Relationship between HRM strategy and Business strategy:
Organisational and employee development is viewed as the core of the cultural change and this is valued throughout the organisation. It necessary to maintain a confident and a competent staff that are clear about the type of council they are in and what kind of work is expected out of them.
“Learning organisations is one in which people at all levels, individuals and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about”.
ABC County Council must continue to learn and encourage learning among its employees. It must promote the exchange of information between various levels of employees hence creating a more knowledgeable work force. This will produce high level of flexibility where people will accept and adapt to new ideas and changes through a shared vision. It will encourage interdependency, improve quality and real productivity. This will also help the organisational structure to become people oriented in relation to staff and employees and further lead to motivating the employees and increase their level of skills and knowledge. Employees in the ABC County must understand that to become a learning organisation, learning is necessary. Appropriate environment must be created for this change to take place. ABC County Currently has a more centralized structure. Therefore, employees don’t possess a comprehensive picture of the whole organisation and they are not clear with its goals. Hence it should translate its organisational structure to a more decentralized where people understand their responsibility. This will create an environment of innovation and will lead to better communication.
Awareness- should be aware n learning is necessary not just for top level but for all, environment- flexible or stru shld b there , leadership- restructure individual views, empowerment- shift from mgt to employees.
TQM- hard and soft.. soft should be applied. – emphasizes on worker empowerment, team work, responsibilities, open communication, involvement, participation-policies, skill development- programe, retension. It is long term strategy for improvement.
Recruitment- of the core workforce will enabe abc to select the right person who will show greater commitment n responsibility to the org.
Abc should try to aim at individual outcomes and target at personal development plans with a shared team output. ABC should realize the imp. Of line managers who r closer to operational issues which directly effect the performance of the company as a whole. Line managers can implement the policies for change directly. They should be trained or expertise to carry out function affectively. The hrm function in county can concentrate on strategic issues as well as routine issues like recruitment, training, appraisels and discipline. High level of HR involvement is must to satisfy TQM objective
Linkage between Performance management and Reward policies & practices:
Prior to the restructuring, performance management was not looked upon seriously. Performance measuring staff was placed within the service area with a small policymaking team. Hence the loyalty of this staff was with their service and not the function.
As the conservative government came to power in England, various reforms were introduced. Improving the performance management was now the fundamental of the central government. To measure the performance of councils, performance standards were determined and audit commission was to measure the performance on the basis of these set standards. The performance was then reviewed against the standards set. This kind of Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) is done regularly by the Audit commission. On the basis of this assessment, a table was released which rated the performance of each council. ABC County Council was rated as ‘Good’ in this. The central government stated that the performance management system should:
- Ensure a complete picture of organisational performance is painted for council members and managers.
- Mean that best value reviews are used as a tool to change service delivery for the better.
- Make it clear to the public and strategic stakeholders how the council is performing.
To cope up with the changes made by the central government, the councils had to restructure themselves. There was a need to change the culture and moving to the one which recognizes that service should ‘add value’ and be ‘cost effective’. 5 visions were used to develop the human resource strategic framework which focused on customer, valuing, innovative and adaptable to change, working in partnership and developing the performance management culture.
The main issue with performance at ABC County was that good performance was not rewarded. There were no appraisals carried out to motivate employees who exhibited high class performance. So, good performance should be recognized and rewarded appropriately. This would lead to employee motivation and employee retention. Poor performance should be tackled appropriately and measures should be taken to avoid it in future. In employees opinion survey was carried out to know the problems of employees, Pay system was highlighted as the major cause of dissatisfaction by most of the employees. It revealed that that special increments and merit reward were very rarely given and the increments for poor performance were not withheld. To sort out this problem, ABC County introduced a system of give special prices to those who were nominated as the ‘Fellow employee and manager of exceptional service’. For those works which are done in a team, “performance review is individual and as is reward and this creates problem when individuals are rewarded despite being perceived by fellow team members a not pulling their weight”. This makes highly talented workers with exceptional skills feel that they are same as all other people in the organisation as there is no distinction made between efficient and inefficient workers. This makes the staff unhappy and they are attracted to take up jobs in private sector. ABC County needs a career grade structure to ensure that employees with exceptional talent are rewarded adequately. This will help them to maintain as effective workforce. Currently, main importance is given to achieve central government targets rather that solving local problems. There should be a balance between the two. The performance of the staff should be measured on a day to day basis. Annual performance reviews should be provided to each employee and the problems should be sorted out in meetings with the managers. There should be a culture wherein employees share the information with each other and discuss the problems to come up with the solution.
