Professional Aspects of Human Resource Management - Case Study Example

Professional aspects of Human Resource Management

Introduction

This essay presents a outline of human resource management practices and their applicability in HR profession. It consists of the essential elements that are required for the development of an individual to succeed in career and add value for the growth of an organisation. It is segmented into five parts on the basis of the different modules that were discussed in class viz. lessons on thinking performer, importance of reflective learning and continuous process development, business environment and its implications on human resource, HRM practices and its professional applicability followed by self SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) analysis. It is a portrayal of what has been taught, how the learning can help in pursuing HR profession and where I stand after the completion of the project.

Foundations of professional knowledge and practice in HRM

The term Thinking-Performer is self explanatory. It defines a person who gives a good amount of thought on the objective, with proper research and resource and then works toward achieving it (self-driven). In HR context, a thinking performer would do the following:

• Active contributor to the organisational goals which comes with proper understanding of the existing strategies.
• Takes care of compliance both legal and ethical and is modest enough to accept that it is not real value addition.
• Finds the best, cost-effective and fastest way to do things that will reduce organisation’s investment.
• Think within the box and outside the box equally. It is important to focus on the consumer with their valuable feedback so as to understand business from client perspective and take prompt actions.

Figure1: Matrix: Thinking (Effectiveness) and Performance (Efficiency)

E F F I C I E N C Y

Source: (Johns and Perkins, 2007)

This model shows a directly proportional relation between thinking effectively and efficient outcome. A person with least effective thinking is a liability to any company with least efficient performance while a thinking performer is an asset because he is self motivated (CIPD, 2010).

Summary (Higgins and Zhang, 2009)

Non thinker + Non performer = Lifetime liability.

Non thinker + Performer = Automated bureaucrat

Thinker + Non performer = Wish-list dreamer

Thinker + Performer = always questions the purpose and seeks to find the better ways of doing things. For example, in an IT firm, there is continuous updating of the software and coding patterns. A thinking performer would seek the changes occurring and update his knowledge so that he can perform better.

Reflective learning: A mirror shows us our outward appearance and helps us to detect the flaws, learn and then improve. Similarly, in reflective learning there is looking back, pausing, pondering about the experiences, questioning and analysing the learning (Hilsdon, 2006).

Figure 2: Components of reflective learning

(Source: Author’s creation)

There are few models that can be used to do reflective learning-

Figure 3: Kolb’s Learning Cycle and Gibb’s Reflective Learning Cycle

(Source: Author’s creation)

Process of reflective learning: Creating a learning log is the best possible way to undergo the reflective learning procedure. It is a parallel process and should be done along with the learning; as delay in keeping a track will lead to forgetting what was taught or learnt. A learning log could be a reflective diary where things taught, learnt, areas and methods of improvement are noted down.

Role of reflection in professional practice

Reflective learning is a process of improvement through self awareness and by being one’s own judge. To be able to set goals, trying best to achieve them and analyse the gap between target and distance reached is a sign of superior emotional intelligence. People who are actively involved in reflective learning are often most sought after by companies as they have better understanding of goals and are active participants in the work processes. It will also help in challenging biased appraisals as one can keep a track on own performance. From my learning log, while doing the PESTLEE analysis, I understood the effect of too much security and privacy over the employees. It is important to maintain confidentiality but too much of privacy makes the employees feel untrustworthy.

CPD (Continuous Professional Development)

It is a self driven process where an individual manages own development without any external push by keeping a track record of experience beyond the initial training phase, learning based on the experiences and how the learning has been applied. It is a cyclic process as application will show the areas of improvement or help in setting development goals (Helena et al, 2014).

Figure 4: Summarising Continuous Professional Development

(Source: Author’s creation)

Process of managing own CPD:

Identification of the needs- To understand what needs to be learned, it is important to have clarity of the objective. For example, if HR is asked to generate the payroll of employees of a particular month using SAP application, the first thing would be to learn how to use SAP. Once that is done, a benchmark needs to be set which can be compared to a sample of payroll. Hence, after generating the payroll and comparing it with the sample, HR can analyse the accuracy and request for feedback so as to understand the lacunas.

