Management of People in Organizations - Essay Example

Management of People in Organizations Name: Student Number: Course Code: Word Count: Date of Submission: Introduction The mention of management as a tool in organizations comes along with aspects such as planning, strategies, skills and objectives amongst others that complete the subject. Appropriate management skills have the main goal of improving the organizations performance in terms of what it produces. Nevertheless, achieving such performance is dependent on various factors, theories, perspectives and concepts and even management models adopted that influence the area of management. Nevertheless, organization management has quiet concentrated on resources and best ways to achieve the objectives and goals of the organization, with less perspective on people management. Necessarily, human resource management department of organizations indicate vitality in the management of people and human resources as part of achieving organizational goals. This is about changes in their respective environments of operation which postulates that apart from all the strategic layouts, development of the potential of employees through human resource management is also important. So now organization managers are widening their focus from tangible to include intangible assets as well. Strong and stable employee-employer relationship, motivated and skilled workforce complemented with strong management are relative human factors that contribute to an organization’s success. This essay has its basis on the argument that management of people in organizations has become difficult in the modern workplace. In relation to the previous discussion, this essay seeks to establish the background of people management, which is currently referred to as Human Resource Management (Tesarovicov, 2008) or more preferably Personnel Management. The objective is to explore the aspects involved in management of people in the organization and how they relate to achieving organizational goals. In this perspective, the essay will develop an evaluation of the causes that contribute to difficulty in people management. For purposes of clarification and use in this essay, the people referred to are the employees of an organization. Human Resource Management A review of human resource management is important since it directly relates to people management just as personnel management does. Goal planning and planning of actions to be undertaken by the organization requires the involvement of all professionals and personnel member of the organization. This point is to indicate that the managers responsible for different departments only oversee, but definitely need the involvement of other skilled humans implement strategies and realize goals (Rebori, 2011). The background of human resource management and possible personnel management draws from the fact that all management decisions and resultant actions directly or indirectly affect and influence the employees more as organization members that just as job-holders. This suggests that management of people is a direct action, but depends on how these influential decisions and actions of the organization are carried out. One skill is evident here that making management of personnel easy is by managing how organization decisions and actions influence them, and not viewing it as an executive priority. The difficulty experience in managing people in modern organizations can be measured by the ease or difficult with which human resource managers strategize and implement organization’s decisions and actions. A necessary inclusion of an overview of these actions to implemented gives a better picture of the argument. Generally, people managers have their responsibilities comprising objectives that include staffing, performance, change management and administration (Armstrong, 2009). Staffing involves, recruiting appropriate and qualified people at the right time to take up jobs in the organization. This is the tricky part that also contributes to difficulty in management since a manager would want to recruit personnel that can be managed (Boxall & Purcell, 2006). Performance is about motivating employees and ensuring measures that enable them to perform well. It involves training, skill development and rewarding. Changing management objectives is one that is advocates for healthy relations at the work place. It gives the employees a chance to present their views in the decision making rather than just implementation of organization decisions. Administrative objectives on the other hand involve keeping accurate information about the people under management. This ensures that different professionals are involved at different appropriate positions of organization’s operations (Bergeron, 2000). Progressive Development of People Management The rise of industrialization and trade unionism in the twentieth century saw an increased recruitment of people in the industries. The number of employees rose to levels that necessitated the establishment of people management systems. The job was dynamic and complex that it had a requirement for a specialized and trained human resource manager to oversee it. It also made organizations develop interest in providing personalized training skills to their recruits for the betterment of the organization. According to Henderson (2011), staffing, assessing employees and providing necessary trainings and investments were part of the human resource manager’s job. The point is that the job definition increased interactive relationship between employees and managers. Resultantly, it resulted in to a change of the conventional working methods of these managers. This manager-employee relationship is a contributing factor to people management owing to the fact that the relationship was inevitable yet with no defined professional ways of relations. In an increasingly competitive global economy with better-educated workforces, reactive or passive management of people becomes insufficient and at times it is even ineffective (Boston Consulting Group, 2007). Consequential to the increased number of employees and large staffs in the organizations, there was an establishment of trade unions and hence, collectivised employment relationships. These trade unions represented the workforce