Human Resource Management Function and Strategy in Loxley Swimming Pool and Loxley Tennis Club - Case Study Example

Running head: HRM Human Resource Management Assignment ___________ ________________________ ________________ Human Resource Management Assignment Introduction Organizations work with several resources. These include capital, physical equipment, land and buildings and people. People are its most important resource. In fact organizations are also generically selling their goods or services to another set of people i.e. the customers. For any commercial organization it is then a people versus people equation for its survival. Unlike other resources which an organization deploys people or its staff are live resources that think, have feelings, aspirations, motives and emotions which get nurtured, developed ,frustrated or stunted every now and then. No human would be willing to work with frustrated aspirations or stunted and suppressed feelings. Thus it becomes incumbent on an organization to nurture and develop the feelings, aspirations, emotions of its employees. This is the traditional function of the human resource management function in any organization. Present day literature, however lays more emphasis on strategic human resource management wherein the human resource management function is aligned in such a manner that fulfilling human resource management function automatically ensures reaching strategic objectives of the organization. In short the human resource management function is woven with in the overall strategy of the organization. Strategic approach to human resource management implies putting in place a set of internally consistent policies and practices that ensure that organization's human capital (skills, combined knowledge of employees and abilities) contributes to organizations strategic objectives. Whereas a bare approach to Human resources management is a self explained concept without its strategic orientation. It refers to all those activities that are undertaken consciously or unconsciously, internally or externally to an organization whereby human resources of the organization are developed and utilized in a manner to maximize achievement of organizational goals. One important precept of entire human resources' management exercise is the recognition of the fact that the most valuable resource for any organization is its human factor; it is the only live factor and thus the only truly mouldable factor. Therefore human resource management (HRM) is a term used to represent that part of an organization's activities concerned with the recruitment, development and management of its employees (Wood & Wall, 2002). This paper examines the case study of an organization where the human resources management function has been in disarray and the same has been manifested in the form of several outcomes like employees' dissatisfaction or lack of motivation, desire to change jobs, feeling of discrimination, poor and anomalous pay structure, poor performance etc; all of which has resulted in the organization presenting itself for a complete overhaul of its human resource management function. The paper would begin by describing in short the important case facts which will be followed by corrective suggestions as drawn from literature concepts and review. The Case Facts Loxley Swimming Pool and Loxley Tennis Club are the two leisure facilities that have recently been privatized and have moved from the control of the Loxley District Council to a company called Happy Leisure Company. This by itself is a situation which is a change management situation. Already there are employees who are not happy with the change to such an extent that they wish to remain redundant under the new dispensation. Other set of employees were so unhappy with the change that they decided to leave their jobs. Thus presenting the new owner with an employee turnover that may even affect essential staffing. District council control was characterized by poor and inadequate funding and separation of the organization of the swimming and tennis facilities. The new private sector owner is contemplating a centralized leisure offering by combining the two facilities. In the public sector control of the district council the two facilities were run independent of each other and their human resource management practices were also distinct. For instance the terms of appointment and pay scales of the employees were different and distinct even though they were doing about the same line jobs in the two set ups.The employees have no recourse to legitimate and recognized unions who could ask for inking equal pay and equal work contracts as no such recognized union exist. Even the work related perks and facilities like entitlement to holidays, sickness leaves and breaks during day varied across the two facilities. The remaining employees are already demoralized sufficiently and appear to be quite demotivated.Desertion of staff and understaffed status of the two facilities appear to have increased the work load, particularly on the leisure assistants under the tennis facility. This has worked to increase the stress of leisure assistants and apparently resulted in poor quality of service rendered to the clients resulting in spate of client complaints. Leisure staff also complains that there are restrictions on their upgrading their skills with in the organization. Due to these job conditions at least 5 more of leisure staff are looking for alternative assignments. However these real issues and travails of the leisure assistants are not appreciated by the two duty