ABC County has its own pay scheme in which it pays its employees above the nationally agreed pay levels. This does encourage employees but concerns have been raised as the nationally recognized pay has been with held after the industrial action. Money cannot be the only motivating factor for employees. They need to have a friendly work environment and complete job satisfaction. A clear performance related pay scheme should be put in place with clearly defining the relationship of performance and reward. Employees also need to have a common goal. If they try to achieve their individual targets, then the goal of ABC County will not be accomplished. Employees must be made self dependent. The strategies should be formulated at the top level and the decisions must be taken by employees themselves.
Recommendations:
Rewarding the dedicated employees- Employees with good performance output should be given some monetary benefits along with other incentives. There should be clear relationship between the performance and the pay. This would lead to motivation of employees and they will try to work as efficiently as they can. Along with rewarding the good performances, some negative rewards should also be given to those whose performance has not been up to the mark.
Training and Development Process- Regular training and appraisals should be carried out to equip the employees with the latest techniques of doing the work. Employees should be involved in decision making process. This would enhance their ability to take strategic decisions which will benefit the organisation in the long run. Every employee should be trained on the basis of his/her past performance. Need based development process should be put in place. Along with their training, their performance should be monitored. Action should be taken against those who are not carrying out training properly.
Database Employee Information- There should be database available containing detailed information about each employee. Currently no information is available on figures of labor turnover, sickness absence, ethnic monitoring, gender split etc. This will help the management to take corrective measures where the absenteeism is too high, or if there is any other thing going wrong.
Communication- Staff feels ill-informed about the important issues. This hampers the coordination of the whole organisation. In the Employee opinion survey, it was highlighted that employees are unhappy about the level of communication in the ABC County. So, a well designed communication system is needed for proper functioning of the County.
Implementation and Planning- The top level of management should be engaged in formulating and prioritizing the issues. There should be a balance between local community targets and central government goals. They should be prioritized and then worked upon. This is because County spends much of its time and resources for achieving central targets in spite of fulfilling the needs of local community.
Recruitment & Selection- ABC County recruits a large number of people most of which are not capable of doing the required job. Hence it should stress on recruiting people by the way of interview, screening etc. It should not either terminate the Online recruitment process, but it should recruit a minimum number of people form this method.
Use of Information- The information gathered should be used properly in the interest of the society. There should be a performance improvement culture and not a blame culture. The County should learn from its previous mistakes and should treat these mistakes as a learning opportunity to improve the performance in the future.
Performance Management- Currently, the performance of team work in measured individually, whereas it should be measured individually for individual work and collectively for team work. By this method, only those people would be rewarded who deserves it. The process should be simple and strait forward.
Employee growth- To maintain an effective work force, the growth of employees should not be overlooked. Employees should be provided with growth opportunities regularly. This can be done by involving the employees in different projects wherein they can learn about doing other jobs also. They should be recognized by the top level of management. This would lead to coming in of more and more competent employees.
Public relation- Concerns have been shown by the public about the working of the county. There has been low electoral turnout because the performance of county is not known to the public. So, it should try to bring its performance in the knowledge of public through mediums like annual reports, newspapers etc.
Questioning and Suggestions- There should be a system wherein each employee has to compulsorily give at least 1 suggestion per month which make a total of more than 3000 suggestions per month. It will be of a great use for the management because it is the employees who can give the best suggestions rather than anyone else. Employees and Community should also be provided with the facility of asking questions from the top management. This would make the organisation more open.
Benchmarking- The county should benchmark its performance with those whose performance has been better than its own. Then a detailed analysis should be done to identify the factors which lead to deviations in performance. This would help ABC County to develop continuously until its get the rating of ‘excellent’ under the Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPA).
Bibliography:
-
Torrington. d &Laura. h, (1995) Human resource management, (4th edition), London, prentice hall
-
http://www.Quickmba.com