and engaged in negotiations with employers for wages and working conditions, on behalf of the employees. For the mangers and employers, this posed as a limiting factor with an increased complexity and difficulty in managing people. This perspective was with basis that it hindered adoption of new ways and continuously modernizing strategies necessary for competition in the developing industries. A close analysis would show that the conclusion of unions as an impediment also comes from the managers’ comparison of initial scenarios where unions were not present to present days where workers belong to unions. Every manager has their own definition of optimum conditions for effective management (Francis, 2007). It is in the modern organizations where the difficulty in people management is more pronounced. It only shows that the problems in this area that were evident in the past occurrences have not been effectively resolved as the human resource management department continued to develop. By example, the issue or manager or employer-employee relationship has only seen an establishment of hierarchy levels in the organizations. This only defines an aspect of relationship at the workplace. The next question would be about the kind of relationship the two should have when away from the professional setting into the social world. Evidently, modern management focuses on work management as people management. Today, human resource management emphasizes that creation and tailoring of job tasks to fit the capability of each worker achieves optimal use of their skills and potentials. The theory postulates that continued development of their skills by training improves work performance. More importantly, it achieves people management and realizes organizational goals, which are the desires of employees and managers. Challenges of Managing People The transforming global economy mentioned earlier is changing the workforce available to organizations. The human resource management is also changing under the pressure of proving its essence, workability and effectiveness of it policies and strategies. This potential and continuous transformation of the workforce presents certain challenges to human resource managers in executing their responsibilities. Stein (2010) puts it that as a manager, people forming working for the organization are the most important asset and so must be managed appropriately to achieve objectives. As part of management skills, it is important that the personnel manager identifies the challenges they are likely to face and design ways to deal with them. Hiring and recruiting the right people: it starts here where the manager has the responsibility of recruiting qualified and suitable employees. As the organization grows and more success realized, more employees are required to enhance expansion of the organization. Achieving a stretch goal - every organization has a responsibility or objective that it seeks to achieve. The responsibility is the goal that the people of the organization are expected to work towards. For the manager, the goals are achieved, not by self but through the people to be managed. Achieving these stretch goals takes careful planning on how to apply the organizations workforce to realize the goals. Bringing the best out of employees – this is quite challenging given that every employee has a different motivating element to use optimal potential. Some of the factors that affect employee performance are out of control and so all the manager has to do is treat employees with respect, help them align personal goals wit work goals, make the work environment conducive and appropriate and encourage communication and cooperation. Dealing with underperforming employees – some employees have issues that affect their work performance persistently. Challenge is that the problem is not the manager’s technically but since it affects the organization, the manager has to come in and possibly help the employee to cope with personal issues. Dealing with outstanding employees – employees with outstanding performance for the company must be treated differently as the others mainly by rewarding them. Without this, they may lose morale and do poor work due lack of motivation. Responding to crises – this is a challenge that main involves the ability of a manager to change plans when unexpected conditions present themselves. Such situations include an employee falling sick, resigning or getting harmed during work. The manager must be able to shift from the normal plan to another suitable for the moment. Essence of Communication in People Management The importance of communication in management can be clearly defined by the Theory of Constraints which has typical attributes of improving communication, planning and capacity for analysis. These come with lower levels of frustration and reduced management difficulties. So then apart from sufficing and satisfying, it keeps stress out tasking. In fundamental terms, the theory of constraints restricts a manager to responsibilities related to assigned tasks geared towards achieving goals. This then ensures to delineate underlying policy limitations from conflicting actions. The Thinking Process technique (Andersen, 2006) of this theory gives a quick map of the solution in proposal so as to see how far it would go in solving a management problem. It also enables noting of missing elements without which a desired outcome may not be realized. It is the basic technique with which the theory of constraints views any manageable system as a limited system with at least a constraint. The idea is to identify the restraint and redesign the system configuration around it so as to maximize on the concept. The technique that reveals the nature of conflicting actions in situations of solution dilemmas allows the operator of this theory to surface the facts about the guiding policy elements that could be violated if a particular approach is used. It is the technique of measurement which provides a clear representation of the conflicts, appropriate assumptions to be made and the possible costs of choosing a given approach. By providing a basis of high levels of both intrapersonal and interpersonal communication (Chen & Starosta, 2000), this theory discusses enhanced efforts of the manager against the problem