PDP (Personal Development Plans) - It is a step-by-step method of setting, analysing and assessing the learning process. It begins with self SWOT followed by setting of the goals and applying best ways to achieve them. With checking of progress at regular intervals, the assessment of expected and actual performance is finally done in the last step.

As mentioned earlier, being a self-driven process it is comes with some barriers like excuses of time constraints or lack of support but all those can be overcome with the passion to learn, develop and contribute as it is a two-way process where achievement of career goals is related to the success of the enterprise.

Role of Continuous Process Development (CPD) in professional practice

Benefits of CPD are not restricted to self but its impact is beneficial to the organisation. CPD is always in relevance with the requirements of the organisation where one works, as standards are set through comparison of performance of others in the same department. After analysing the improvements that are required, CPD helps in maintaining and developing the skills to serve better. It is a cyclic process where knowledge needs to be updated with the change it brings. Change is the only constant and one who cannot update oneself with change loses value and competitiveness. With technological advancements, the frequency of change has increased multiple times and CPD ensures time-to-time up-gradation of relevant knowledge. For an individual, it helps in boosting up the confidence as knowledge imbibes the zeal to perform better than others. It helps to provide valuable contributions to the team efforts resulting in getting noticed among the group with future prospects of leading the group. It also helps in earning appreciation and spread influence.

Ethics, CSR and HRM

Ethics: comes from Greek word ‘Ethos’ meaning customs or habit while BBC has defined it as moral principles. It simply draws a line between good and bad. In the present time, philosophers tend to divide it into meta-ethics (based on origination of principles, mostly from our history or culture), normative (explains right or wrong) and applied ethics (animal rights) (BBC, 2014).

Origin of business ethics came late during 1980’s; earlier, the only motto of any business unit was profit maximisation without paying any heed towards the people who are working for the enterprise or the society in large. Business ethics are the codes of conduct based on right, wrong and fair moral judgements. Based on this, there are two opposite school of thoughts (Examiner.com, 2011)

Stockholder Theory

Stakeholder Theory

Milton Friedman, Nobel prize winning economist, stated that the only responsibility of a business unit lies towards its stockholders and that can be done only through profit maximisation within the purview of legal non-deceptive means.

Stakeholders include society at large apart from the stockholders who gets direct monetary benefits (return on their investments). According to Freeman, it is the moral obligation of any organisation to work towards the upliftment of the society in which it is operating with minimum wastage of resources like recycling processes.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

CSR as a concept started taking shape during 1950’s when management practitioners felt the urge of conscience. A business unit cannot work on its own; there exists a symbiotic relationship between its internal and external environment (give and take policy). It is the mutual exchange that determines how well a firm can do in its endeavour of seeking profit. CSR activities give opportunity to organisations to work for the society which in turn ensures growth and success through spreading positivity of the brand image.

Role of ethics and CSR in HRM

Human resource department deals with the manpower, their management and development which in turn determine the success of an organisation. An organisation runs with the joint effort of its entire people that work for a common goal set by the firm. Hence, ethics play a vital role in matters of leaves and compensation, health and safety, industrial relation amongst the employees. By sticking to ethical practices, HRM can also create a shield against legal issues that might crop up due to non compliance. For example, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. (Indian unit of Japanese automobile maker) Manesar plant had faced a major blow in 2012 due to labour protests arising out of unfair wage practices that caused the death of a HR manager and left several injured (The Economic Times, 2012).

