Accountability in Human Resource Management - Coursework Example

 Accountability in Human Resource Management Introduction Human Resource is one of the important departments of an organization. This department mainly deals with the employees working in the organization. The information about the employees are stored and maintained by the human resource department. They are also responsible for allocating the resources and allotting the projects for the employees. Human resource plays a vital part in an employee’s service in the organization. Since it deals with more of personal information, the data storage becomes a matter of concern. This paper describes about induction, talent planning and the importance of human resource data. Induction Induction is considered to be the primary phase in an employee’s service in a company. A new joiner must undergo this process as it is the initial process that every employee must undergo. The main aim of this induction programme is to make the employee know about the company’s policies and goals. This would also enable him to know about the procedures and regulations followed in the company. This is considered to be the major advantage of an induction programme. Since it allows the employee to get an idea about the company, it is one of the important parts of an employee’s life. It reduces the burden of the higher officials; since the employee will get an outlook about the company and its operations. Induction is definitely beneficial to the new joiners as well as the officials in the organization. An individual joining an organization may not possess prior knowledge about the company. In this case, induction would be an opportunity to know about the company. This is a simplified approach adopted by an organization to impart the knowledge to the new joiners. Induction and training period are the most important periods of an employee’s life in the organization. Since it forms the basis of an employee’s career, the company concentrates more on training the new employees. (Lawler, 2008). There are several reasons as to why an organization conducts a training and induction programme. This is beneficial to the employee as well as the organization. Each and every organization conducts an induction programme and this is common for all the organizations irrespective of the size and organization’s nature. The type of induction programme depends on the organization’s operation and in the way how the organization deals with a project. Since the approval and information from all the departments become mandatory, induction integrates the departments in an organization. Induction offers several benefits to the organization. Benefits of Induction The various benefits of induction are Employees will have a better understanding of the company. They can easily adapt to the projects in which they are allocated. Staffs will get used to their job very easily without much hassle. Helps the organization to identify the talents of an employee. They can identify the flaws in the performance of the employee. Goals can be achieved without much problem as the employee has prior knowledge about the organization. Induction programme is conducted with the help of Human Resource department of the organization. This induction programme is designed and developed well in advance to avoid any problem during its implementation. The implementation is done in such a way that it leads to other benefits to the organization. The induction programme plan specifies the number of days for which induction programme is to be conducted. The plan also imposes how an induction programme should be conducted. Generally the induction programme is conducted on the first day when the employee begins his career in an organization. In certain cases, induction is conducted when an employee moves from an existing project to a new project. The situation and implementation of induction may vary according to the organization. (Philips, 1999). In either case, induction is carried out to make sure that the new employee gets a complete idea about the organization and the project in which he is going to work. Induction programme also specifies the type of training and duration of training. During this process, the organization decides about the type and mode of training. Thus an organization concentrates more on an induction programme since it indirectly improves the reputation and development of an organization. Once an induction programme is conducted, the details are recorded and stored in a separate database for future reference. This paper proposes a sample induction programme which includes details pertaining to the project in which the staff is assigned, conditions and regulations followed in the organization and other relevant information. An induction plan will generally be divided into four or five sections like general information, project details and policies of the organization. The general information section includes Employee Name. Department. Employee designation. Date of joining The details pertaining to a particular project are Role and responsibilities of the employee within the concerned department. Employee’s higher official to whom he must report his work. Allocation of work. Priority of work. Skills required for the project. Details regarding the training. Information to be collected from a new employee include Introduction to the new department. Employee’s job and his role in the project. Conditions regarding the project and company. The final list of an induction programme comprises of rules and policies of the organization in which the person is employed. It includes Shift details and working hours. Bonus and other allowance details. Details regarding the training period and reimbursement during training. Duration of training. Declaration. These are the common information that any organization may include in its induction plan. Additional information can also be included and it purely depends on the needs and requirements of the particular firm. The induction plan and programme is conducted by the human resource department and they are also responsible for recording and maintaining the information pertaining to the new employees. Talent Planning Talent planning is considered to be one of the most prominent functions of any organization. The organization has the responsibility to decide which resource is to be allotted to the ongoing projects. This is done with prior planning and preparation. Planning is the important aspect since even a minor fault may result in a heavy loss to the organization. Hence this talent planning is carried out only after preparing a proper plan. This plan consists of a schedule based on which the operations are implemented. Since the recruitment is done only based on the company’s requirement, it is mandatory for an organization to prepare and follow a talent planning schedule. This recruitment and selection process completely depends on the organization’s pattern of recruitment and requirement. Some of the organizations hire the required number of people and then allot them to each department in the company. Some organizations recruit people only on the basis of project’s requirement and current vacancy. This in turn ensures that only talented people and people with potential are hired. (National Research