Human Resource Management Essays

Human Resource Management Essays Human Resource Management Essay Human Resource Management Essay Knowledge and skills development is vital to the health of organisations. We live in an information age today, and organisations are routinely valued not just on their physical but on their intellectual capital. Training is one of the chief methods of maintaining and improving intellectual capital, so the quality of an organisation’s training affects its value. Untrained or poorly trained employees cost significantly more to support than well-trained employees do. Training affects employee retention and is a valuable commodity that, if viewed as an investment rather than as an expense, can produce high returns.Training is organisational effort aimed at helping employees to acquire the basic skills required for the efficient execution of the functions for which they are hired. Development, on the other hand, deals with activities undertaken to expose employees to perform additional duties and assume positions of importance in the organisational hierarchy . The benefits of training and development to employees and organisations alike are numerous and include (but are not limited to) the following: 1. Workers are helped to focus, and priority is placed on empowering employees. 2.Productivity is increased, positively affecting the bottom line. 3. Employee confidence is built, keeping and developing key performers, enabling team development and contributing to better team/organisation morale. 4. Employees are kept current on new job-related information, thereby contributing significantly to better customer service. 5. Employees are updated on new and enhanced skills, with a view to aligning them to business goals and objectives. 6. After a downsizing, remaining workers are given the technical and management skills to handle increased workloads. . Companies with business problems are given a fresh or unbiased professional opinion or exploration, evaluation, or critique. 8. Job satisfaction, employee motivation and morale are increased, r educing employee turnover. * Processes increase in efficiency, resulting in financial gain. New skills and knowledge can be acquired. * Existing skills and knowledge can be enhanced or updated, enabling people to further improve proven strengths. * Weaknesses can be addressed or mechanisms put in place to compensate. * Improvements in confidence, capability and competence. Employees feel supported and enabled in their work. * Learning is progressed to practice in the workplace. * Learning is used to improve performance at work. * Learning is shared, enhancing team performance. * Wider impact in the organisation through performance improvements and the dissemination of information, ideas and networking. Innovation is increased, bringing new strength to strategies, products and the company’s capacity to adopt new technologies and methods. There are various methods organisations adopt in the training and development of their employees, depending on their needs.They include role playing, job rotation, on-the-job training, vestibule training (where employees are trained off their regular work areas but in an environment closely resembling their work place), public classroom training, onsite training, conferences which allow employees to quickly develop skills on a number of topics, technical seminars which provide employees benefits similar to conferences but with less flexibility because of focused contents, instructor-led online training, mentoring where the skills gap to be bridged is substantial, e-learning modules which allow for employee independent learning and exercises are repeatedly done to reinforce or refresh understanding of content, and embedded learning which helps employees learn through modules built into products or equipment – embedded learning solutions are often customized to fit an organisation’s requirement.We also have reference cards which provide instant access to essential learning, such as Frequently Asked Questions, paper reference cards, web-based cards, etc. ( legalsecretaryjournal. com/? q=employee_training_and_development) A LITERATURE REVIEW ON TRAINING amp; DEVELOPMENT AND QUALITY OF WORK LIFE Ms. Pallavi P. Kulkarni, Assistant Professor, M. E. S. Night College, Aabasaheb Garware Campus, Affiliated to University of Pune, Pune, India ABSTRACT In this competitive world, training plays an important role in the competent and challenging format of business. Training is the nerve that suffices the need of fluent and smooth functioning of work which helps in enhancing the quality of work life of employees and organizational development too.Development is a process that leads to qualitative as well as quantitative advancements in the organization, especially at the managerial level, it is less considered with physical skills and is more concerned with knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviour in addition to specific skills. Hence, development can be said as a continuous process whereas training has specific areas and objectives. So, every organization needs to study the role, importance and advantages of training and its positive impact on development for the growth of the organization. Quality of work life is a process in which the organization recognizes their responsibility for excellence of organizational performance as well as employee skills.Training implies constructive development in such organizational motives for optimum enhancement of quality of work life of the employees. These types of training and development programs help in improving the employee behaviour and attitude towards the job and also uplift their morale. Thus, employee training and development programs are important aspects which are needed to be studied and focused on. This paper focuses and analyses the literature findings on importance of training and development and its relation with the employees’ quality of work life. Keywords: Human Resource Management, Training, Development and Qua lity of work life. researchersworld. com/vol4/issue2/Paper_20. pdf Human Resource Management Essays Human Resource Management Essay Human Resource Management Essay Businesses are more concerned about securing important investment from shareholders and maximize profits. Few considerations are given to employees as analyzed in this paper. Maybe this is a two way traffic. One cannot only blame top management, but each and every stakeholder has their role to play. This research was done solely to analyze to what extent the functions of Human Resource Management can pair up with ethical practices for better stakeholders management, especially employees. Information from various philosophers were gathered and give a dark, not really positive relationship between the Human Resource functions and the ethical practices of businesses and organizations. Taking along the difference between ethical practices and Human Resource functions would have definitely given another type of findings which could have been more positive. The ultimate goal is to make the Human Resource Functions an important process for the achievement of organizational goals but this paper demonstrate that we are far from realizing this management dream because the anomie concept by Disastrous 2006 and the Stakeholder Theory By Edward Freeman 1984 both put accent on individualism. This cannot be seen directly from literally understanding these concepts But the ultimate idea behind these concepts is what is shown to us when we go through them. Introduction Human Resource Management is considered as the lifeblood of organizations. Rapid economic growth has resulted to companies trying fiercely to differentiate its products and services from competitors in order to increase market share (Lecture 5 2006, Samson Daft 2005, p. 441) . In order to be distinctive, human resource management plays an important role as it deals with the workforce (Anthony et al. 2002, p. 749, What Intel is and What it isn’t 2001). This is because, the quality of the workforce would have a huge impact on the quality and the distinction of services or products sold (Samson Daft 2005; Anthony et al. 2001, p. 749, What Intel is and What it isn’t 2001). A good example for this would be Toyota, a renowned car manufacturing giant, famous for its extensive employees benefits, whilst making tremendously high profit each year (The Economist January 29th, 2005). According to an article published in the magazine The Economist, The Car Company in Front (January 29th, 2005) under its human resource management, Toyota allows flexible positive working condition and gives its workers a certain degree of power to attain access to business information, and control the production line to encourage an increase in the production capacity and the company’s performance as a whole. This shows how an effective human resource management robustly affects a company’s performance. Looking more specifically, employee motivation is one area under human resource management. In Harvard Business Review (Kotter 2001) it was clearly stated that ongoing and effective motivation is imperative as it would result to an organization’s ability to overcome hurdles and achieve its missions and visions. This could be explained by looking at the positive effects motivation has on people (Kotter 2001). When a person is hardly motivated, there is little that he or she can do because motivations as well as inspiration energize people (Kotter 2001, Marsh 1998, p. 10-44). Consequently, employee’s skills are underutilized resulting to the underperformance of a company (Kotter 2001, Conlon 2003). In other words, a company could not perform to its greatest potential due to inefficient employees who lacks motivation and support. Another way of explaining the importance of employee motivation is to look at what motivation itself means (Samson Daft 2005, p. 73). According to Samson and Daft (2005) motivation refers to internal as well as external sources that stimulate interest and perseverance to pursue an act. Motivation to employees therefore directly affects productivity (Samson Daft 2005, p. 573). This is why performance management consulting firms like the Guild Associates has reformed their training workshops to focus more on motivating employees as it is believed to match th e new business requirements to increase productivity (McKanic 2005). Now that we have identified the importance of human resource management in general, and employee motivation in particular, it is imperative to understand the challenges faced in these areas before implementing strategies. Human resource management deals with people, and employee motivation is one of them (Lecture 5 2006). Diversification is a huge word in dealing with people as people are diversified and they vary from one person to another (Katz 2003; Gray Roberts 2003). This sets hurdles in implementing motivational strategies that fix the differences to achieve common organizational goals (Lusthaus et al. 999, Samson Daft 2005, Katz 2003). Another problem regarding motivation is that it is subject to changes. People are motivated by different reasons at different times and under different circumstances (Gray Roberts, 2005). An employee may be highly motivated by money this year and start craving for power and recognition the following year. According to Marsh (1999) such extrin sic rewards however, could indirectly kill intrinsic desires people are naturally born with as they tend to become materialistic or get depressed over stiff competition. This sets another hurdle for managers in choosing the right motivational strategy. Since human resource management and employee motivation are critical but challenging, how to build a motivated workforce becomes an interesting question for managers. Human resource management plays a role in creating a motivated