Human Resource Management (HRM) is introduced to enhance productivity in an organization by addressing their working environment and treating them as valuable human capital.

by shirley90 (student)

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this essay is to amplify the steps to be taken to ensure that Human Resource (HR) practices addresses the need for long-term productivity and for a workplace in which relationship are built on trust and mutual respect. Productivity is a measure of quantity and quality of work done, taking into account the costs of resources used (Mathis & Jackson 2011). However, productivity in workplace is far more than the simple definition, it is how organizations prepare itself for the changes in technology or to achieve innovation, quality or cost reduction objectives in the long-term. A workplace with trust and respect provides employees with confidence and sense of belonging in the organization. The two main points covered are interrelated, with trust in workplace motivates employees, increase job satisfaction and increase productivity in workplace.

Human Resource Management (HRM) is introduced to enhance productivity in an organization by addressing their working environment and treating them as valuable human capital. The key for productivity is the employees, thus HRM practices ensure attraction and retention of talents and the right people are on the right job doing the right things, which helps organizations create competitive advantage.

The essay will flow according to the employment cycle, how HR practices in each cycle address to the topic with examples from organizations such as Citibank that are based on my personal experience.

PRE-HIRING PHASE

The first phase of employment cycle involves HR planning and job analysis. Planning maps out strategic HR plan to prepare organizations for changes related to technology or resources. The first step of planning is to determine the organization’s business objectives. Organization has to focus on innovation, quality or cost reduction to ensure the HR practices align with the focused objective. This essay will emphasize on the objective of innovation as the need for long-term productivity. Only with a clear business objective can an organization develop HR practices, which motivate and lead employees on the right track.

Increasing education levels creates demand for jobs that are interesting with career advancement and training provided. Jobs have to be consistently redesigned to meet the current demand. Job analysis specifies the position’s functions, requirements and future opportunities. It helps to provide a clear guideline on selection process, performance appraisal on what to assess, what type of training to resolve underperformance and the rewards entitled for hard work. It identifies the competencies related to the job.

Data could be collected from various sources to ensure credibility. Line managers could verify the information regarding employees’ roles to ensure they are aligned with organization’s objectives. A good job and person specifications will help to attract qualified applicants. Purpose of person specifications reduces stereotypes during selection process and mainly focused on their ability. A well-structured job description enables employees to be aware of what is expected from them, reduce their uncertainty and increase trust level in organization.

HIRING PHASE

The second phase of the employment cycle involves procedures and polices that organizations used to attract, recruit and select the suitable candidates. The key to high productivity in recruitment is to recruit people whose values and goals that match with organization’s objective. Organizations have to take both internal and external policies into consideration. Internal polices are set by organization itself, while external policies are not within their control. Recently, Singapore tightened its restrictions on foreign labour (Teo 2012), organizations are to take these policies together with business strategy, time, cost, and criteria developed from job analysis into consideration to determine appropriate recruitment strategies. Internal recruitment such as job rotation or promotions builds employees’ trust in the organization that their performance is assessed fairly. Often, a promotion creates an indirect mutual trust between organization and employees of their responsibilities. However, organizations should have a fair practice on recruitment methods to allow internal promotion as well as recruitment externally to bring in new employees.

Citibank recruitment system recruits permanent positions internally, advertising on its website or internal referrals, while temporary positions are recruited through recruitment agencies. It creates a workplace built on trust through announcing of opening positions through internal mails and encouraged employees to apply if they are interested. This open system practice reflects fairness and how Citibank value its employees. By treating employees as assets, it could increase overall motivational level and job satisfaction. Shorter time was also spent on sourcing temporary positions in order to focus on permanent positions and development of other HR functions.

A planned procedure ...

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A planned procedure allows fair and organized practice in selecting suitable applicants. Assessments are another tool to determine applicants’ personalities or behaviors fit the job. With technology implemented into our daily operations, online recruitments are used instead of the traditional jobs advertising in newspaper. Starbucks uses software, which has the ability to record of all the online applicants and their answers based on a variety of questions designed by Starbucks (Weber, 2005). This shows how technology are intimately linked to engaging fair HR practices by eliminating non-qualified applicants through assessment and job specifications (Dauda & Akingbade 2011).

Lastly, successful applicants are required to go through selection interview. Creative interview questions allow creativity replies from interviewees and highlight their competencies. Hiring the right people for the right job creates is the key to organization success.

POST-HIRING PHASE

In the post-hiring phase, it is crucial for organizations to maintain strong relationship and trust among employees to create a better workplace or enhancing innovation and productivity. High satisfaction will lead to higher commitment and lower turnover rate.

First impression often shapes employees’ attitude at work. Orientation has to be well designed to reduce anxiety, develop positives attitudes and encourage innovation in the new employees that lead them to job satisfaction and long-term commitment (Nankervis et al. 2011). Regular follow-up and evaluation of their progress helps to encourage feedbacks regarding orientation and daily operations for improvement. Efforts in monitoring new employees’ progress and listening to feedbacks can build employees’ trust in organization.

Currently, globalization and changing demographics creates workplace of different generations, nationalities, races, genders, education levels and culture. Organizations should develop a platform that supports global interactions and exchanging information on diverse market, resources, skills and experiences, allowing employees to apply these gained knowledge in work. Workplace that enhances collaboration and teamwork forms comparison, which helps trigger employees’ creativity and self-esteem (Dauda & Akingbade 2011). Long-term productivity can therefore be achieved in high trust and commitment workplace.