managers who basically have fallen to believe that leisure assistants lack commitment to work and need stricter disciplining.Encousre this difference of opinions and view points between the line staff and duty mangers there have been situations of strained relations .The entire set up lacks team spirit and is entirely demotivated.The newly hired human resource manager ahs a challenging assignment in hand with the immediate objectives of pulling together the team, motivating them, stopping the exodus of employees, improving work conditions so that strategic objective of the organization i.e. leisure seeking client's satisfaction is ensured in terms of minimal or nil complaints. Most importantly the major communication links in the organization seems to be broken or snapped up. In fact the case study reports that the newly hired chief executive officer was not able to find an occasion to communicate with all employees at one place. This is the most important aspect which requires the immediate attention of the new human resource manager. The Problem Areas and their solutions The case study reveals several problem areas all owing their origin to the defective human resource practices undertaken by the earlier management which appears to have got institutionalized .Any change management exercise is to be done with caution as it involves strategic reorientation. In this case two distinct facilities are sought to be combined as one single leisure facility. In fact in strategic management literature there is one preferred approach to strategy making .It is called the transformational approach and it comprises in the creation and inspirational articulation of a compelling vision and a clear set of organizational goals or missions, which give meaning to all sets of activities throughout an organization. A substantial portion of a transformational strategy maker's emphasis may be on transcending self-interests in an ideological framework (Chaffee, 1985; Mintzberg & Waters, 1985) to get employees to ingrain and pursue organizational goals (Bass, 1990). The use of symbols and metaphors also may be central to this process (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). The chief activity of top management in the transformational process is to motivate and inspire organizational members (Nonaka, 1988) toward organizational goal attainment. Their main attention is on bringing workers together for the common purposes at hand (Grandori, 1984; Mintzberg, 1987) and developing and maintaining continued efforts toward the shared values (Bourgeois & Brodwin, 1984) and emotionally appealing corporate vision. An identification of the staff with the vision of a combined facility that offers best leisure offering to customers is essential if Happy Leisure is to move forward as a team. This inspiration and vision identification on the part of staff can come about, however, only when they do not feel threatened and discriminated. In fact some the factors which will be classified as lower order needs in Maslow's need hierarchy seem to perturbing and affecting the motivation of the employees . Motivation theories provide ready and general constructs to analyze the behavior of human resources at work place. Using these constructs it is possible to analyze and reduce employee dissonance, adverse work relations and blurring of organizational objectives so as to target improved work environment. Thus this analysis can distinctly exhibit the possible solutions to motivational problems at work place. A person's motivation, job satisfaction and performance will be determined by the strength of his/her needs and expectations and the extent to which they are fulfilled. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there are five categories of needs viz. (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) social, (4) esteem, and (5) self-actualization. They form a pyramid structure with the lowest and broadest physiological need at the base. Pyramid structure also illustrates the fact that breadth of needs, as we graduate up the pyramid, gets reduced indicating that the higher order needs get finely tuned and well defined and perhaps are fewer in number as well. In order to have fully satiated and motivated workers, each lower level needs to be satisfied before one can graduate to higher level needs. Maslow made a complementary hypothesis that physiological, safety, social, and esteem needs on satisfaction, ceased to motivate, while the self-actualization needs motivated an individual more and more as they got satisfied. Maslow's premise was that it is the growth choice that propels any individual toward self-actualization - that of individual growth or "filling one's potential."(Maslow, 1954).A worker wise need analysis following Maslow's construct verbatim is a tough task and may even result in manager forgetting main work related goals. However s discerning manager would do well to keep the construct in mind and attain its full understanding and approach all problematic situations with the requisite empathy that this constructs help attain. People are individuals and it is so arduous to meet everyone's needs at their required level. Moreover quite a few of such needs may be sourced outside the work place. Herzberg utilized Maslow's ideas as a foundation to build his own motivation-hygiene theory. According to him the hygiene elements relate to low level needs (physiological, safety, and social). For an individual, hygiene conditions include company policy and administration, control and supervision, relationships with peers and supervisors, work