Reform of Human Resource Department in Ontario Public Services - Essay Example

? Commissioned Paper Economics Analysis: Ontario Public Service (Human Resources Management) Being the first province to introduce an HR designation, it is important to understand and evaluate the human resource management strategies of Ontario public services. The key trend in OPS were identified which includes the shift from traditional HR to strategic HR, as a result of such trend outsourcing was enhanced but only limited to transactional HR activities. To motivate and enhance the performance of employees within the organization, OPS emphasized on training and development along with other strategies which were focused on reducing the hygiene factors of employees. Ontario public service is expected by the employees and citizen to compete against the private sector in terms of human resource management. For the accomplishment of such objective OPS might have to take modern practices into account to be the leader in the management of human resource. The implementation and adoption of human resource management practices would improve the employee’s performance and productivity as well as their motivation level. Table of Contents Commissioned Paper Economics Analysis: Ontario Public Service (Human Resources Management) 1 Abstract 2 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 4 Trend 1: Shift to Strategic HR 8 Trend 2: Measuring and Managing HRM 8 Trend 3: Influence of Technology in HRM 9 Trend 4: Outsourcing 10 Trend 5: HR as a Profession 10 3. ANALYSIS 11 4. CONCLUSION 14 References 16 1. INTRODUCTION Human resource is considered as the most important asset in the Ontario public service. For the city of Ontario, Human Resource Department plans, coordinates and administers a plan for the recruiting and retaining highly qualified employees and maintain compensation plans for the employees. Human resource management for OPS includes the recruitment and selection to attract “the right person for the right reason” and to train these employees to achieve the strategic goals of the OPS (Belcourt, 2003). Human resource is behind the success of every business and nation, so it is essential to manage the employees for their optimum performance. The employee’s performance beyond expectation could help the nation and businesses to achieve the goals and objectives within the limited time-frame (Bratton and Gold, 2009). The report provides us with an insight that the human resource management can help in shaping the behavior of employee that is consistent with the organization’s reason for existence; purpose, mission and vision. The focus of this research was to shift from traditional HR to strategic HR. This shift from traditional to strategic human resource was to ensure the flexibility and innovation based on technology. Another focus of OPS was to focus on outsourcing that was to be limited only for those departments of the organization where the department needs motivated employees. Other departments in which the organization excels would be handled by the OPS. In this research paper the importance of human resource will be judged by conducting relevant analysis based on Ontario public services. The analysis is based on up-to-date data and models that would help to conclude regarding the progress of human resource management in Ontario public services. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW For an organization to be successful and to respond to the challenges, the organization must bear high recruitment cost. This recruitment would help to accomplish the vision and mission and pursue the organizational excellence (Armstrong, 2009). For such purpose the OPS has developed a plan to focus on outsourcing which would help the OPS to reduce its recruitment cost and provide the organization with the best human resource available. This reduction in cost could be an opportunity for the OSP to use the capital in investing in other programs where the probability of return is greater than the others. According to the Equity theory, employees look for a balance between their input (hard work, loyalty, commitment, determination, personal sacrifices, skills, efforts etc.) and their outcomes (salary, benefits, job security, recognition, responsibility, praise etc.) (Ferreira and Otley, 2009). To motivate the employees it is essential for the OPS to create a balance between the levels of management in the organizations. This theory is based on job motivation which beliefs that employees become de-motivated when another employee of same qualification and job experience is provided with benefits that others are not. This means that the valence should be equal to the input (Hartel and Fujimoto, 2010). According to this theory when the employees compare their pay to the pay of others holding the same position in the industry, the employees perceive inequality and tend to decrease either their input or their output. If the employees perceive equality, the employee continues with his performance and will be motivated. This theory explains that employees should be provided with enough opportunities to enhance their job satisfaction and motivation level (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005). Another theory of human resource management by Herzberg focuses on two factors; hygiene and motivation. This theory is also applicable to OPS as the employee’s motivating factors and de-motivating factors play a great role in employee’s job satisfaction (Pilbeam and Corbridge, 2010). The hygiene factor shows the employee’s dissatisfaction level whereas the motivation factor indicates the motivation level of the employees. Hygiene indicates the factors that increases and