workforce. Training to improve performance and performance appraisals to keep track of employees’ performances are two important elements in human resource management to create a motivated workforce (Samson Daft 2005, Lecture 6, 2006). But more importantly is employee’s motivation to ensure an effective and motivated workforce. Motivating strategies depend heavily upon a manager’s personal foundation of what constitutes motivation (Samson Daft 2005, Kotter 2001). The most recent theories however is contemporary approach which outlines three common theories used in deciding approaches to motivate employees. These are content theories, process theories and reinforcement theories (Samson Daft 2005, McCuddy 2005). Content theories highlight the needs that motivate people, while process theories explain how workers choose behaviors to get what they need, and how they determine such choices are successful (Ferguson 2000, Motivation n. d. , Samson Daft 2005). Reinforcement approach simply shows the link between behavior and its consequences( Samson Daft 2005). Under process theories are equity theory and expectancy theory (Ferguson 2000, Samson Daft 2005, Motivation n. d. ). Equity theory is simply the theory which believes that a motivated workforce could be formed if the working environment shows parity and fairness (Ferguson n. d. ). Equality in this case is measured through the inputs-to-outcomes ratio (Samson Daft 2005). For example, if the amount of efforts put to a project leads to an equal pay rise to everyone involved, the workforce as a whole would be motivated to perform better. On the other hand, if the job pay is selective and is not equal, despite equal efforts poured by everyone, the workforce would be dispirited by the inequality and would not perform to their greatest potential. The issue on equality has become even more prominent with the realization of globalization taking place in the economy ( James 1998). According to James (1998), the emergence of multinational companies with turnovers bigger than GNPs in most countries has resulted to ‘geographically spread and racially diverse foreign workforces’. Hence, it is imperative for these companies to practice equity as any inequity may results to chaos which would badly affect the company’s performance (Anthony et al. 2002). An example of a company trying to practice equity in its business is the world’s biggest food chain retailer, McDonald. McDonald continues to ensure equal participation by all members of society in its organization and allow them equal chances to participate in its intensive and recognized training programs. Not only has McDonald been listed as the top companies for minorities to work, it has also received awards for â€Å"fostering leadership development among women† (Anthony et al. 2002, Garnegger Shemmer, 1998). The Equality approach practiced by McDonald motivates employees to perform to their greatest potential regardless of their condition of being a minority, or not. The other contemporary approach in building a motivated workforce is based on the reinforcement theory. Reinforcement theory uses the consequences of an action to instill motivational values in an organization (McCuddy 2005). Under reinforcement theory, there exist four reinforcement tools to achieve desired values among workforce which are positive reinforcement, avoidance learning, punishment as well as extinction (Motivation n. d. ; Ferguson 2000; Samson Daft 2005). Positive reinforcement and avoidance learning are pleasing results and the elimination of unlikable consequences following the employees fine performance or actions (McCuddy 2005). Positive reinforcement includes impromptu praises to punctual workersand pay rise while one scenario of avoidance learning includes when a supervisor stops complaining when an employee’s work tend to consistently improve. Extinction and punishment are the act of withholding positive rewards and the imposition of undesired actions taken on employees following their unfavorable behaviors (Samson Daft 2005, Ferguson 2000). Among the examples of extinction and punishment include withholding raises as well as warning an employee. To create a motivated set of workers, the managers must always recognize their good work, and take rightful actions when employees’ performances deteriorate. A good example of a company which practices the expectancy theory is Intel, a leading technology company whose reward and recognition program is directly based performance and results (Anthony et al. 2002). An article on Intel (2002) revealed that the total compensation is made up of base pay, benefits, and results driven bonuses. An 8-week sabbatical with pay is also rewarded to loyal employees who served the company for more than 7 years (What Intel is and what it isn’t n. d. . In February, Intel would rank and rate each or its employees according to their individual performance. Although this may motivate those who have performed well, critics believe that this could set depression and stress among workers, hence hindering better performance in the future (Marsh 1998). Conclusively, this essay has outlined the i mportance of human resource management and motivating employees especially in improving company’s performance and overcoming obstacles as an organization. The challenges faced in dealing with these two aspects were also highlighted to show hurdles faced by managers to get a motivated workforce. However, effective strategies have been discussed to overcome the challenges and help managers build a dynamic workforce, motivated to achieving their greatest performance. All in all, human resource management, in general, and motivating employees in particular are two important keys towards a holistically better organization. (1788 words) Reference: 1. Samson, Danny Draft, Richard L. (2005) Second Pacific Rim Edition : Management, Thomson, Melbourne 2. 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