conditions, salary, status, and security (Markiewicz, 2002). Inadequate presence of hygiene factors can cause dissatisfaction or lack of motivation .Such hygiene factors account for 69% of the total factors which cause employee dissatisfaction or lack of motivation. The motivation conditions, which include achievement, the job itself, recognition, responsibilities, and personal growth, accounted for 81% of the factors which contributed to job satisfaction. The hygiene conditions were stated to be extrinsic factors while the motivation conditions were reckoned as intrinsic factors, and the only available method to sustain motivation toward organizational goals was through the achievement of intrinsic outcomes. . In order to do this the managerial layer has to be observant, patient and in full empathy with the workers. As Stolovitch and Keeps state," Another problem common to most work settings is the strong inclination of managers to avoid deep analysis of performance problems and to solve shallowly analyzed problems with training, even if the problem is not caused by a lack of knowledge (Stolovitch and Keeps, 1992). Also, research studies demonstrate that different workers are motivated by varying factors - which may be intrinsic or extrinsic to the employees or to the organization. Studies on employees' intrinsic and extrinsic job motivation among different segments of the working population show that while skilled and technical workers are motivated by the intrinsic rewards of their employment, lesser skilled workers in routine jobs were motivated by extrinsic factors such as incentives and bonuses. Another theory on human behavior, motivation, and management was developed in the late 1950's by Douglas McGregor. His theories X and Y were based on several assumptions made in respect of the organization and individuals that worked in such organizations. In short, in Theory X management organizes all elements of production, motivates and controls employee behavior to get to the objects of the organization, and without this intervention, employees are seen as indolent and indifferent to organizational needs. McGregor further assumes that managers believe that the average employee is by nature indolent and lazy, lacks ambition, is self-centered, and resistant to change. The "direction and control" style emanating from Theory X is unpopular in today's modern work place and has been so since last 45 years or so. This itself evidences that McGregor's assumptions regarding Theory X were inaccurate. Professional, creative, intelligent, highly educated and technical people simply do not respond favorably to the Theory X manager anymore (Insurance, 2002). The converse side of McGregor's coin carried his Theory Y. Theory Y gives out a contrasting description of an average worker. Workers are, by nature, not resistant to change and organization. The motivation, the potential for growth, the capacity for assumption of varying responsibilities and the willingness to mould activities/work to meet organization goals are all present in workers-perhaps in latent form. It is apparent that the management could not possibly implant them there. However it was the responsibility of management to make the workers realize these latent positive human characteristics for themselves. Management can also work to develop these hidden traits. The primary task of the management is to organize work conditions and operations so that workers can achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts toward organizational objectives (Heil et al, 2000). The Theory Y worker, also termed as the knowledgeable worker, not only accepts responsibility, but seeks it. The contrast between X and Y brings out the contentious issue as to who controls human behavior. Theory X espouses external control, and Theory Y has as its base self control and self direction. The main dilemma a manager faces in McGregor's construct is the unrealistic burden which Theory Y places on him i.e. to fulfill his own personal goals and the goals of the organization while conceiving subordinates jobs' as helping them to achieve their mutual goals in their own manner. This often makes the management take up irrational and shallow analysis of subordinate's problems. Thus a deep and rational analysis of the line staffs' need is the urgent requirement in order to foster a team spirit. This would also help stop their exodus out of the company. All of the above theories contribute to present a very practical human resources practices construct in this case study. Basic needs of the line staff are left wanting. These needs are not fulfilled uniformly thus stunting the latent desire to accept the change, responsibilities and the new vision. New human resource manager has to have a closer look at the work routines of the line staff and design day's job works in such a fashion that line staff are not only equitably spaced but they are allotted shifts in an equitable manner. A long term solution would be to impart training inputs so as to combine the pool of the leisure assistants and pool assistants in a pool of assistant with each assistant capable of manning either the tennis courts or the pols.This should be dangled out with a promise that low income staff would be able to achieve higher pays if their performance in new duties were found to be satisfactory. Alternatively the human resource manager can begin with drafting a new standard job contract for all assistants with a contractual condition that against pay they would be agreeable to train for and man the duties they had not attempted before. Within this contract there