Human Resource Management in Innovation (New Zealand) - Term Paper Example

?Running head: Human Resource Management in Innovation Human Resource Management in Innovation Insert Insert Insert Name 12 December 2011 Human Resource Management in Innovation Introduction The company has been experiencing internal staff attrition, which heightened to 10% in the past 12 months and therefore calling for innovations in human resource management. Exit interviews with employees reveal that these attrition rates are a result of low wages, lack of career development opportunities, outdated company image and recruitment processes. The reasons therefore results in employee dissatisfaction being the main reason for increasing staff attrition rates in New Zealand employment market. However, maintaining full employee satisfaction is difficult considering economic uncertainties, budgetary constrains, and layoffs facing organizations. Non-monetary human resource initiatives in this case may come in handy in increasing employee satisfaction and consequently reducing employee turnover rates (Grobler and Warnich, 2005, p.127). Human Resource Recommendations The changing dynamics in recruitment processes in the New Zealand employment market calls for new approaches and initiatives to reduce staff attrition rates and improve the company’s general performance. Considering that exit of every key employee costs the company up to $1200 NZD, the organization needs to focus on hiring the best staff. The human resource would rather leave a vacancy open than recruit an unfit employee and even spend more time searching for high-caliber employees. Among the acquired employees, the organization also needs to focus on identifying and retaining the talented and outstanding employees, considering that these employees are in high demand by competitors. This is to ensure that employees who make real difference with regards to performance of the organization are retained (Taylor and Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2002, p.11). The human resource also needs to redesign the orientation program for new staff and ensure recruitment of right persons with the right attitudes and expectations. This is in consideration of the fact that many employees have left due to their belief that the company presented unprofessional old-fashioned image. Many organizations face highest staff attrition rates within the first few months after recruitment. Employees’ first experience with organizations should be positive to enable quick assimilation into the organization and to make them feel proud to have been recruited. First impression transforms to staff morale, which is a major factor that contributes high to staff turnover rates (Bittel and Newstrom, 1992, p.181). The company should seek to improve wages and benefits to employees considering that high rates of staff attrition have resulted from low wages and general benefits to employees. The company needs to allocate more funds to match wages to employees and benefits with market rates. Market-based compensation aspects are tied to the recommendations that, instead of making compensation comparisons within the industry alone, the human resources should undertake comparisons with specific competitor markets such as Australia, which absorbs approximately 3500 employees from the New Zealand employment market every month. Skills are not only transferable in industries but also across industries and markets and industries. Compensation and equity of a company needs to be comparable with competitor market rates since unreasonable negative deviation from markets rates would drive away existing employees. Among compensation issues, equity is a vital issue that needs to be balanced with regards to long existing staff and currently hired staff. Long existing staff have the propensity of leaving employment incase incoming staff are paid more proportionally. In addition to market rates compensation and equity, incentives plan such as milestone bonuses and performance awards provide employees with something to anticipate and work hard for. Consequently, compensation should be based on contribution and skills as opposed to position-based compensation strategies. Employee compensation equity seems to be compromised by defined responsibility based compensation on given positions, while compensation plans based on skills and contributions to the organization bring about equality a satisfaction among most employees. Through this, employees will strive to learn more and thereby contributing more to the success of the organization, to increase their value in the organization, rather than searching for better prospects in overseas employment markets. Nevertheless, the company should seek to shift from position centric compensation strategies to employee contribution centric compensation. Human resource approaches recommendable involve both recruitment and retention program strategies. More so, the responsibility of human resource management should be a shared responsibility, since all staff participants play a vital and supportive role in recruiting and retaining other staff. All participants in general influence a particular staff’s decision to stay or leave employment (American Institute of Architects, 2011). Collective participation is vital for creating early warning detection systems through other staff informing the human resource officials with regards planned and foreseen resignations. This will offer an opportunity to efforts of preventing the departure and addressing the relevant issues. Prevention can also be done through identification of dissatisfaction triggers such as pregnancy, marriage, and divorce. There is also need for flexible work schedules tailored for individual qualifications of employees, considering that a one-size-fits-all schedule has lost its effectiveness in the current employment market. Indeed, compressed work schedule would come in handy in promoting schedule flexibility with particular departments (International Monetary Fund, 2001, p.86). Most staff migrated because of being assigned duties that they were not initially recruited and qualified for. Personal demands vary from one