Figure 5: Outcome of ethical practices

(Source: Author’s creation)

CSR in HRM

• Economic responsibilities: It is the basic responsibility of any company to generate revenue and maximise profit as it is answerable to all its shareholders who invested their money for its growth. Loss or degenerating rate of profit will affect the share price thereby affecting the monetary returns of its stockholders.
• Legal responsibilities: A corporation works under a certain government of a country and it is bound by its laws and legal environment. Any disobedience of the existing laws can lead to major set-backs and hamper of image of the company.
• Ethical responsibilities: For example, setting of fair price of products for all consumers irrespective of financial status.
• Philanthropic responsibilities: For example, Google donated around 5,000 Raspberry Pi computers for spreading computer science education among 25,000 children in Japan.

Figure 6: Outcome of CSR

(Source: Author’s creation)

HRM (Human Resource Management) and the business environment in different contexts

Figure 7: Business environment

(Source: Author’s creation)

A business unit operates within a particular environment through take and give policy. It adapts to the nature of the existing environment and forecasts the probable changes that will take place. It happens to be a cyclic process as every change brings a new change and the units that are good in predicting the upcoming changes can grow successfully. It is important to understand the business environment and the factors that can directly or indirectly affect the status quo. It helps in understanding the threats and opportunities, an in-depth learning through updated information, building of brand image and identify own strengths and weaknesses. The above diagram gives an overview about all the elements that need to be assessed in order to understand the business environment (Ibrahim and Primiana, 2015).

Figure 8: PESTLE analysis of APPLE Inc.

(Source: Author’s creation)

PESTLE analysis is the tool that helps organisation to understand the environment in which it is working and the probable changes that are bound to take place due to several factors. It is the role of the HR professional to do a proper time to time investigation, so that, forecasting and simultaneous planning can boost up the profit of the organisation and also protect it from upcoming threats. In recent time firms have realised the importance of the HR department as their strategic partner rather than a separate team working in isolation.

HR can explore the opportunities in the fast growing developing countries where people have more affinity towards APPLE brand compared to the markets of Europe and U.S. Hence, to combat the problems of stagnating income in its established market, it can focus more on the Asian market before any other company does that.

PESTLEE Analysis in HRM perspective:

Influences

External factors affecting organisation

Implications for HRM

Political

Political upheavals can disrupt manufacturing leading to increase in net production cost

Any hindrance in manufacturing will lead to non-feasible demands of the working class

Economical

Labour cost rise in China

Lay-offs and increase in working hours for existing employees will disturb work-life balance and will be a cause of dissatisfaction.

Social

Tapping areas where people are still unaware of its products

Opportunities for the employees to think in new ways to perform the job which in-turn will ascertain their dedication towards Apple Inc.

Technological

Cyber crime hampering Apple’s signature services

Employees sometimes face problem in working without knowing the purpose or objective, due to high level of privacy created by Apple to protect itself from intellectual theft. This creates employee grievance.

Legal

Venturing into intellectual property business requires high level of protection from theft, duplicity and information leakage

Another cause of grievance amongst employees as Apple’s policy of organisational secrecy takes out the fun from freedom in work.

Environmental

Manufacturing units in China creating pollution and other health hazards is a burning issue (Carnegie Council, 2012)

Health hazards among the employees leading to the problem of high employee turnover.

Ethical

APPLE’s manufacturing partner in China; FOXCONN has been reported for its inhuman working conditions (Wall Street Journal, 2013)

Suicides among the employees from high work pressure.

HRM as profession

Role of HR functions

Human Resource is that part of management which deals with the living component of any organisation; people. It ensures proper management of the employees and their relationship with the organisation. HR functions include five key roles (Tan and Nasurdin, 2011).

Executive role- It is the basic functional role of HR where the department looks into the management of people that work for the enterprise.

Auditor role: It is the role of HR to take care of compliance and ensures that all the activities that are taking place in the organisation and departments are at par with the company laws and guidelines of the HR policies.

Facilitator role: Here, HR plays the role of activator and ensures the fulfilment of goals of each department in terms of HR policies and imparts training if necessary.

Consultancy role: HR also plays the role of a teacher by imparting knowledge to the leaders or managers on professional ways of dealing with subordinates as not every employee showcase same kind of attitude, behaviour or intelligence.