can be a clause for measuring output and performance (say number of praise letters/feedback) received from clients for awarding bonuses and pay hikes. As a further step there might be carrots in the form of promotions if a specified number of bonuses were achieved or exceeded. Similarly holiday entitlements, sick leave entitlements and breaks should be standardized and available to all line staff and part of the standard contract .This evening out of pay and job conditions anomalies is essential evening out before change management can commence through, say, training and learning for other job tasks. After the training input is completed the human resource manager can begin drafting new job cards so as to include multipurpose duties. This would tend to motivate employees' basic needs and spur them on to higher needs awakening heir latent desires to take up responsibility, help change come about and work constructively as per the Theory Y construct. Duty managers are kind of mangers cum leaders. They should combine the role of leaders with their managerial functions. A view holds that leaders are people oriented and their main task is to inspire people. Their primary functional output is a change (Veal, 2004) and their capabilities are assessed in terms of controlling the process of this change. That is to mould and control change to suit project's objectives. Whereas managers are task and process oriented and their main task is to organize such tasks and processes. Management's main output is task done in target time at target cost. In plain language Management is assigned the task of producing and maintaining a degree of predictability & order (Veal, 2004). Leadership on the other hand assumes the function of producing change under a constantly updated schemata of direction and vision. Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. Leadership is deliberately causing people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leader's agenda. They must widen their horizons from mere shallow viewpoints of their subordinates and look inside their behaviour patterns. For instance, in the present case study they needed to look into the extra work load left on the remaining line staff after a good number had already left the company and other who were already contemplating change of jobs. Duty managers were also led by prejudices against deserting staff and unnecessarily projected such a prejudice irrationally to left over staff doubting their commitments. Ideal approach would have been to buy time for the over burdened staff and help them come out trumps with clients. New human resource manager has to impart leadership training to duty managers as well. To begin with the span of control of duty managers can be defined well by associating fixed number of assistants with each of them. Again duty managers need to moulded and trained to man both court and pool duties. Another aspect which the new human resource manager needs to reinvent, so to say, is to repair the important official communication lines. Communication of the chief executive officer with all categories of staff is extremely important from the view point of morale, feedback and fostering a team spirit. In addition structured communication which is work and need based must periodically take place within the organization so as to sort out troublesome issues. Holding meetings is an ideal tool provided meetings are kept meaningful. There can be broadly two approaches to upgrading the quality of communications in a meeting. One is through conceptual clarity about the established theoretical concepts in organizational communication theory and applying such concepts in understanding persons and situations. For instance communication theory list out classical barriers to communication, which exist in both receiver and sender of communication on account of self-concept , status , credibility, emotion ,repetition and one way - two way communication (Bariers,2007). An understanding of these concepts and their proper application in a meeting set up can result in improved communication and lead to active listening. Active listening is," an energetic attempt to really understand what the speaker is saying and to reflect back to him or her what this is. When people are listened to actively, they listen to themselves more closely. Sensitive, active listening actually brings about changes in the speaker and in the listener. Such active listening overcomes many of the barriers to communication". (Barriers, 2007) West (2007) gives out an interesting case of a meeting which rarely maintained schedules," In the European headquarters of a multi-national, there was a weekly meeting for the senior directors which were timed to start at 0900 and finish at 1130. In fact, it rarely started before 1000 and rarely finished before 1800. One of the most senior directors, now a major figure in the UK business world, gradually disappeared from the meeting. He started by popping out now and again to take important international phone calls, leaving his papers at his place in the meeting. Gradually, these absences got longer and longer until in the end, he arrived for the start of the meeting, put his papers on the meeting table and then left, not to reappear. A glance at his papers showed that far from being relevant to the meeting that day, they were the same set of papers week to week! The odd thing was that no other member of the meeting complained". West (2007) also explains that there are four styles to conducting a meeting depending upon the organizers' people orientation versus task orientation as presented