Contribution of High Performance Working towards Greater Skills Utilisation in the UK Organisations - Term Paper Example

?Introduction: Human resource is one of the most important assets of the organisation. With the passage of time the importance of human resource haveincreased and organisations are including human resource in the process of formulating strategy. It is important to acknowledge the role of human resource as the strategic partner in the organisation. This in turn allows the organisation to create competitive edge in the market on the basis of highly trained and talented employees and staff. Despite of all this importance and significance of human resource in the organisation, there have been serious issue regarding the skill utilisation of the employees. The organisations are not able to fully utilised the potential and skills of the employees. Also, most of the employees are working in the position which are not compatible with their skills. All these factors have negative impact not only employees but also on organisation and in turn on whole economy. In this report an attempt has been made to analyse the extent to which high performance working in organisations can contribute towards greater skills utilisations with reference to the organisations in United Kingdom. The topic under discussion requires an organisation to develop a stimulating environment that harnesses its employee’s true working potential. By creating an environment that empowers an employee to use his skills to their maximum capacity would not only benefit the organisation (in terms of growth) but also the economy as a whole. When developing a workforce with variety of skill sets, it is of utmost importance to look at the broader picture (Dessler and Varkkey, 2009). In this broader picture the participants of the work force and the participating organisations are not the central figures. It is the economy of the country that is the central figure. Whenever, there is a demand for highly skilled workforce in the economy there arises a need to provide constant replenishment of workforce with new package of skills. When this happens the economy starts to move towards growth and prosperity. Therefore, in order to help the economy to grow and more importantly for its own growth an organisation should make endeavour that allows it to utilise its employees’ true working potential. An organisation can achieve this objective by crafting a High- Performance Work System. High-Performance Work System: A High- Performance Work System is an integrated set of human resource management policies and practices that together produces superior employee performance. Although there are no definite parameters or features of this kind of systems, but experts do believe that this kind of a system should comprise of the certain practices like: Employees Security, which entails job security and safety from workplace hazards and unjust employer treatment, selective hiring which involves the process of hiring individuals who fit with the work description, personality traits and organisational mission, extensive training which entails administering job specific training along with skill enhancing drills, self managed teams and decentralized decision making which in turn supports the delegation of work and authority, reduced status difference between managers and workers, information sharing i.e. Passing on the information that will help the person performing the task, contingent rewards (pay for performance) this enables the organisation to link reward with a performance goal, inspirational motivation through transformational leaders i.e. mentoring and supervision, measurement of management practices i.e. develop a departmental level Scorecard to assess performance, and emphasis on high-quality work (Wood and Wall, 2007). With the help of high performance work system an organisation can achieve is several benefits and advantages. The organisation will be able to get more qualified applicants per position, there will be more employees selected based on validated selection tests, there will be more hours of training for new employees, employees will receive regular performance appraisal, there will be fewer occupational injuries, and the financial and annual statements will look better (BIS, 2010). It is essential to implement high performance working practices in order to overcome the gap between the skills available and skills required. As, this gap in the skills is leading to decreasing the overall productivity of the employees and in turn negatively affecting the performance of the organisation. Apart from this, these skill gaps also have negative impact on the overall national and economic performance. The employees who are underutilised or are forced to perform tasks which are not related to their skills, are de-motivated and discouraged which not only decrease the job satisfaction but also decrease the output of the employees. Also, the bad jobs and underutilisation do not provide the employees with the opportunity to develop and nourish the skills and talents. All of these factors have negative implications on organisation, individuals, nation, and society. Hence, the leadership and management of all organisations should make sure to implement high performance working practices in order to increase the overall productivity and fully utilise the potential of the employees in right direction and domain (BIS, 2010). In order to achieve the most efficient and effective high performance work system a human resource manager should look at his function in a strategic way. He should therefore develop a practical way to convert or translate company’s strategy into required employees competencies and behaviour. And inculcate these required employee competencies and behaviour into specific human resource policies and practices (Guest, 1997). The figure given below will summarize things more clearly: (Adapted from: Guest, 1997) In order for an organisation to achieve successfully the above mentioned road map, it has to start linking HRM practices with HRM outcomes: Selection Socializing Training and Development Quality Improvement Programs Job Security Individualized Reward System Internal Promotions Team Work Communication Employee Involvement Job Design Flexible Job Description (Guest, 1997) This need of creating a high performance working is an imperative for an organisation, operating in this highly competitive and volatile business environment. Modern management requires an organisation to build its working environment around high employee involvement and for that an organisation must make use of the concept of job enrichment. The concept should be employed at all levels of the organisation and therefore it is important to look in to this concept. According to this concept a business manager should delegate responsibly to its lower-level employees. This main aim behind this practice is to make employees responsible for their job and allow them to take decision regarding their job, the basic assumption behind this is that an employee when made responsible for is job finds himself more connected with the business. Employees feel as if his work is contributing in some way to the organisation success and growth. When an employee’s starts find ownership in his work he will make conscious effort to raise the standard of his work. Not only should the earlier discussed steps be taken but also an employee should be able have his concerns passed onto to those who are in a position to bring about the desired action. This fact entails some sort of representation