Traits of the Successful Human Resource Department - Literature review Example

Abstract

All institutions depend on the contributions of employees to thrive. Employee motivation plays a significant in maintaining employees’ loyalty and improving productivity. The current business environment requires employees do technical processing of knowledge, which demands a new motivational approach different from the traditional ways of appreciating performance. Motivating factors in employment include remuneration increase, promotion, and proper job organization, good interpersonal relationship between management and employees, and positive job evaluation. The business organization should also have proper communication channel as well as current technologic advancement.

A motivated employee is a productive member of an organization.

Employees’ Management

Organizations recruit employees in various departments depending on demand. The employees serve in the organization following a specialty through training and experience acquired in various fields. The employers subject the potential candidates to a serious scrutiny and interviews before hiring them. After a successful recruitment process, the human resource department will determine the appropriate measures of maintaining the workers pertaining to salaries, social welfare, and security. The paper discusses motivation of employees as a management strategy of human resource.

Management of employees is the sole responsibility of the human resource department through safeguarding their welfare. The welfare issues include security, health cover, remuneration, job security, and social amenities. The issue of employee management entails four basic issues significant for all organizations. First, the organization should motivate the employees to perform their duties. Second, the management should ensure that there is a proper means of communication between them and the workers as well as the employees themselves. Third, the employees should have job protection from unfair dismissal. Finally, the department of human resource should have a sustainable way of addressing the workers’ performance as appropriate.

Proper management ensures that workers are motivated, united, and work diligently to ensuring success of the organization within and without. Poor management strategies usually lead to underperformance, lack of motivations, resigning of workers, competition, and eventual collapse of an institution. The human resource should note that the employees might portray the company negatively to the public in the case of dissatisfaction. The human resource department should always ensure that all the employees are motivated in their line of duty.

Motivating Employees

Motivation of the employees is strategically crucial in enhancing corporate dominance in the competitive environment. Motivated workers help in corporate progress especially in the current corporate world where institutions have access to capital, natural resources, and technology. The present environment requires employees to get more involved in the technical processing of knowledge, which demand a new motivational approach different from the traditional ways of appreciating performance. Motivation, alongside encouraging people to work towards the goals of the organization, involves getting individuals to acquire ownership of personal and corporate’s needs alike.

Approach to motivating employees depends on the remuneration state. Workers who feel dissatisfied with their pay package should have pay increase among other benefits. The other category is the knowledge workers who are comfortable with their salaries. Such should have individual attention, empowerment, leadership roles, and appreciation of achievements. The knowledge workers do non-routine, non-repetitive work requiring significant cognitive activity. The group indulges in research work, development activities, and professional service. All the knowledge workers are highly educated and qualified members of the staff. Importantly, these professionals take options whose outcome magnificently affects the performance of the company in which they work.

The motivation of employees links to the job characteristics and structure of the organization. The structure determines the gross complexity and challenges in a particular job description. Causes of job complexity may depend on the skill variety, autonomy, task significance, identity, and feedback. The complexity and challenges has a direct impact on the worker’s reaction to the organization and work. Most employees have negative attitude towards job centralization and formalization. Future alterations of the job characteristics after recruitment may also cause a change in the internal motivation and overall satisfaction. Centrality in the form of departmental units has a positive relation to skills variety, feedback, and autonomy. The workers at the central positions are influenced and additional autonomy reflects a higher outcome in job satisfaction and indication of motivation (Suneel, 2011).

Smith (2002) highlights five core drivers of commitment to work as the opportunities to personally grow, ability of the management to recognize the significance of family and personal life. The other drives include customer needs’ satisfaction, communications about the returns, and relevance of complying with the regulations of the job. The above factors will aid the employees’ comfortability at work hence a sense of belonging and motivation to continue working for the organization. The employer will also find employees that are more loyal when they provide benefits and advantages equivalent to the input by the employees. For a worker to be committed and motivated to perform their duties, the human resource management must meet both family and personal effects, recognize the jobs, address the work- related challenges, ensure benefits, and appreciate personal growth (Smith & Rupp, 2002).