by the situation at hand and giving rise to the need for a meeting," a directive meeting will not be creative. Its members will not produce new ideas. Such a meeting will not make its members feel better about each other unless, that is, they gang up in hating the direction; a systematic meeting is not about decision making. At best it can be about ratifying decisions but the options put to the meeting have been worked out beforehand in sub-committee or even political cabal. Very often such a meeting is managed so that the decisions that the organizers want are ratified and discussion or disagreement is quashed; a facilitative meeting will be long winded. It will spend a great deal of time talking about matters that do not appear on the agenda. This is because the agenda as such is less important than the group's future ability to work together and an interactive meetings may puzzle the uninitiated because they do not come quickly to the point and require a great deal of understanding and background on the part of the group's members. Interactive meetings may sound ideal but the danger is that people pretend that they are in one when they are not. People may talk as if they are rationally considering the issues and caringly responding to the feelings of others. They may also be manipulating the situation very skillfully". A right selection of the meeting style can itself result in its success. Collectively these practices would work to add to the skills and knowledge base within the organization, and as well as to awaken fully employees' willingness to deploy their acquired knowledge and skills for the objectives of the organization. It may be useful to note that this willingness of employees carries the connotation of employee commitment. This is likely to result in a high performance work culture and atmosphere within the organization and we have some authors researching with phrases like "high commitment" (Wood & de Menezes, 1998), or "high involvement" (Vandenberg, Richardson & Eastman, 1999 and Guthrie, 2001) to characterize the approach or as "human capital-enhancing" practices (Youndt, Snell, Dean & Lepak, 1996). It is vital to decide as to what constitutes the independent variable HRM practices. Is it the employee recruitment methods, performance appraisal systems, training schemata, teamwork considerations, intra organization communication, job design and description, employee empowerment and participation, performance-linked salaries and/or promotions, work place relations or even job security These must be decided in advance with entire system of interrelationships between these subsets. This would enable a clear definition of the exact HRM practices we are probing. This may also differ from organization to organization and a common thread has to be established Works Cited Wood, S. J. & Wall, T. D. "Human resource management and business performance". In P. B. Warr (Ed), Psychology at work. Harmonsworth: Penguin, 2002. Chaffee, E. (1985). Three Modes of Strategy. Academy of Management Review, 10, 89-98. Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. (1985). Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6, 257-272. Bass, B.M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press. Conger, J. A., & Kanungo, R. N. (1987). Toward a Behavioral Theory of Charismatic Leadership in Organizational Settings. Academy of Management Review, 12, 637-674. Nonaka, I. (1988). Toward Middle-Up-Down Management: Accelerating Information Creation. Sloan Management Review, 29, 9-18. Grandori, A. (1984). A Prescriptive Contingency View of Organizational Decision Making. Administrative Science Quarterly, 29, 192-209. Mintzberg, H. (1987). The Strategy Concept II: Another Look at Why Organizations Need Strategies. California Management Review, 30, 25-32. Bourgeois, L.J., & Brodwin, D. (1984). Strategic Implementation: Five Approaches to an Elusive Phenomenon. Strategic Management Journal, 5, 241-264. 1 Maslow, A.H.(1954). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 Markiewicz, Dan. Been There Done That Yes, You Can Improve Job Satisfaction.(2002). Industrial Safety & Hygiene News: Vol. 36, No. 12; pg. 16. Dec. 2002. 3 Stolovitch, H. D. and Keeps, E. J. (1992). The handbook of human performance technology, San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. 4 "Motivation: the X Factor." Insurance Day 14 Nov. 2002: Section News. 1 Heil ,Gary, Stephens, Deborah C., Bennis ,Warren G. (2000).Douglas McGregor, Revisited: Managing the Human Side of the Enterprise. John Wiley & Sons. Veal Ruffin.(2004). Project Management and Leadership:Equal Partners for Project Success.www.asapm.org. Barriers to Communication.(2007).Retrieved from www.TWMAcademy.com on January 06,2007. West, David.(2007). Oh no! Not Another Meeting. Retrieved from www.TWMAcademy.com on January 06, 2007. Wood, S. J & de Menezes, L." High commitment management in the UK: Evidence from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and Employers. Manpower and Skills Practices Survey". Human Relations. 51.pp 485-515. 1998. Vandenberg, R. J., Richardson, H. A. & Eastman, L. J. " The impact of high involvement work processes on organizational effectiveness". Groups and Organization Management. 24.pp 300-399. 1999. Guthrie, J. P. " High involvement work practices and, turnover and productivity: Evidence from New Zealand". Academy of Management Journal.44.pp 180-190. 2001. Youndt, M. A., Snell, S. A., Dean, J. E. & Lepak, D. P. "Human resource management, manufacturing strategy, and firm performance. " Academy of Management Journal. 39.pp 836-865. 1996. Read More