New Human Resource Roles to Impact Organizational Performance - Essay Example

Human Resource Management Chosen topic: Origins In the first part of this paper, it was seen how Euro Disney failed in its initial plans since it did not have a correct human resource policy in place. Businesses that want to succeed know the power of effective HR in the organisations. Primarily HR is responsible in three domains of management, which are employee compensation, staffing, and designing/ defining work. However, the essential role of HR is to maximize productivity by tapping the inherent human potential in employees in such a manner that they start delivering productive work. HR which is not able to extract effectiveness from the employees cannot be termed as good human resource division of a company. Organisations which think that HR be better left with a side role of simply hiring and firing staff err in their judgment and thus fail. Some organisations even do not count HR as part of a larger game plan to succeed and thus falter on the way to where they want the organisation to be – top! Business world is changing rapidly but HR is perhaps going to stay the way it is and would, in future as well, have to shoulder the responsibility of maximizing growth within the organisation. Gubman (1996) has remarked that human resource's basic mission will always be to acquire, then develop, and finally retain the best people; while bearing the responsibility of streamlining the overall work culture of the organisation and be a forerunner in contributing growth to the business. All these challenges for HR will stay always, no matter how business landscape changes in future. Until recently, human resource departments in organisations were given lower rung positions in corporate hierarchy; much to the chagrin of the fact that human resource had an important role to play in then replenishment of the organisation workforce and culture. Lately, however, there has been a dramatic recognition in the approach towards which organisations consider these departments. Small businesses give human resource a much importance as do larger businesses, even though in small organisations human resource does not have a greater role to play in contributing to the business. Burstiner (1988) has, although, discounted this paradigm and feels that big or small, the basic tenet to be followed by human resource departments remains the same, which is hiring the right people, honing their skills, and making them responsible for an organisation's accomplishment of goals. There are certain overriding principles that guide modern human resource management. The most important of these principles is that human resource departments need recognition in the sense that they form a backbone of an organisation, and thus, must be construed as an important asset of an organisation. Armstrong has remarked that achievement of business success must be directly linked with procedures and personnel policies in conjunction with strategic plans and corporate objectives as enumerated by the human resource departments. Not only this, human resources’ legitimacy has also come to the fore that it is them who are capable of finding and employing talents and once done with the process, then retaining them in order to suit the company compatibility established between the two sides. Retention of talented personnel is one of the most difficult jobs in the present world where competent people finding the best options around at the drop of a hat. Seldon et al (n.d.) second the view of many other HR scholars that training and development go a long way in deriving long-term profitability from an employee, and it an employee's quality that determines whether or not the association is going to be lasting enough. Human resource management has an interesting history and dates back to times when the workforce management was actually seen as based on an individual’s attitude towards a specific work. In other words, HR of old times was a working arrangement entered between apprentices and master craftsmen with whom they worked and from whom they learnt the trades. Things changed around 1800th century, when such arrangement gave birth to problems at workplaces. Most of the problems were caused by unsafe working conditions, monotony of jobs and more importantly low wages. Such things continued throughout the century and a turn of sorts took place in 1901 when a company called National Cash Register Co. (NCR) created a "personal department", under the presidency of John H. Patterson, in order to look into employee grievances, safety concerns, and other issues. Ford Motor Corporation followed the trend and after observing a 380 percent turnover ratio in 1913, it doubled its daily wages in 1914. The new hike raised the daily salary of an employee to $5 from $2.50; even though the latter was not any less wage at that point of time. After many transitions in-between, the real changes in HR began to be seen the last century (Losey, 1998) Recent developments and their source Ever since the organisatins have realised the importance of human resource management, it has begun to be seen as human capital management and development. Human capital refers to the people on whose expertise organisations develop themselves. This is probably one reason why a phrase, "people or human resources are our greatest assets," is used. Given up for some time on account of its negative connotations in association with economics, the phrase has emerged again since 2003 (Scholz, 2007). Different scholars have put the meaning of human capital differently. The most common meaning refer to the people with valuable skill sets and assets that the organizations use to steer their growth. Youndt et al (2004) has suggested that it the same old human resource concept given a new paradigm but is based on the same repertoire of competency, attitude, knowledge and behavior in individuals. Human resource management as looked through the prism of human capital management is thus the same capability of a department to identify, acquire, develop, deploy and retain individuals with these skill sets. Rastogi (2000) has remarked that practices and policies pertaining to this concept of human capital should be assessed, developed and implemented in such a manner that they are in sync with the organisation's shared vision. Good global organisations believe that their success is directly proportional on the correct investments they make on the human capital, which has a unmatched value. This value can be motivated, nurtured and enhanced by way of creating proper working environments and incentive strategies. This attitude on part of organisations makes sense for either side i.e., employer and the employee (Lee, 2005; Kulvisaechana, 2006). Increased interest in human resource as fairly visible now is being attributed to a lot of seminal work that started getting published in the United States of America in early 1980s. These works were dubbed as ones that quenched the insatiable thirst of American mangers to know more about the field. The first of its kind work, In Search of Excellence, became the most successful. Likely future development with respect to chosen topic As said in the previous paper, I am likely to be a part of global IT industry after my master's. Being part of the global IT industry means coming across varying work cultures and people across different boundaries and encountering different languages, beliefs, local practices and visions. In case of global companies, HR has added challenges to meet. It not only has the onus of contributing to the industry's progress but also meet the cross-border challenges by fostering success through respect for local workforce