Service role: The HR policies keep on changing with the changes in government policies and it is the HR who transmits the updated information among the organisation members to raise awareness.

HRM activities can be divided into five basic functions (Bamberger, Biron and Meshoulam, 2014).

• Staffing
• Training and development
• Performance management
• Maintenance
• Staff relations

Staffing: An organisation runs with the help of right kind of people with the right kind of skills, required to do the job that will suffice to the needs of the organisation’s goal. For this purpose, HR department needs to analyse the job requirements followed by analysing the exact number of manpower needed to do the job. Based on this data, HR starts his job of searching the right candidates which comes under the recruitment process. This step not only relates to finding prospective employees but also creating an application pool from where the best can be filtered out. After getting relevant number of applications begins the process of selection which is basically an elimination process in which the irrelevant entries are removed and only the best are skimmed out for the job. The final step is placement wherein the talent pool is placed for a job as per the requirement (Cengage Learning, 2013).

Figure 9: Summary of staffing process

(Source: Author’s creation)

Training and development: It is important for the employees (both fresher and experienced) in order to work efficiently as it gives the right kind of input required to perform in the job. Training is need based and provides the trainee with skill based knowledge which exclusively job related to which he needs to work effectively. Training is a part of development and latter is a much broader concept. Organisations often create developmental activities to prepare employees towards more challenging roles and responsibilities (HRMP, 2016).

Performance management: The following flowchart will summarise the steps that are involved in managing performance.

Figure 10: Steps of performance management

(Source: Author’s creation)

The entire process of performance management begins with the entry of a new employee till he leaves or retires. It is a necessary tool to improve the overall performance of an organisation through improvement of all the individual elements working with a common goal. It starts with setting of organisational goals and developing job descriptions to measure the major responsibilities. This builds a standard against which the performance can be compared. This is followed by checking the progress at regular intervals, providing the required coaching to bridge the gap between desired and actual performance and finally, arranging appropriate compensation in the form of incentives or promotions or rewards to felicitate the performers (Bruce, 2013)

Maintenance: All the employees working in and for an enterprise are bound by the policies of the place and HR is in-charge of health and safety rules, flexible leave policies or other benefits (in favour of employees).

Staff relations: It is related to communicating with the employees who are member of union and usually involves collective bargaining sessions regarding pay structure or working conditions.

Challenges involved in HR activities in professional field are discussed below

• In staffing: The major hurdle of recruiter is to find the right candidate as often the quality of application pool is not as desired. The best is already taken and it is hard to search and attract someone that the company actually needs.
• In training and development: It is important to enhance the skills of employees for better performance but with their improvement, attrition rate increases and it becomes hard to retain them back who would have otherwise formed the future pillars. The better an employee becomes higher are the chances of competitors to sway away such employees with attractive offers. Another challenge faced by HR professional in training is finding out the exact type of training that needs to be imparted and this often is faced by objections from the employees.
• In performance management: Accuracy, transparency and justification of appraisals are the major hurdles that HR faces in the entire process of performance management (Dublin Institute of Technology, 2013). Often misjudgements, halo effect and favouritism create a biased report and is a cause of disappointment among the employees leading short tenures (HR Daily Advisor, 2013).
• Maintenance: Under this, HR needs to take care of all the rules as per Company Act and make sure that all the employees abide by them. It is comparatively easier in a smaller organisation but in large organisations, maintenance and vigil is quite challenging.
• Staff relations: Any organisation is composed of people belonging to different backgrounds with varying cultures, beliefs and financial status. Hence, it is quite obvious that clashes will occur over time within the employees as well as with the management over various demands related to wages and leaves (The Wall Street Journal, 2011).