decreases the employee’s dissatisfaction level but doesn’t motivate the employees to change their behavior and performance. On the other hand, motivation factor indicates the reasons for job satisfaction. The special feature regarding this theory is whatever happens hygiene factor cannot motivate the employees but it can only increase or decrease the de-motivation factor whereas the motivation factor can only increase or decrease the employee’s job satisfaction level but cannot de-motivate the employee (Price, 2007). According to this theory, for enhancing the performance of employee the organization must first eliminate all those elements that create job dissatisfaction. This means that the hygiene factor must be eliminated or corrected. These factors may include organization’s obsolete policies and regulations, job security, competitive salary etc. By eliminating the job dissatisfaction factors the employee now must be provided with elements to enhance the motivation and job satisfaction. The elements that are included in job satisfaction are opportunities for growth, compensation based on performance, delegating authority, internal promotions and offering training and development opportunities to the employees (Purcell and Hutchinson, 2007). The next theory that emphasizes motivation of human resource is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. In this theory the needs of the human resource are classified in different hierarchical levels which could motivate the employees to change their behavior towards their work and organization. The needs of the human resource could be categorized in 5 different levels; physiological, security, social, self-esteem and self-actualization (Redman and Wilkinson, 2009). The first category of physiological needs includes the basic needs or could be said as biological needs. These are the most important need for human resource as these needs includes shelter, food, water etc. These needs help the employees to feel satisfied and motivated. The second category of needs depends on the job security and safety. This need comes into existence only if the psychological needs are met. This need focuses on providing safe and secure working environment as well as protection from unemployment and loss of job. The third category of need in Maslow’s hierarchy is social needs. This need emphasize on creating relationship to avoid loneliness and to be a part of the group. Being a part of the group increases the performance and motivation of the employees due to which the productivity also increases. Fourth category in this hierarchy is based on self-esteem; this need focuses on respect, confidence, competence, achievement and status. This need helps the human resource to improve the performance to reach this level. This is the last level which is a bit different from other levels. This need focuses on the growth and continuous improvement; this might also include challenging task and opportunities for success (Secord, 2003). Above mentioned three theories focuses highly on the motivation of the human resource (i.e. employees) by meeting the needs of the employees and by eradicating all those factors and elements that de-motivate or dissatisfy the employee regarding their job or organization. The OPS is grasping the opportunity to be the best in human resource management and to do so it must eliminate all the factors that could disrupt its growth. The report of the OPS about human resource management and the strategy to shift towards strategic human resource management is based on five trends in HR. Here, the researcher has made an attempt to research these trends in the light of latest research studies: Trend 1: Shift to Strategic HR As people are the key competitive advantage of any industry, it has been realized that instead of focusing on other functions, the organization must consider HR to accomplish strategic goals and objectives (Salaman, Storey, and Billsberry, 2005). The trends related to shift in strategic HR includes aligning human resource to business strategies in order to increase the effectiveness and competitiveness of the organization. With HR’s vital role in the changing environment, organizations are able to retain their employees by providing them with an opportunity of involvement in decision making (Vosburgh, 2007). By doing so, the organization not only boost the morale of the employees but also enhance the chances of success for the organization (Fulmer and Genson, 2006). It aims to be proactive rather than to be reactive and HR managers are now taking decisions based on their intuition and experience to create a working environment for the employees to do things right the first time (Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005). Trend 2: Measuring and Managing HRM In earlier years only HR scorecard was used to measure the effectiveness of an organization. This trend has greatly changed because of the growing importance of HR in organization (Ulrich and Smallwood, 2005). To measure and manage the HR, scorecard is still used along with many other measurement tools. These measurement approaches includes “HR best-practice index” focuses on connecting the HR practices with financial outcomes, “causal chain” focuses on cause and effect relationship to enhance the organization’s chances to success, “Efficiency of HRM operation” this approach focuses on cost-per hire and training cost to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of organizations (Flamholtz, Bullen, and Hua, 2002). HRM management could also be measured by workforce engagement, such as absenteeism rate, turnover rate, output quality and job-satisfaction. These all factors could also be used for analyzing and measuring