Other contributors to motivation include the feedback from the job, coworkers, and supervisors. The feedback influences not only the internal motivation but also the instrumentality of the outcome mediated by promotion and pay increase. Therefore, the human resource should positively commend the employee through, positive feedback, job promotion, and pay rise as a way of motivation. The employees will always work diligently towards achieving the goals of the organization. Without proper measures in place, the employees will lack the urge to perform optimally hence low output.

Organization relies greatly on the flow of information up or down the ranks. Communication is essential for the employees as well as between them and the management. The critical communication between the management and the employees are the set of rules that govern the organization. The rules comprise of written policies to ensure that the organization performs according to the set standards. Procedures and rules provide a framework on the specific roles of every employee and nature of service rendered.

Communications occur at various levels, in diverse ways, for the individuals as well as the assistive devices in use within the organization. Communication is an integral part of developing the loyalty of an employee. The human resource should adopt various forms of communication depending on the intended information. The mode of communication depends on the cost and utilization. The modes available include oral, phone, emails, and fax. Emails are currently the most widely used mode of communication in organizations, especially among the elite groups. Despite one mode being popular, it is important to note that over- reliance may cause information fatigue. The management must, therefore, devise various to ensure diversity.

Communication relies greatly on the choice of words as opposed to judgment and speaker. Most employees judge based on the voice quality, in terms of inflection and tone, alongside other physical cues. The audience and staff of the organization comprehend the content, listen to the speaker. The audience will always prefer easy hearing as opposed to understanding the content. Through quality oral communication, the leadership can define an environment of passion and conviction among the subjects. Initially, the management had difficulties in communicating moral values of empathy, fairness, teamwork, responsiveness, and focus on excellence. Oral communication on a one-on-one basis is the only way creating a sense commitment, meaning, and trust. Emails, memos, notices, and circulars are not the best when it comes to making a meaning of the intended information. The voice gives the ultimate show of the spiritual power to communicate values of the organization. Authentic and personal verbal communication is critical in developing an individual for a competitive advantage. Despite the significance of verbal communication, technological changes slowly alter the modes of communication despite the enhanced media lacking the physical affect created by the face-to-face encounter with other members of the organization in the same physical environment.

The significant aspect of communication that motivates employees, according to Catasus, Martensson, & Skoog (2009), is the relaying of figures. The top management reveals more sense-giving cues through availing preferred actions, visions, and values regarding an institution. The workers feel motivated when the management rates their output in numbers. Human Resource Cost and Accounting is one such statistical technology that analyses and report the output of every worker in a particular organization.

Other forms of motivation among employees are the job design. Well-designed jobs and proper setting of goals stimulate the employees to perform excellently. The effect on the performance is because of the positive satisfaction and motivation on the particular worker. The human resource department should design the job such that the workers experience minimum stress in various contexts through enrichment, engineering, work life quality, social information processing method, socio- technical design, and the characteristics of the particular job design (Garg & Rastogi, 2005).

The research conducted by Garg and Rastogi (2006) revealed that the use of available technology and resources alongside training sessions has a definite increase in the motivation and productivity at social, group, and individual level. The other deduced factors include flexible schedules and variable enumeration programs by the organization. While designing a job, the human resource should bear in mind the internal determinants within the organization that will facilitate the opportunity creation for development of careers, creativity, and skills acquisition by the employees. The duo also added that routine evaluation of the workers would ensure that the employee finds out their areas of weakness and improves as appropriate. Ergonomically designed jobs create a safe working environment through considering the position of the workers and possible musculoskeletal injuries. A knowledgeable human resource leads to either proactive performance or outcomes. The linear fashion of acquisition and utilization of knowledge help achieve goals effectively and ensures autonomy in line of duty, thus motivating employees to perform as expected. In the conclusion, Garg and Rastogi (2006) acknowledged the significance of transformational style of leadership in motivating workers and the subsequent cohesion and a cultural environment natured by the workers themselves.

In summary, a successful human resource department is one that ensures that ensures motivation among the esteemed employees both the knowledge and semi- skilled. Motivation comes from both the intrinsic and extrinsic factors of the company. The management should, therefore, ensure that the welfare of the workers is a priority. Workers mind more of their personal and family effect, coworker’s relationships, career progress and development, conducive working environment, good remuneration, promotion, and safety. Some of these factors are attributes of the employers while others are about the organizational. A motivated employee is beneficial to the company and the self.