from the employees’ side in the top management of the organisation (Burgoyne, 2006). Thus, it is clear the job enrichment deals with giving autonomy to an employee’s whereas employee representation enables an employee to exert influence over the issues that go beyond the narrow requirement of the task performed by the employee (Keep and Mayhew, 2010). Delegating responsibility to the lower level also finds its utility when it comes to grooming entry level employees. Many proponent of management considers this as a natural transition, when senior individuals move up the chain of command while the junior individual are provided the opportunity to mature themselves and develop their skills before moving onto pivotal positions. This also provide breathing space into the economy, which has the depth in it to absorb upcoming talent, while at the same time catering to the needs of the near retiring class. This also provides the means to fresh talent to express themselves in the practical setting, and come up with new and vibrant idea. When this happens the economy starts the boom as the economy has in it new and promising opportunities. This is the scenarios which attract foreign investors who are always on the lookout for worth pursuing opportunities (Keep, Mayhew and Payne, 2006). It is also important for an organisation to satisfy the needs of high calibre staff. The organisation needs to create challenging tasks that would motivate such individuals to put in extra effort and come up with something new. Therefore, it is imperative on the part of the organisation to quit stalling the idea of going global. When an organisation has completely served its domestic market and there would be no stimulation in demand no matter what the organisation does, so it is wise that the organisation shift its focus from the domestic market to foreign market. These markets would bring with them new challenges that would require a shift in the way of thinking. These markets would require strategies that have not been tested, ways of operating that are new, and an environment that is totally alien to the company personals. All this would provide a thriving ground to high calibre individuals, who would relish the novelty of the challenge (Hughes, 2008). Thereby, if an organisation is able to achieve all these objectives than there is no stopping it from becoming a high performance work organisation, an organisation that provide its employees with the knowledge, skill, incentive and responsibility to make decisions which are necessary to innovate, improve and respond rapidly to the changing environment (Godard, 2004). Barriers to the Development of High performance Workplace: Although high performance work system and workplace is beneficial for the employees, organisations, and whole society but there are several barriers and limitations which hinders the process of development of high performance workplace. Approximately 80% of the British Workforce finds any real motivation in their work, making the disengaged and less committed (as reported in The Gallup Organisation's Employee Engagement Index survey, Flade, 2003). This fact alone cost the British economy around $64.8 billion dollars, the cost occurs due to low employee retention, high absentee levels, and low productivity. Workers feel their supervisors are unjust with them, rather than focusing on their strengths their weakness is targeted. Their job description is unclear and the work they are made to do is not enriching. Workers also complain about having no say in the organisational decision making. It is also found that this feeling of disengagement in most prevalent among senior company employees. So this results in the loss on investment, made on the development of this cohort of company employees’ (Lloyd and Payne, 2002). The most troubling of all is the fact that employees are becoming callous to the attempts made to motivate them. These attempts include: Innovative workspaces, rousing corporate mission statements, and rising pay levels. Other then these problems, United Kingdom in order to put a throttle on the huge influx on skilled immigrants have made a very stringent visa policy that is aimed at cutting down the number of foreign worker in the labour force of United Kingdom. This policy may back fore and might result in a gap being created between fresh talents needed by the industry to compensate the number of workers retiring from the work force (Lloyd and Payne, 2002). Serious policy assessment is required because foreign students formed a huge chunk in the University classes. Absence of vocational training centres in United Kingdom is also leading to the stagnation of skills in the upcoming cohort (Lloyd and Payne, 2002). Conclusion: Accordingly, what is required in the situation of United Kingdom is a visionary style of management, encompassing all the concepts, dimensions and ideas discussed above. This management should have some priorities in its working. These priorities should be: goal clarification, employee ownership, caring for employee concerns, employee recognition, appropriate feedback, employee contribution and employees stop being considered as a means to an end. Elaborating the last point father, many organisations consider their relationship with their employees as unimportant as long as they are achieving their financial objectives. When this sort of mentality persists in an organisation where little effort in made to engage employees than obviously an environment that depletes the motivation of the employee would be given birth to. And in this sort of environment neither the employee is willing to exert extra effort and bring to use his true capacity nor is the organisation able to survive for a long period of time, as the organisation’s most valuable asset is stagnating due to underutilisation of its true potential. List of References BIS (2010). Skills for Sustainable Growth: Strategy Document. London: DBIS Burgoyne, J(2006) .‘Management Capability and Company Performance’ In Porter, S and Campbell, M (2006). Skills and Economic Performance London: Sector Skills Development Agency pp 210 – 224 Dessler, G., and Varkkey, B. (2009). Human Resource Management. UK: Pearson Education. Flade, P. (2003). ‘Great Britain’s Workforce Lacks Inspiration.’ Gallup Management Journal. Available from [Accessed 28 March 2012] Godard, J. (2004). ‘A critical assessment of the high performance paradigm’, British Journal of Industrial Relations vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 249-378 Guest, D. (1997). ‘Human resource management and performance: a review and research agenda.’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 263-276 Hughes, J. (2008). ‘The high performance paradigm: a review and evaluation’, Learning as Work Research Paper No. 16. Cardiff: Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Keep, E., and Mayhew, K. (2010). ‘Moving beyond skills as a social and economic panacea’, Work, Employment and Society 24(3): 565-577 Keep, E., Mayhew, K., and Payne, J. (2006). ‘From skills revolution to productivity miracle – not as easy as it sounds?’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 539–559 Lloyd, C., and Payne, J. (2002). ‘On “the political economy of skill”: assessing the possibilities for a viable high skills project in the UK’, New Political Economy, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 367-395 Wood, S., and Wall, T. (2007). ‘Work enrichment and employee voice in human resource management – performance studies.’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 1335-1372. Read More