Human Resource Management - Essay Example

? Human Resource Management Table of Contents Answer to Question no 3 Answer to Question no: 2 4 Answer to Question no: 3 5 Answer to Question no:4 7 Title: Comparison between the present and future HR strategies in Cafe Co. 7 Introduction 7 Part (a) 7 Part (b) 8 Conclusion 10 Answer to Question no: 5 10 Reference 12 Bibliography 12 Answer to Question no: 1 Soft human resource management emphasises on the human aspect in organisations. Here, the people are considered to be an asset which is different from the other resources like finance, operations, etc. Thus the strategies that are developed in this model pertain to encouraging commitments from the workers. One of the important models of soft human resource management is the Harvard model. This model considers the external environment and the stakeholders as important determinants of the human resource policies in organisations. The policies would result in effective human resource outcomes pertaining to commitment, cost effectiveness and competence (D’Annunzio & Duncan, 2009, p.26). This approach is seen to bear relevance in the case of Cafe Co. with regard to its policies and criteria while recruiting of candidates. Candidates were selected according to merits befitting the organisation. The soft HRM policies also get reflected through the company’s attempt to enhance values of openness, recognition, trust, people development, teamwork, enthusiasm, fairness, courtesy and communication. Also the HR practices introduced were primarily meant to attain employee loyalty as there was a very high staff turnover. The soft human resource practices which treats employees as competitive assets of the company is demonstrated by Cafe Co’s considering the low minimum wages as one of the prime factors behind high employee turnovers. Hard human resource management seeks to achieve organisational goals. Just like another resource, they also need to be managed. It requires aligning the human resource strategies with the organisational strategies. The hard management argues that HR strategies must be developed to achieve organisational goals through managerial control and maintaining of performance. The new approach developed by Cafe Co. Aimed to achieve such organisational goals by the adoption of best practices. The hard HR practices also get reflected through the fact that Cafe Co. introduced methods of associating performance with organisation goals. The organisational structures were also well defined. The practices of communication, empowerment, training and involvement were meant to improve the bottom line performance and demonstrate the company’s emphasis on hard HR strategies. The primary aim of implementing the best practices strategy was to ensure that the human resources practice con tribute towards taking the business forward. Moreover, the development of performance management system demonstrates the company’s attempt towards development of scientific practices for measuring the employee’s performance. Through this system, the combined objectives of colleagues and their development needs were addressed. This was done in terms of increasing their technical skills and knowledge and also their behavioural skills. The system was implemented considering the firms’ objectives and constantly reviewing the performance for ensuring that they met those objectives. Regular feedback was delivered to the employees on the basis of which training and development programs were developed. Answer to Question no: 2 Line managers play the critical role of the delivery of HR practices and policies. They are primarily concerned with the issues relating to resourcing, preparation, performance management and international development (Dickmann, 2008, p.15). They are responsible for interpreting and implementing HR practices which have direct influence over people’s discretionary behaviours and motivation levels, which consequently affects the business performance. The importance of using human resource activities by line managers is that they remain in direct contact with the employees of the organisation (D’Annunzio & Duncan, 2009, p.5). It is the effectiveness with which line managers are able to implement the practices that determines the success of the same. The disadvantage associated with the activities of the line managers is that their activities at times might be effective in catering to the immediate requirements of the human resource department’s policies, but might not be effective in attaining long term goals of the organisation. At times their objectives might be differing from that of the organisations and thus they might become resistant to certain policy implementation. Answer to Question no: 3 The Ulrich model developed in 1997 suggested that “as champions of competitiveness in creating and delivering value, HR professionals carry out the roles of strategic partners, administrative experts, employee champions and change agents” (Armstrong, 2006, p.79). Ulrich defined the roles as follows: Employee advocate: employee advocate aims to focus on the employee’s requirements through listening, empathizing and understanding. Human Capital Developer: This is the role played by the HR managers in the development and management of human capital. The focus is primarily on preparing the employees for succeeding in future. Functional Expert: Concentrates on such human resource practices which are central to the human resource values which acts with insight based on the knowledge they possess (Armstrong, 2006, p.80). Some of these practices can be delivered by administrative efficiencies such as process design or technology, while some other through the