Training

Employees build trust in organization based the perceptions of organization’s ability to provide trainings that benefits their career (Vanhala & Ahteela, 2011). On the other hand, organization provides training when they trust employees to have the potential to apply competencies in work. Proper planning in training investment helps organization to ensure the increase productivity benefited and costs are on the same scale (Mudor & Tooksoon 2011). To generate productivity, training objectives have to reflect the organization’s business plan in order to tailor effective trainings. Organization first has to analyze and fills the gap between employees’ actual and desired performance with suitable trainings. Objective for training can determine the appropriate training methods such as on-the-job learning, off-the-job learning, seminars, and workshops. Next, each training objective must be delivered to ensure the understanding of how specific training programs help in their career to motivate their learning interest.

Lastly, training would be more effective through consistent evaluations and improvements. Comparisons can be made between employees who had and had not received training to determine whether the skills gained are applied in workforce.

Starbucks, emphasizing on customer experience and quality, went to the extent of shutting down the stores for few hours to allow employees to attend training courses (Weinstein 2008). As a customer service organization, Starbucks acknowledge the importance to increase employees’ skills outweighs the revenue earned for that few hours. Good trainings develop employees’ learning interest and competencies to handle problems that arise and help organization achieve its objective.

On other hand, Citibank, which is focused on innovation, thinks that flexibility is important. Trainings are provided throughout the year and employees including temporary workers can choose to attend trainings, which they think are useful for their role. Flexible practices give employees the responsibilities make their own judgments and create a sense of belonging for temporary workers.

Performance Management

Performance management is a system that measures employees’ performance, ensures that they are on the right track and creates the link between performance and rewards. Level of trust is related to impartial performance management system, which relates to job satisfaction, long-term commitment to produce long-term productivity. Performance reviews includes the evaluation of past performances, the potential for promotion, identifying talents and their needs. The reviews frequency, review guidelines such as behavior-focused, outcome-focused and source of reviews are factors to take into account before developing and implementing a performance review system. In order to allow acceptance of performance reviews, organizations should disclose the guidelines, process of evaluation and allow employees participation in evaluating colleagues whom they work closely with. Employee-participation gives employees’ opportunities to express their views, indirectly building trusts in workplace (Vanhala & Ahteela 2011). Trainings can also be provided to mangers on skills to writing constructive and unbiased performance reviews.

After the evaluation from all sources, face-to-face interview could give manager the opportunity to analyze, discuss employees’ possible improvements and growth and the opportunity to listen to their work issues and needs. In the process, manager and employees can analyze the possible solutions to create outstanding performance. This open system motivates individuals to be aware of their progression towards individual and organization’s goals. The final step for the review is score grading, which groups employees into different performance levels. Grading analysis allows organization to fit possible solutions and rewards for individuals and for progression tracking purposes.

Reward Management

Baby-boomers emphasize on promotion and higher salary, Gen-Xers prefers materialistic rewards (Kapoor & Solomon 2011) and Gen-Yers focus on work-life balances, recognition rather than salary (Goh 2012). Organizations must aim to develop a strategic reward system to accommodate the generation differences that covers their compensation and benefits. With the current war for talent (Barth & Amin 2012), each organization has to put in effort in improving job satisfaction to long-term commitment and motivation. Policies, procedures and entitlement of rewards have to be impartial and appealing. Total rewards include financial and non-financial rewards like base pay, incentives, healthcare benefits, career progression and other indirect benefits.

Firstly, competitive based-pay shows organization is crucial in attracting and retaining employees. Regular monitoring of market rates through market surveys and job evaluations could help organization adjust the rewards accordingly for fairness. In my opinion, for long-term productivity, job-based and skills-based approach should not be a long-term approach as it only motivates employees to achieve higher positives or skills for better pay. Competency-based approach on the side, allows employees to progressively apply their competencies in work.

The purpose of performance-related rewards is used to recognize and rewards contributors, it should not only be rewarded to top performers. The types of incentives should vary according to generation differences in order to appeal to individuals and create motivational drive. Rewards will not be effective when it is not useful to employees. Therefore, organization could analyze feedbacks and issues reviewed from performance management process to tailor solutions for specific needs such as childcare benefits or other beneficial rewards. Family day is an example of how organizations address the demand of work-life balance, and allows bonding between employees and their family.

Starbucks part-timers get to enjoy the total rewards when their working hours hit the requirements (Rama Rao 2010). Flexible benefit practices create competitive advantage, at the same time increase work-life balance and employees’ productivity. To create better innovation work environment, organization has to identify unspoken needs and provide unexpected rewards.

Workplace Safety

Safety needs is the second important need in Maslow’s Hierarchy. Creating a safe workplace for employees is important in building trust. It is important to develop safety policies, procedures and programs. Organizations often prepare its employees in evacuations through holding frequent fire drills. Effective safety practices help employees to know how to react in times of danger.

CONCLUSION

Organizations often over-focused on its business plan and neglect employees’ needs, causing high turnover rate. This builds negative trust in the organization and direct and in-direct costs are then lost in the process of replacement. Organizations should align their business objective with HRM practices to shape positive working attitudes in employees and creates a workplace with high trust and productivity. With the process taken in each practice, it gradually leads to high-involvement practice where employees are actively involved in organization’s strategic decisions.

The key words emphasized throughout the essay are flexibility, fairness and employees participation. To fully utilized employees’ competencies, organizations have to do their part in promoting flexibility. While most organizations view part time work as impractical (Jayandran 2012), other organizations could view the demand of part-timer work as a form of providing flexible working hours which helps increase job satisfaction. A newspaper article reported that flexible working practices increased employees’ motivation and energetic level thus generating higher revenue and productivity (Lim 2012). Also, employees’ participation encourages them to think innovatively and be involved thus building higher trust level.

While there are many other ways to address long-term productivity and mutual respect workplace, but the most basic step is employees have to be treated as organization’s assets.

(2163 Words)

REFERENCES

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