Succession Planning and Human Resources Theory - Coursework Example

Succession planning and human resources theory Human resource management is a planned objective by the organization’s management to manage the people who are working there in order to fulfill its set goals and objectives. The purpose is to ensure the organization succeeds in all set goals and achieve its target by utilizing one of their assets, the people. (Armstrong M, 2003). Once these people get recruited to the office, it reaches a time to go. Their exit may be warranted by either death, retirement or someone may resign which result to a vacant to be filled immediately, hence a succession plans has to be in place to cater for such emergency exit. Succession planning is practice developed by the organization’s management in ensuring the employees who are capable of handling tasks are retained to the job as well as having a well structured policy to replace those who are leaving through retirement, death or resignation. It is built on managing the skills of the personnel career development and how the exit and entry of the employees is handled and managed without affecting the companies operations and ensures qualified personnel are capable of taking over the vacancy as it arises. Succession plan has changed in the 21st century due to high complexities in the business operations and markets competitions where organization has to retain the most talented and efficient cadres in order to be able to compete in the market. The plan not only is applied to the management of organization personnel but even in the political succession. People prepare themselves for the office incase the head of state approaches retirement. Due to changing organization needs and business complexities, succession planning may be difficult and at times very challenging to the management if an emergency vacancy arises without immediate replacement. Ideally succession planning becomes necessary especially to the management for efficient and effective operations and ensuring growth trend has to be maintained. It has been argued that those managers who are promoted within the organization upwards do better than those sourced form outside. (Regent recruitment News letter, vol. 16) It ensures business does not stop operating once the employee leaves the offices there is immediate replacement. This improves the morale of staff since they know once a vacancy arises they will be given the first priority to fill the gap. Where proper succession plan exist employees also benefit through job training in order to prepare for any vacancy arising from within hence promotes the sustainability to the organization. Employees also are motivated when contemporary strategy is taken by the organization to prepare them grow in career development. It makes employers have faith in the organization. External sourcing may be costly especially when the organizations go for well talented and most qualified personnel, it is worthy having succession plan to identify the most talented staff and ensure are well trained take over the job immediately. Career development system influences succession planning. A great deal of assessment is made to ensure the right person to fill the future vacancies. This is done by carrying out audits which provides data in a register basis to determine the right staff for the top job. Proper hand over and succession procedures must be put in place for the person taking over the office in order to have a start up point. One of the most important areas to consider is how the organization develops the talent which must be well managed and developed for the future. To achieve this well planned succession panning must be put in place to accommodate the ever changing world where most of the companies are moving towards 21st century. Talent management becomes a most important tool for companies that would wish to help their personnel in order to add value to the organization as a whole. The aim is to empower the senior managers with understanding and capabilities of taking over management of an organization in an efficient and effective manner and prepares them to work towards achieving goals and target and develop a plan for growth of an organization. (Leadership development & succession planning for the 21st century, 2005) It has been argued that successful training of leaders must be designed to develop certain skills and help an individual improve conceptual abilities, personal needs and self esteem to cope with growing complexity in leadership. (Diana c. Bisbee, 2007 volt 4-issue 3) According to, human capital consultant journal, 2009, Succession planning of bank of America brought about an embarrassing situation when the Bank chief executive officer (C E O) Ken Lewis resigned leaving the board of directors disarray all due to his immediate resignation without a standby successor. This was a big lesson to learn not only to the said bank but other institution without a succession plan in place and ensure C.E.O encourage talent management rather than killing their competitors. The board of directors also must ensure the proper management of talent is adhered to otherwise, some selfish C.E.O may never allow their junior colleagues to move up in career. The board contributed greatly to the failure since no proper plan of succession of the bank was in place. The crisis affected the operations of the bank and corporate image was greatly affected negatively. Due to the complexities involved in handling human resources personnel, scholars have taken time and efforts to come up with theories in order to bring understanding and how these personnel behave towards work and performance and what affects them generally. Management theory encompasses several theories that explain the influential factors on human motivation at work place. For instance, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs give reasons as to why individuals work and states that the needs of people are satisfied in an ascending order from basic/survival, security, belonging, esteem up to self actualization.( Armstrong. M, 2003, PP 215-220.) Self actualization Esteem needs Need for sense of belonging Safety/ security needs Physiological needs/Survival needs Until one level is satisfied, beginning with the survival needs, one cannot move to another higher level. The basic needs include food, shelter, clothing and other requirements that people need to survive. They are also called the physiological needs because without them the body will not function properly. Once these needs have been satisfied, people now want to feel secure after which they want to have a sense of belonging and then to be respected, self esteem which is then followed by a need to become of full potential. Once one has attained this level, they perceive things differently, are focused more on development and mostly their sense of humor is different from the others in that what makes them happy is not hostile humor as they evaluate every happening before they can laugh at it. The classic theories which include theory X and Theory Y McGregor, (1960) emphasized maslow’s and herzberg’s theories of motivation (Blake and Mouton, 1964). They view human nature as being both negative and positive towards work and McGregor emphasizes that people should be perceived as being self energized, creative, responsible and committed and this is the major factor that connects self actualization with work. Theory X views employees as being lazy and very irresponsible and have to be pushed to work with a lot of supervision and system controls put in place to monitor them. People are seen like machine. The managers here believe that the need for money makes the people work and mostly if something goes wrong, the people are blamed without investigating whether there could have been another cause like lack of training. Theory Y assumes that people are willing to work without force as they are generally very motivated and self energized. They usually enjoy working without supervision and only need a good environment and a lot of incentives to maintain their positive attitude and energy. It creates an environment of trust and where both the senior and subordinate staff enjoys a narrow gap in their relationship and both work towards achieving the target. Other concepts like job enrichment also emphasizes that people would work more if they got job satisfaction and states that when designing, jobs should be interesting and of challenge so that workers can be committed. Fredrick W Taylor (1856 to 1915) tried to study how personnel behave at work and what affects them like the physical environment, task, and human interaction, characteristics of human beings capacity, speed and durability. His aim was reduce variability at work place of which he encouraged monetary incentives to employees as motivators. He faced a lot of criticism as he was viewed encouraging managers to treat their workers as machines. Currently, organizational behavior is growing as a field and though the roots trace back to Max Weber, it is believed to have started as an academic discipline that was highly influenced by social psychology. Conclusion Succession planning is all about identifying talents, coaching, forming bonds and generally grooming candidates for future responsibilities. A close analyses of the above theories and concepts, shows that companies are still adopting the ideas of the early scholars in running their businesses. Currently companies and organizations are ensuring latent management is taken seriously as part of organizations goal to ensure smooth running of the business. REFERENCES Towers, D 2007, Human Resource Management essays Smit, M 2006, HR, Show me the money; presenting an exploratory model that can measure if HR adds value Legge, K 2004, Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and realities, Anniversary edition. Douglas, M 2002, Theory X and Theory Y workforce Vol. 81 Papa, MJ& Daniel, TD& Spiker BK 2008, Organizational Communication: perspectives and trends Ulrich, D 1996, Human resource Champions. The next agenda for adding value and delivering results Armstrong,M.2003. Human resources management & practice 9th edition. Regent recruitment, client newsletter, vol.16 Whitaker, A. (2009). Human Capital Management Consultant Diana ,C.Bisbee,2007 vol.4 issue 3. Executive Practices in Land Grand Universities. Leadership development & succession planning for the 21st century ,business wire, journal ;July 5,2005) (Academic leadership online journal executive succession practices in Land Grant University by Diana c. bishee, volume 4-issue 3 feb 2007) Read More