policies, interventions and menus. It remains necessary to distinguish between foundations of the human resource practices like recruitment, rewards, learning and development and the emerging practices like communication, organisational design, work process and leadership development. Strategic Partner: This involves combining and aligning a number of dimensions with the aims and objectives of the organisation. The dimensions like strategic human resource planner, business experts, and change agents are aligned to attain the business and organisational objectives by helping the managers on getting things done (Armstrong, 2006, p.80). Leader: This involves leading the human resource functions, and also collaborating with the other functions while leading them too. It enables enhancing of the strategic standards and corporate governance. In this regard, quality of the HR professionals plays a key role and their abilities to lead (Armstrong & Baron, 2002, p.XVII). The Ulrich model bears relevance to the human resource practices in Cafe Co in certain areas. The awareness of the administrative requirements pertaining to the employees’ needs like payrolls and holiday entitlement demonstrates the organisation’s focus on understanding the employee’s requirements. As suggested in the Ulrich model an employee advocate could be appointed for understanding the employee requirements through listening, empathizing ad understanding. Kim’s concern towards providing constant information to the HR for enhancing their activities also proves the above point. The company’s emphasis on human capital development reflects through its performance management system in which the development needs and objectives of the employees were addressed. This was in terms of both behavioural skills and also technical and skills and know how. The well defined and clear organisational structures and their alignment with the firm’s goals and objectives through improving the employees’ performance indicate the firm’s focus towards developing functional expertise. The restructuring of strategies on the key areas of HR like talent management, learning and development and learning, compensation and benefits are some of the areas the company focussed to enhance its expertise in. The emphasis on the line managers and assisting them for the recruitment and selection of candidates and other activities that were in the best interest of the company also demonstrates the company’s focus on the attainment of business objectives through strategic partnership. Answer to Question no: 4 Title: Comparison between the present and future HR strategies in Cafe Co. Introduction The following report would bring forth the present strategies in Cafe Co. and also provide an evaluation of the same. This would primarily be in regard to the company’s HR practices pertaining to recruitment and selection, performance measurement, compensation and other benefits, communication system and training and development. Having done this, the project makes recommendations on how to improve the present system. Part (a) The present HR policies aimed towards introducing a completely new human resource strategy with the focus of emerging as the best coffee house in the world. The immediate need that was felt in the organisation was the development of a strategy that was focussed on developing and retaining the human resource in the company. Attaining employee commitment was considered to be of prime importance and regarded as the driving force of the organisation towards progress. The present system focussed on developing the expertise of the line managers. Line managers were given the responsibility of recruitment and selection as well as other HR activities as they were constantly in contact with the employees. The present focus was to design such an HR strategy that would be effective in attaining the maximum commitment of employees. The current system was based primarily to bring about openness, recognition, trust, enthusiasm, communication and teamwork. In other words the HR measures primarily concentrated in attaining organisational objectives and less on meeting the human resource requirements. Greater attention was required with regards to human resource development through employee benefits and other schemes and ensuring the well being of employees. The compensation structure of employees was not according to the industry standards. There were companies which offered better compensation and other benefits to employees. The need was also felt with regard to the administration requirements in the company in areas like absent management, payrolls, holiday entitlement and other areas. Greater attention was also required in terms of communication facilities in the organisation. It was felt that the human resources would require constant information and awareness about the basic information. The present recruitment and selection procedure was also not free of errors. It lacked systematic procedures and there were no proper guidelines in the procedure. The line managers tended to be less involved the process while the human resource managers remained more involved in these issues. Part (b) It is recommended that the line managers must be given greater responsibities with regard to devising human resource strategies. As they are closer to human resources and other issues they are more likely to know the intricacies and requirements of the trade. The strategies that are devised at the top management may not be suitable for implementation. Thus the opinions and suggestions of the line managers should be given greater emphasis as they would be responsible for implementing the strategies. All kinds of discrepancies