Council, 2002). The human resource department has the responsibility to allocate the people with accurate and appropriate skills to a particular project. The main reason of carrying out this method is, it ensures that only people with ability are put onto a project. They must possess complete knowledge about the domain and project to which they are allotted. Talent planning involves phases like attracting talent, retaining workforce and recruitment and selection. Attracting Talent Attracting talent is one of the major aspects in the process of recruitment and talent planning. The organization must recruit people who are capable of handling the problems and resolving the issues that arise in the organization. Thus an organization recruits people depending on their talent and current requirements in the organization. The organization has the rights to allot a person from a different project and this is done to minimize the cost of recruitment. In this case a person working in a project is released and put onto another ongoing project. This in turn saves time and minimizes the risk of hiring an incapable person. Since the employee will have prior knowledge about the company and its nuances, it would be easy for him to adapt to a new project when compared to a new employee. The process of training can be avoided and he can directly be allotted to the project without much formalities. The concept of explicitly training the employee is eradicated. Attracting and Retaining Workforce Attracting and retaining a diverse workforce is the second important aspect of the recruitment process and this forms the integral part of an organization’s process. Diverse workforce generally yields more benefits to an organization. Attracting and managing a diverse workforce is considered to be more advantageous as the organization need not conduct recruitments whenever there is a vacancy. Instead they can select a person from the existing employees. (Philips, 1999). This makes the resource management task a much easier process. In this case, the organization can select the required person from the existing list of people who are working in the organization. The main advantage of this concept is, it saves time and cost that would be used in recruiting a new employee. Since the company manages a diverse workforce where people possess knowledge about all the domains, it would be easier for the organization to select a person based on the needs. This clearly explains that diverse workforce must be the aim of any organization. The only task here is to conduct a simple level of interview among the employees and the company can select the person based on the project’s requirement. Recruitment and Selection Recruitment and selection is one of the major aspects and functions of the human resource department in any organization. Talent planning does not end with mere attraction and retention of employees. Instead it also includes the recruitment and selection of candidates according to the company’s requirement. Recruitment is a herculean task since it involves many sub tasks like intimating the people regarding recruitment, conducting tests and interviews and finally selecting the right person depending on the project. Recruitment and selection go hand in hand since selection purely depends on the process of recruitment. (Lawler, 2008). Recruitment is generally classified into two types namely, internal and external recruitment. Internal recruitment is widely preferred, since the organization need not spend explicitly to train the new recruits. As the employee would have been working in the organization, it would reduce the unnecessary costs. The company will have an idea about the employee’s potential and capability and it would easy for them to decide. Thus the organization can select an employee who has a better ability to work on a particular project. Though internal recruitment minimizes the risk of hiring an unknown person and saves cost and time, it has certain disadvantages. Selecting a person working in another project may affect the project in which he is currently working. This would disturb the entire workflow of a particular project. This would also affect the appraisal and the promotion of other employees. When considering all these problems, external recruitment is considered to be better when compared to internal recruitment. In this situation external recruitment is more advantageous since a wide range of capabilities and talent can be examined. Before beginning the recruitment, an analysis must be done to find out the requirements of the organization. This will enable the recruiters to select people based on the requirements of the company. (National Research Council, 2002). This will bring in new ideas into the existing organization there by providing the company with more innovations. In this case, the recruitment process must be carried out in stages. Each stage will examine the talent of the candidates and finally the one with more potential and ability is selected. At the end of each stage the number of candidates get reduces and the organization can select the required person based on their expectation. HR Data Collection Data collection and storage is one among the important tasks of an organization. This is done by the human resource department and they are responsible for the process of data collection, storage and maintenance. An organization may implement any unique approach to collect and maintain the human resource data. The selection of these methods purely depends on the management and the organizational needs and requirements. Since human resource data consists of information pertaining to the employees, it must be stored and managed in an effective manner. The organization must incorporate certain strategies and methods to collect, store and manage these data. This will ensure that the data is completely secured and free from threats and attacks. Reasons for HR Data Collection Human resource data collection is done in an organization to collect data from each and every employee. This helps the organization to know about its employees and this will be of great use during project transfer and promotions. Apart from these reasons, the main use of collecting human resource data is to store and maintain an employee record pertaining to every employee in the organization. This record is used at the time of providing access to a project, during appraisal, promotion and other performance related activities. (Philips, 1999). The higher officials can use these details and ensure that the particular employee is capable enough for a promotion. Employee information will also help the organization to carry out a background check about the employee. This will help the organization to know more about the employee from his previous employer. The data collection is done based on the human resource policies and regulations of an organization. Types of Data Data collection is done based on the data since the data is generally classified into many forms and types. The general classification of data includes qualitative and quantitative data. The human resource department implements the methods according to the type of data. This is done to ensure that each type of data is carefully collected and maintained. Depending on the type of data, a method is