues, and framework. Management Decision, 50(4), pp.651-667.
Stone, D, & Dulebohn, J 2016, Human Resource Management: Theory and Research on New Employment Relationships, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 30 April 2018.
Vermeeren, B., Steijn, B., Tummers, L., Lankhaar, M., Poerstamper, R.J. and Van Beek, S., 2014. HRM and its effect on employee, organizational and financial outcomes in health care organizations. Human resources for health, 12(1), p.35.
Yang, C.C. and Lin, C.Y.Y., 2009. Does intellectual capital mediate the relationship between HRM and organizational performance? Perspective of a healthcare industry in Taiwan. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(9), pp.1965-1984.
Zheng, C 2016, International Human Resource Management: Trends, Practices and Future Directions, Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 30 April 2018.
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