employee to another with regards to personal mobility, job security needs, demographic factors, the local labor market, and general economic conditions and their impact to individuals. However, mobility factors are not considered as problematic to staff turnover, since they contribute to development of skills and availability of external labor (Green, 2004, p.63). Human Resource Initiatives In general, recruitment programs must put into consideration a number of key elements that encompass market-based compensation, employee benefits, training and career development, good working environment, creative recruiting, and marketing of the company to reflect a professional image. Recognition and acknowledgment programs ensure human resource management focuses more attention on the human aspect of the employees, which can be brought forward through group award ceremonies, employee of the year recognition, dinners, and even letters from top management to the organization. Employee benefits may also include health benefits, pension plans, and referral bonuses. The recruitment company needs to market the organization through developing marketing campaigns and brochures that highlight the merits of working for the organization, although this should not compromise informing prospectors of genuine job expectations and compensation scales. Innovative human resource practices involve creative recruiting activities that incorporate information communication technology and innovative recruitment approaches such as vocational training, internship programs, job fairs, and retiree initiatives. This would prevent staff turnover that resulted from the use of outdated recruitment processes that do not capture the attention of serious job seekers. In complementation to the relevant recruitment approaches, the human resources should seek to focus on employee retention strategies. Employee retention aspects are tied to interpersonal environmental aspects such as respect, employee value, employee commitment, and sense of belonging among other critical factors such as clear job expectations and proper management of the human resource. It is clear that increase from 5.5 and 6% to 10% employees turnover necessitates the company to not only review it recruitment process but also staff retention. Attempts to benchmark the 10% attrition rates with those of other competing employee markets and industry participants indicate the need for employee retention. From this, the company has been able to gauge its performance effects with respect to staff turnover (Cascio and Boudreau, 2010, p.88). Perceived glass ceiling and lack of opportunities within the company to progress to specific areas of expertise has contributed largely to exit of employees from the company. Lack of opportunities for professional development with clearly defined career paths for employees largely contributes to dissatisfaction of the employees. Career development among other strategies such as application of skilled management, leadership and vision, organization wide decision making and favorable working conditions can collectively work towards significantly reducing staff attrition rates (Liebert, 2008, p. 26-30). The company should put in place the career development programs and undertake clear definition of career paths. Provision of career development strategies will provide employees with opportunities of learning new skills and generally advancing their careers. The HR needs to focus its efforts on developing a professional and career development program by allocating funds to departments and divisions of an organization for program implementation. Implementation of the programs will involve the processes of clearly defining career paths in each department. Career path definition will allow employees to better understand their careers with regards to job specifications in the organizations, and consequently, providing them with opportunities to advance professionally within defined career objectives. The organizations must also ensure it incorporates a highly trained team of managers who will fine-tune organizational vision, while motivating employees to work towards making the company’s vision a reality. The management training strategies can be effectively incorporated in the career development program. Overall Time Line for Implementation 4th December Identification of outstanding employees. 5th December Training and development initiative introduction 6th December Salary Increment end equity consideration for existing and new employees. 7th December Introduction of Compressed work schedules 8th December Introduction of the ITC system and marketing of the company’s image. Conclusion The company’s successful and efficient human resource management is not only critical for the positive reduction in the increasing staff attrition rates, but also the general performance and profitability of an organization. The company’s profitability is dependent on turn over costs that range from employee replacement costs to lost skills and time used by existing workers in training new employees and depressed productivity during new employee orientation. Currently, exit of one key employee cost the company up to $1200 NZD thus significantly hampering profitability. References American Institute of Architects. (2011). The Architect’s Handbook of Professional Studies. NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Bittel, L.R., & Newstrom, J.W. (1992). What Every Supervisor Should Know. NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. Cascio, W.F., & Boudreau J.W. (2010). Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives. NY: FT Press. Green, N.D. (2004). Human Resource Management: International Prospective in Hospitality and Tourism. OH: Cengage Learning EMEA. Grobler, P.A., & Warnich, S. (2005). Human Resource Management in South Africa. OH: Cengage Learning EMEA. International Monetary Fund. Annual Report. (2001). International Monetary Fund. Liebert, D. (2008). Staffing Analysis Workbook for Jails. NY: DIANE Publishing. Taylor, S., & Chartered Institute of Personnel, and Development. (2002). The Employee Retention Handbook .NY: CIPD Publishing. Read More