between the line managers and the human resource managers must be removed. The case study reveals that the line managers were not content with the recruitment strategies developed by the HR managers. The strategies were difficult to be executed and not really aligned to the organisational objectives. Thus the need is felt to remove the disparities and considering ways to facilitate the process. As recommended by Banfield and Kay (2008), the first step must be identifying the recruitment requirements. Also, the process must be fair, which means that the process should be made as much objective as possible. The decisions at every level must be based on the merits of the candidates. In addition to this, employers have the responsibility to ensure that candidates are not subjected to any kind of discrimination during the process of selection (Banfield & Kay, 2008, p.75). The present recruitment strategy was not up to the standard where there was no properly designed strategy or guidelines. Most importantly, the strategies remained less focussed towards recruitment requirements and company’s objectives. Emphasis must be given to the bureaucratization and routinization of the recruitment and selection activities and conforming to the established procedures and rules, which was completely absent. The conventional approach to fit the candidates into the job can be made flexible where jobs can be moulded with the flexible and diverse skills of the candidates (Banfield & Kay, 2008, p.77). It is more important to identify and understand the HR requirements and not just how they could contribute to the company’s objectives. Strategies must be designed to meet the HR requirements and then align them with the company’s vision and mission. The requirement of enhancing communication system in the organisation and upgrading the employees on the basic requirements would be one effective way of removing hassles and hurdles in the work process. Most importantly a performance management system should be introduced in the organisation. Employees’ performance should be reviewed regularly by managers, peers and even from customers. Based on the reviews a system of training and development program should be developed. In it important to conduct the performance reviews at the right time. Moreover, the payroll system could be linked to the performance of employees which would provide them with the incentive to enhance and improve their performance. It would also be effective in attaining the views and opinions of employees with regard to their requirement of training programs. It is important that training modules are developed considering the individual requirements of employees more than collective requirements. Conclusion The report concludes that there are a number of loopholes in the human resource strategies that required restructuring or removal. It is felt that the line managers should be given greater responsibility with regard to implementation of the strategies. Their views and suggestions would be given greater value as they were responsible for implementation of the strategies. Developing a proper recruitment strategy would be crucial. Also, the system of recruitment which lacked proper alignment and focus, required restructuring. Focus was also given on improving benefits extended to employees. This required restructuring of the company’s compensation and benefits strategy. The attainment of employees’ commitment was considered to be of prime importance to achieve their best performance. Answer to Question no: 5 Evaluation of the recruitment process could be done using the following steps. Effectiveness: In case of implementation of strategies their effectiveness must be measured in terms of their performance. The output should be regularly monitored. The effectiveness measured would determine the suitability of the strategy. Effectiveness could also be measured using through retention rates and regular reviews of performance. Efficiency: One way of attaining efficiency would be to break down into sub-components and attaining a balance between efficiency with job satisfaction goals (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2005, p.372). Efficiency could be measured by measuring the cost effectiveness of the methods chosen, calculating the average cost incurred for the recruitment of each candidate or even the time consumed for the entire process. The training and development programs of the workforce should be adjusted considering their individual requirements. The performance review system would bring forth the evaluation of the performance of candidates and provide an insight regarding their training requirements. Fairness: It should also be ensured that the system is fair and free of any loopholes. The entire process of recruitment should be based on merits alone where each candidate must get the same opportunities and their assessments must also be done without biasness. Reference Armstrong, N. 2006. A handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers. Armstrong, M. & Baron, A. 2002. Strategic HRM: the key to improved business performance. CIPD Publishing. Banfield, P. & Kay, R. 2008. Introduction to Human Resource Management. Oxford University Press. D’Annunzio Green, N. & Duncan, F. 2009. Introduction to Human Resource Management. School of Management & Law. Edinburgh Napier University. Dickmann, M. 2008. International Human Resource Management: A European Perspective. Taylor & Francis. Marchington, M. & Wilkinson, A. 2008. Human resource management at work: people management and development. CIPD Publishing. Bibliography Foot, M. & Hook, C. 2005. Introducing Human Resource Management. Prentice Hall. Read More