the HRM (Toulson and Dewe, 2004). Trend 3: Influence of Technology in HRM Technology has greatly influenced HRM and plays a vital role in the success of an organization. Due to technology, HRM has shifted from people-approach to knowledge based approach. It has enhanced the responsibilities and functions of HRM which includes many functions but some of the major functions are selection, training, recruitment and development of employees. The implementation of Database Management System (DBMS) and Human Resource Information System (HRIS) has widened the HR field which has eventually increased the efficiency of organizations. The influence of technology is just not limited to the efficiency of the organization but has also reduced the administrative cost and increased the productivity and response time to great extent (Chaudhuri, 2009). By implementing technology in the HR field, the department is able to attract and recruit potential employees effectively by the use of E-HR. Technology has supported HRM for over a decade to become smarter day by day. Technology has influenced HR to introduce new concepts such as ESS (Employee Self-Service), CPM (Computerized Performance Monitoring), e-learning etc (Ferreira and Otley, 2009). Trend 4: Outsourcing Outsourcing is one of the most emerging trends in today’s world. It not only enhances the opportunities but reduces the challenges to great extent for an organization. In earlier years, organization was used to outsource in order to reduce its cost and to increase its benefits but the trend have shifted to hire virtual teams from all around the world. This has provided the organization with diverse workforce to enhance their business and to gain competitive advantage over others in the industry (Grimshaw and Miozzo, 2009). In earlier decades only customer service was being outsourced by the companies. This outsourcing has been greatly changed as companies today are outsourcing most of their functions to reduce the cost and to enhance their business outcomes. Even IT (information technology) is being outsourced to reduce the risk and burden of setting whole infrastructure for the IT department (Sako, 2006). Trend 5: HR as a Profession Human resource was given no attention and was unheard in earlier decades. But after 30 years it has gained its importance that it deserved. It has evolved from just a mere administrative function to strategic department. Human resource has come to be known as the most influential profession in today’s emerging world. Many leading colleges and universities are now providing bachelor and master’s degree in human resource and due to its flexibility it has many career paths within it (Stephens, 2010). Due to HR’s importance, it is considered as the heart of business and many individuals are taking up HR as a profession to meet the unending needs of these businesses. This profession helps to get the best from people for the organization to be successful; this trait has not only encouraged the organizations but also individuals to choose HR as their profession (Tobey and Benson, 2009). 3. ANALYSIS The goals of the OPS HRM were to shift the human resources to strategic management. This strategy was focused to increase the productivity and performance of the employees and to shape employees behavior according to the needs and requirement (Belcourt, 2003). The key to success of Strategic HR is dependent on the tracking of result and performance of the employees, to do so the HRM not only focuses on a single theory but introduced multiple theories at the same time. These theories include the Equity theory, Herzberg’s two factor theory and Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory. The strategic HRM focuses on outsourcing as it reduces the cost to a great extent and improves the productivity of the employees. By outsourcing many of the organization believed that their cost was reduced by 0-40% and this cost could be redirected to those initiatives that could enhance the organization’s growth rate (Grimshaw and Miozzo, 2009). The equity method that the OPS HRM focused was to provide fair and equal opportunities to its employees to pursue excellence. This would reduce the risk of loss and liabilities for the organization and would reduce the hurdles for the organization to reach its goals and objectives. For such reasons the OPS initiated programs for internship so that the youth and other graduates searching for jobs. This opportunity would focus on attraction and retention of the employees that the organization believes to improves its performance. This issue of attraction and retention is considered as key OPS workforce issue. The barrier for attraction in PS are the low compensation plans, the perception of the government related job and the speed of decision making. These all mix up and create barriers for the public service to attract employees. On the other hand, the issues related to the retention are low which could be indicated by turnover rate of 3 percent only (Belcourt, 2003). The OPS has also adopted strategies to enhance and encourage the employees to reduce their dissatisfaction regarding their job and to increase their motivation level. This could be evaluated by “two factor theory”. This theory focuses on the reduction of the dissatisfaction level and to enhance the motivation level regarding the job and the OPS took certain steps to renew some strategies that would do so. Some of the factors that would enhance the satisfaction of employees include succession management where the organization develops future leaders, providing challenging task to the employees, recognition and career planning. This factor not only increases the motivation level of the employees