of difficult management of personnel in modern organizations. According to Andersen (2006), this takes care of foreseeing and understanding the side-effects that may develop out of the management plans, against the management objectives. In a nutshell, the constraints theory basically improvises to turn and utilize the obstacle of management difficulty and help the manager to build stepping-stones through the transition into a working suitable management skill of a chosen area like people management. Probable people management skills include interpersonal management by way of communication and relations. Use of interpersonal and communicational skills can help a manager to practice their management functions and skills rather effectively in various ways (March, 2011). However, there can be times when the communicational and interpersonal skills themselves are insufficient in realizing the importance and functions of management skills. It is then important to develop appropriate ways or designs of implementing these interpersonal and communication skills. This view relies on the fact that different elements or types of management skills are interdependent. The idea is that even with the right tool, procedural and appropriate ways of putting that tool to use is equally important. This alone necessitates good communication skills and interpersonal relations. The manager has to be clear and confident when in discussions so as to enable achievement of the aims and objectives of the business (Schwartz, 2001). It is achieved by making good use of communications skills of enhancing productive relations. Taking part and taking an interest in what is happening in the employee group helps to encourage the functions of management skills and appreciating their importance. It is best that all interpersonal and communicational skills are used only when most appropriate and also that the person does not become over confident or authoritative when interacting with others. This takes into consideration that a human resource manager interacts with everyone at the workplace. In addition, making sure that a steady frame of mind is kept when dealing with others is a good form of communication (Menechella, 2001). The effectiveness of interpersonal and communicational skills towards the function of management is determined by approach used to implement management skills. People management is generally as difficult as the human resource managers report their experiences in modern organizations. The same report entails the management is more difficult when it involves creative and outstanding yet difficult employees. The trick is how to hire and manage creative but difficult employees. This tells if an organization is ready to do what it takes to keep creative people happy and therefore give their all to the organization. Premuzic (2013) suggests that a basic strategy is to establish a competitive environment that gives the employees reasons to defeat each other and want to perform better than their colleagues. It involves letting them fail and suffering the consequences for the same and surrounding them with people who give them competition. Competition is enough pressure, thus, employees should not be subjected to unnecessary pressures. Motivation is vital for human resource management but overpay is out of the question and every employee should be paid in accordance with job definitions, responsibilities and performance. Conclusion The question people management in modern organization has mostly arose due to the difficulty that personnel managers or human resource managers face in executing their responsibilities. This is a contemporary issue resultant from the continued industrialization and technological advancements experiences globally. This has seen an increased number of employees in organizations, an aspect which call for proper management of people, the employees, to ensure achievement of organizational goals and objectives. However, according to the discussion above, some of the challenges that presented difficulties at the dawn of industrialization and increased employment of personnel have not been effectively addressed. Conclusively, from the essay, there are a number of challenges that make management of people difficult. The important task is for the managers to identify these challenges and address them appropriately. The essay achieves the objective of establishing a background, outlining challenges and possible countermeasures to the problem. References Rebori, M. K. 2011. Goal Setting and Action Planning Skills: Community Board Development, 4(1). Boxall, P. and Purcell, J. 2006. Strategy and Human Resource Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Henderson, I. People management: Personnel Management and Human Resource Management. CIPD. Francis, M. 2007. Effective Management [online]. Available at: http://changingminds.org/articles/articles/effective_management.html [Accessed 25 May 2013]. Andersen, A. 2006. Theory of Constraints: Management System Fundamentals. Montvale: Institute of Management Accountants. March, A. A. 2011. Communication and Interpersonal Relationships: The Attention Factor, 212(1). Menechella, D. 2001. What’s wrong with you, why don’t you understand me? [onlne]. Available at: http://www.dellamenechella.com/what%27s%20wrong.html [Accessed 27 May 2013]. Stein, G. 2010. Managing People and Organizations: Peter Drucker's Legacy. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Tesarovicov, I. 2008. Modern approaches to leading an organization with focus on human capital. Journal of Information, Control and Management Systems, 6(2). Armstrong, M. 2009. Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 11th Edition. London: Kogan Page Boston Consulting Group. 2007. 2020 Vision, the manager of the 21st century, Australia: Innovation and Business Skills Australia. Schwartz, A. E. 2001. Communication Skills, Boston: Schwartz and Associates. Chen, G. M. and Starosta, W. J. 2000. The development and validation of the intercultural communication sensitivity scale. Human Communication, 3(1). Premuzic, T. C. 2 April 2013. Seven Rules for Managing Creative-But-Difficult People. Havard Business Review. Bergeron, P. 2000. Regional business intelligence: the view from Canada. Journal of Information Science, 26(3). Read More