environments and cultures. Since most of the global companies are waking up to the disasters of nature and issues surrounding the plant earth, HR will also be expected to play an active role in fostering an environment of social responsibility. That way it might need to tap the younger work forces who are always excited about making a difference through corporate social responsibility. Since causes as these infuse enthusiasm, it would further be expected to encourage friendly competition through properly recognised programs. There has been mass awareness pertaining to this globally, and a number of companies, who have deviated from this type of commitment, have at some point of time, deviated from the path. Companies like Lehman, WaMu and Enron have grabbed headlines because they have failed the corporate social responsibility test miserably. It has been seen that HRs which have not be loyal to this part of their job have actually eroded the organisational trust. Once any such initiative is taken up by HR in global IT industry in future, the same can help organisations connect with staff and the community in many different ways. Some of these could include volunteer days, community programs, community event sponsorship, and participation of employees in food banks, walkathons, etc (Lokhandwala, nd) The future industry will see a paradigm shift in aligning people with businesses and it is no wonder that there will be demand which will entail making human resource professionals business partners within the organisation in which they work. It is widely held belief now that in order to build complete organisations in future, human resource professionals must develop five elements of enterprise. These are speed and talent, boundary less attitude in work, leadership qualities, healthy culture, and brand identity of the organisations. These would further mean role-related attributes of large group facilitation and managing change, mechanism that is faster in response, keep stakeholder conflicts sway and mange them methodologically when they arise and coach future leaders of the organisation. Furthermore, in future, and particularly in fast-growing IT firms across the world, HR will not be looked at only from the pedestal of acquiring and retaining talent, but also will be expected to have a thorough grip on the understanding of businesses and complete knowledge of finance. HR should know the metrics of finance and realise the impact of cost benefit analysis on the organisations. In the years to come human resource functioning will undergo a massive transformation and define new career paths. Since the industry has been recently and will develop in future unfamiliar roles, the thrust will be on HR to demonstrate new skill sets and compete with the changes. As a result of this, HR will be expected to become more proactive, more strategic, and more involved in the wholeness of businesses. Clearly, HR in future will have to cope up with the number of pressures that will be on organisations to handle. These could be environmental pressures, global competitiveness, rapidly changing technology, new organisational partnership, new hierarchies and structures, workplace change, and new demographic characteristics (Beatty et al, 1997). Human resource will have to increase its perceived and real value in order to play these roles. This is likely to bring about a complete shift in HR functions and activities, and certain basic steps will increase the likelihood of success. These would include strong human resource leadership, acute future orientation, creativity and flexibility, and deliverance of value. HR can deliver value if it knows how changing organisational, environmental, and workforce factors are going to influence the businesses. Consequently, it has to be capable of anticipating the required needs on part of HR, and should be loaded with required solutions vis-à-vis the needs. Further directions in the specific filed of choice The IT industry, which I am likely to join after my Master's, will have a lot of its responsibilities being shared by HR in future. This industry in future will not be only one on its own, but also it will have a critical role to play in many other organisations working in other segments. Overall, IT is considered to be an effective contributor in the overall development and growth of any sector in which it is integrated. It is often said that organisations tend to succeed after IT makes inroads into several of its functions. HR is mostly active when any such integrating takes place. In the IT acquisition process, role of HR has long started getting recognised and given the pace with which global business scenarios develop, the role is expected to be of even greater magnitude. In the global IT landscape, the role of HR is considered as very critical in the overall alignments needed to be done at various levels. In this industry I see HR working as per several classifications, and each fulfilling a description pertaining to specific domain knowledge. Some HR classifications that will be very much part and parcel of future businesses would be operational non-IT resource, functional non-IT resource, operational It resource, functional IT resource, strategic non-IT resource, and strategic IT resource. The respective description for each would be use of interfaces to access IS services, logistic management, programming needs, critical layer to support use of IT, analysts, system developers, IT-savvy architects; dynamic decision support human resource, and planning through high levels of IT exposure. All of these classes and descriptions will cater to domain knowledge of transactions, tools, high-end business processes, sound IT management knowledge, and specific IT focus. I see myself at the higher end of the management hierarchy in this industry banking on my sound expertise of IT and strong foundation of knowledge. References Armstrong (2000). A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. (7th ed) London: Kogan Page Beatty, R. W., & Schneier, C. E. (1997). New human resource roles to impact organizational performance: From "partners" to "players." In D. Ulrich, M. R. Losey, and G. Lake (Eds.), Tomorrow's HR management: 48 thought leaders call for change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Burstiner, I. (1988). The Small Business Handbook. Prentice Hall Gubman, E. L. (1996). The Gauntlet is Down. Journal of Business Strategy. November-December Seldon, G. Gary, R. and Roberts, C. (n.d.). Human Resources Management. Washington, D.C.: Small Business Administration Kulvisaechana, S. (2006). Human capital development in the international organization: Rhetoric or Reality, Journal of EuropeanIndustrial Training, 30(9): pp.721-734 Losey, M. (1998). HR comes of age - history of human resource management. Available http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_n3_v43/ai_20514399/?tag=content;col1. Accessed March 08, 2012 Lee, P. (2005). Optimising human capital: measuring what really matters, Journal of Industrial and Commercial Training, 37(6):pp. 299-303 Lokhandwala, S. (n.d.). HR’s Role in Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility across a Global Workforce. Available http://www.nuviewinc.com/pdf/CSR.pdf. Accessed March 08, 2012 Rastogi, P. N. (2000). Sustaining enterprise competitiveness – is human capital the answer? Human Systems Management, 19(3): pp. 193-203 Scholz, C. (2007). Human capital management – a long and winding road, German Journal of Human Resource Research, 21(3): pp. 203-205 Youndt, M. A. Subramaniam, M. and Scott, S.A. (2004). Intellectual capital profiles: An examination of investments and returns, Journal of Management Studies, 41(2): pp. 335-61 Read More