but also enhances the responsibilities of the employees which are considered as an opportunity by the employees. Increase in commitment level of the employees is also seen by job enrichment and job enlargement. On the other hand, the hygiene factor includes orientation, mentoring, positive work environment, compensation and benefits and job security (retention). This shows that Ontario has done considerably well for the development of the public services and human resource management. By providing sufficient training and development programs for the employees and commitment to invest in the success of employees is the key factor of OPS success. Being the largest employer in Canada, OPS motivate and invest in the employees to be the best so that the goals and strategic mission could be achieved. By Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory we could analyze that OPS motivated the employees by fulfilling their needs which ultimately supports the organization to accomplish their goals and objectives. The employees are provided with jobs in the public services and provide retention plans for the employees due to which the employee’s safety and security needs are fulfilled. In addition to this, OPS focuses on enhancement of communication and collaboration among the employees due to which employees create a sense of belonging and the isolated feeling of the employees are eliminated which were the key cause of reduction in employees motivation. Furthermore, OPS is committed to invest in the training and development of employees which increases the employee’s loyalty and satisfaction regarding the job. This training and development enhances the growth and respect factor due to which the employees are more inclined to work at the optimum level. The continuous training and succession management fulfills the needs of the employees and by this ends the needs of the employees. By this analysis we can say this that technology changed the face of the organization and its performance. The work that was being done manually in the organization was consuming a lot of human resource time and was extremely expensive but merging information technology and human resource provided the organization with a chance to eliminate the expensive traditions. The organization was now provided with a management system; HRIS, which could handle all the information quickly and inexpensively. By such system the organization had a chance to lower administrative cost, increase its productivity and improve decision making. The selection and recruitment time was also reduced to an extent as all the selection and recruitment tasks of HR were done through the use of technology. There are also some problems associated with the change in HR practices that the OPS had to face. Mentoring was one of such problems. Mentoring is a technique to develop HR talent but due to the mentor’s lack of knowledge regarding the best HR practices, the technique was ineffective and failed to train the employees. Another problem was lack of technical talent. Due to the lack of availability of technical talent the organization had to face problems as implementing technology requires professional IT staff members that are well aware of the recent trend in information technology. Without such staff the implementation of technology is impossible. Due to the emerging concept the solutions available for the OPS are limited as well as the methodology. The adoption of new methods and concepts are limited due to which the applicability in the OPS has been reduced. 4. CONCLUSION It could be concluded that OPS was successful in the implementation and change of HRM from traditional to strategic human resource. Human resource being the most important function for the success of organizations was focused by the OPS to achieve long-term goals and objectives. The shift from traditional to strategic HR was successful by introducing the technology which reduced the efforts and time consumption in the organizations. OPS emphasized on the quality of human resource rather than the quantity of employees. This shows a great reduction in the number of employees in the public service. This measure enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness of the human resource. The efficiency not only reduced the training cost but also increased the number of training of employees in a day.’ Employees being the greatest resource of OPS, it had been given a special place in the public services. The employees are trained and developed to create competencies that would be helpful for the organizations in the future. To do so a strategic framework for was developed so that the future challenges could be tackled in the future. This strategic framework laid great emphasis on the future workforce as without this framework the employees might lack the necessary skills, knowledge and competencies. By evaluating the different motivational strategies; Herzberg’s two factors, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Equity theory one can analyze the development made by the OPS to eradicate all the factors and elements that reduces the satisfaction and motivation level of employees. By doing so OPS was successful in creation of human resource management without flaws. These practices have direct impact on the organization and its performance. The trends identified by the OPS are still applicable and the strategies adopted by the institution are effective and efficient in this regard. References Armstrong, M. (2009) Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 11th edition. London: Kogan Page. Belcourt, M. (2003). Ontario Public Service: Human Resource Management. 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