Skills, graduates and the HR professional

The first module taught about the concept of thinking performer. A person who uses his own logic to understand and then contribute to the task that needs to be performed, is a thinking performer. For example, a doctor first listens to the problems of his patient. After that he tries to diagnose the problem and relate it to the possible causes and finally, starts off with the treatment process. What I learnt from this module is how to orient my thinking process and then perform based on my drawn conclusions. To be able to think is different from to be able to think in the right direction and a thinking performer is the one who has the capability to think correctly and projects the thoughts through performance. This quality is very important for HR professionals as they need to deal with the variants of non thinking performers alongside the thinking performers. HR is the spine of an organisation as it forms a bridge between the employers and the employees. All the rules pertaining to the organisation are made and implemented by the HR, along with the needs of training and performance management and all these functions need critical thinking.

The second module discussed about ethics and CSR. Both of these helps in building the image of an organisation and also leaves the employees and society happy and content. Ethics is related to moral conscience wherein companies within the periphery of constitutional laws may cross the boundary of its own rules to create goodwill with its customer. For example, when Nestlé’s Maggi was reported to be unsafe, it immediately pulled out all its stock from the market and came back only after being certified safe (Live Mint, 2015). It cost the company a loss of 451.6cr in the Indian market but it stood strong on ethical ground. CSR activities of Disney add to its ever glowing reputation. It provided the maximum aid to the earthquake affected Haiti in 2010 and promotes films based on environmental protection. My learning from this module is that it is not always necessary to be a top performer but it is more important to stay correct on moral ground and do what should be done. It gives inner satisfaction and brings smile on people’s face. For HR professionals, it is an important aspect to enhance the company’s brand image along with the profit. Non-monetary benefits sometimes help in generating revenue as people feel connected to the brand that can boost up sales.

Third module was based on business environment and how it impacts the organisation and its employees. There are positive and negative impacts involved with the internal and external environment; like with company’s expansion plans into untapped markets, employees get the chance of working in different market segment which comes with new challenges and a shift from daily routine work. Internal politics and favouritism leads to dissatisfaction amongst employees which is the negative impact. My skills in this regard got enhanced in determining how to analyse the business environment with the help of PESTLEE or SWOT. This is also relevant to the needs of HR profession as HR being integral part of business management needs to forecast the probable environmental changes and its impact on the sales and employees.

The fourth module has discussed in depth about HRM as profession. Earlier, HR profession was sidelined as a department that only takes care about the basic needs of the employees like payroll and compensation and was better known as personnel manager. Later, with various scientific researches, in the second half of 20th century, it transformed into management function with equal participation in the core business decisions. I have developed the skills of understanding human psychology which plays a vital role in the process of recruitment and retention. Also, I learnt the importance of having healthy work environment among set of culturally varying people and how it influences work-life balance. My skills are necessary to pursue HR profession as it is the role of the HR to understand the manpower requirement of the organisation and hire appropriate candidates who can add value towards its growth.

Figure 11: SWOT on SELF

(Source: Author’s creation)

After doing a SWOT analysis on self, I have come across certain weaknesses in me that I need to overcome; time and experience can help in doing so. I can study human psychology as part of my free time exercises so that I can become a professional with logical thinking instead of emotional. Opportunities always crops from strengths and weaknesses as the former will assist in doing what I am good at and the latter will silently indicate what not to do. Apart from that, I feel an in-depth knowledge of HR laws will help me in formulating and implementing laws in future.

Conclusion

The learning from the modules puts light on subjects of thinking or non-thinking styles of performers and non-performers. Thinking performers are the assets of any company as they add genuine value to the organisation and form the core group involved in active strategy formulations. They undergo self development programmes through CPD and reflective learning and do not need to push and pull factor of success. They are also involved in analysing the business environment so as to understand and forecast possible potential opportunities or threats and actively strategise policies; to act as pillar of support for the organisation. HRM practices are not just printed words in a book but have real implications without which organisation will fail to stand still in today’s world of severe competition and unceasing change. HR should actively take part in making business strategies with budget plans that will ensure maximum utilisation of the resources available and at the same time be empathetic towards the employees.

Reference List

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