selected and implemented to collect and store the data. When considering an organization, data is classified as personal and professional data. Personal data includes personal information like employee’s name, residence, criminal verification and other background details. Professional data comprises of the number of years of experience, previous employers, projects he has handled and his conduct in the companies in which he was employed. This would enable the organization to come to a conclusion about an employee and it would help them to decide whether he is fit enough to get employed in this organization. (National Resource Council, 2002). The human resource department can easily analyze the technical and professional capabilities and standards. All these information would be of more use at the time of yearly appraisal and promotions. As an employee’s performance is assessed based on his history of projects, this would make the process easier. Thus collection and maintenance of human resource data becomes mandatory. Human Resource Practices Human resource practices are different in every organization. It depends on the nature and type of the organization. Human resource practices include resource allocation, man power allocation, decision making, report generation and project allocation and distribution. Human resource practices differ based on the organization and there has been a drastic change in the way these practices are implemented. These practices have changed when compared to the past and it has become flexible enough to suit the needs of the company and current technical advancements. Human resource practices cannot be implemented as a standalone process. It requires the involvement of other standards and this will make the process easier. Human resource practices will work efficiently only if the data is perfect and accurate. Hence the data decides how efficiently a human resource practice works. The human resource practices generally affect the employees either in a direct or indirect manner. In certain cases it may affect the working pattern and methods as the human resource practices may differ from one employee to another. (Philips, 1999). The human resource practices are implemented based on a framework that is based on the organization’s nature and practices. Hence the human resource practices must also be implemented based on this framework. The executives must develop these practices only after getting a complete outlook about the existing framework. This will ensure that these practices do not yield problems in the future. (Lawler, 2008). It is better to implement the practices based on the employee instead of implementing a common practice for all the employees. To accomplish this task, the human resource data must be properly stored and maintained. The technological advancements have contributed to the development and implementation of various storage mechanisms. Though there are various storage mechanisms, only few make it to the list of best storage techniques. Selecting a proper storage mechanism is an important task, since the component must manage the information of all the employees working in an organization, irrespective of the size of the organization. Data Storage and Retrieval Data storage is a much easier task when compared to the past. The data pertaining to the employees are stored in a computer system that can manage the information of thousands of people without much difficulty. The information stored in these systems can be accessed at any time of the day and the employees have a direct access to it. As the data type is simple, the organization can implement any type of data storage mechanism. (National Research Council, 2002). The best and time tested method is storing the data in a computer system. This permits the employees to access the information whenever required and it can also be modified with proper authorization. It eradicates the problem of keeping them in manual records and eases the process of searching a particular data. The data pertaining to each department is stored in a separate record and it makes the process of searching and retrieval an easier task. A centralized system can be installed so that the employees in all the departments can have an access to it. (Philips, 1999). Since it is a centralized approach, the officials can retrieve the information from any of the system in the organization. Another method is to store the human resource data in the department’s server system. In this approach, the information about each department is stored in the concerned department’s server system. The people working in a particular department have a direct access to this system as they need not request the human resource department to grant them an access. The main advantage of this method is, the time required to retrieve a particular data is less as the officials can directly get their employee’s data without much hassle. When comparing these two methods, the concept of storing the data in a centralized system is better as it makes the information available to all the employees in the organization. The second method will not yield more benefits, since the people involved in that department only can go through the details. This is often considered to be more problematic. Legislations for Storage and Retrieval Data storage and retrieval is not an easy task as it involves the participation of almost all the employees. The organization must implement these data storage principles based on the government’s policies and regulations. (Laeler, 2008). The government follows a set of predefined rules and the organizations must abide by these regulations. The policies and principles differ from one government to another. The European government insists on privacy of data and data protection is considered to be the important aspect of data storage. The details of an employee must not be disclosed to another employee in the organization. The organization must make sure that the employee’s data is protected from other threats and attacks. European law also states processing of personal data must be carried out only after obtaining prior permission from the employee. Privacy and security of data is the main objective of the European government and they insist on protecting the private data of an employee. They must be maintained in a proper manner that does not yield any problem in the future. The legislations vary from one country to another and the organizations must follow the policies of the government. Conclusion Human resource is one of the important departments in an organization. This department is responsible for conducting induction, training, and recruitment and selection process. The other departments on an organization rely on human resource department since it maintains information about the employees, resources and the projects. Hence the human resource department is the one which operates the other departments in an organization. Works Cited Philips, Jack. Accountability in Human Resource Management. U.S.A: Butterworth- Heinemann, 1999. Print. National Research Council. Using Human Resource Data to Track Innovation. Washington: National Academy Press, 2002. Print. Lawler, John. The Global Diffusion of Human Resource Practices. U.K: Emerald Group Publishing, 2008. Print. Read More