HR Management and ICT - Essay Example

Research Paper: Business Information Management Table of Contents Introduction 3 Human Resource Management and Information and Communication Technology 3 Human Resource Management 3 Function of HRM 4 Usefulness of ICT in HRM 5 Impact of ICT change in HRM delivery 6 Case study 8 Conclusion 10 Reference List 12 Introduction Human Resource Management and Information and Communication Technology Human Resource Management The global business market environment consists of firms that belong to several different types of business operations. The business activities of the firms may vary largely among them. However, almost all business firms have one common goal, which is to make sufficient money to keep the business sustainable. In order to do that, they require people who are capable of utilizing the available physical assets and generate revenue for the company. To put it simply, the workforce of a company can also be considered as a resource that is capable of generating cash flow. According to Armstrong (2008), the human resources are the most important ones that the company can have, without which it is impossible to run any business operations. Thus, the human resources are the human work force of an organization that is capable of running the business operations of the company and generate revenue. Human Resources Management (HRM) involves managing the organization’s workforce. It encompasses a wide range of activities involving recruitment of employees, providing with training, compensating for their job work, developing policies to protect and take care of their interest and creating strategies to retain the skilled employees (Barber, 2008). This suggests that managing the human resources involves a series of activities that eventually lead to the welfare of and self-development of the employees. This as a result leads to higher human capital for the organization, which in turn helps to improve overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. Thus, properly managing the human resources is imperative to the organizational success and sustainability. Over time, the function and responsibilities of the human resource department has evolved. Previously, the roles of the HR department (HRD) were to take care of the recruitment process, the employees’ payroll and maintain a steady work force. However, owing to the changing global business market environment, the job role of the HRD has expanded and evolved (Bondarouk, 2011). Now, apart from the recruitment process and managing payrolls, the HR managers also take care of the employee retention by improving their motivational level of the employees. This is mostly because, more than recruiting new employees, retaining the existing ones is quite important. Therefore, increasing their motivational level by offering a favourable working environment, an interesting job role and rewards will not only drive them to work harder but it will also make sure that they will not leave the organization easily. Function of HRM The human resource management takes care of several organizational functions related to the employees and organizational welfare. The functions of HRM have been detailed in the following paragraphs. Staffing: As mentioned earlier, every organization requires a people to run the business operations. Therefore, the firm needs to recruit new employees, which is facilitated through the human resources department. The HRD recruits new people with the required skills and knowledge that can be properly utilized by the required job role. The HR managers develop a staffing plan that allows them to indentify the number of employees required in the firm based on the expected revenue generation. The recruitment should always be done following the principle of “right person, right job”. Improper job allocation may lead to high level of attrition and employee turnover in the organization, which in turn can prove to be detrimental for the firm (Bondarouk, 2011). Developing Policies: The HRD develop policies which are usually designed to take care of the interest of both the employees and the organization. These policies create certain rules and regulations and it is expected that both the employer and the employees will follow those regulations. These policies can only be effective if the rest of the workforces are willing to contribute to the objectives of the human resource department which is to improve the human capital of the firm and increase its overall productivity and working efficiency. These policies include disciplinary codes, dress code, ethical policies and resource usage policies (Boxall and Purcell, 2009). Compensation and Benefits: The HRD ensures that the remuneration paid to the employees are justified and fair depending on their job roles, skills required and level of individual experience. It also includes other privileges like health benefits, retirement plans, incentives, vacation plans, etc. Retention: The HR managers must ensure that the skilled employees and workers who are responsible for the organizational success are retained in the firm for a long period of time. In order to achieve high retention level, they need to increase the motivational level of the employees and create a work friendly environment with sufficient resources for the employees (Gratton, 2008). Usefulness of ICT in HRM The advent of technological advancement has changed the way the organizations conduct their operational activities. It has allowed the firms to become more productive and use its valuable resources and time efficiently. ICT or Information and Communication Technology is a part of a greater field of Information technology. ICT is concerned with creating seamless communication among different parties within a network. It has allowed the firms to combine various technologies and devices such as computer terminals, intranet networks, robust knowledge management system and wireless access network, etc. These implementations have made it easier for the employees to communicate both horizontally as well as vertically across the hierarchical ladder (Tiwana, 2000; Dove, R., 1999). According to (Ruël, Bondarouk and Looise, 2004) an organization characterized by high levels of communication is most likely to have a higher productivity, efficiency and employee retention. Good communication removes any room for ambiguity and confusion in job roles and responsibilities. This as a result, allows the employee to focus on the organizational objectives and contribute to the organizational success. Moreover, easy communication also allows the supervisors to give proper guidance to the subordinates and monitor their progress. At the same time, the subordinates can also give feedback to the higher authority regarding any issue that they may have faced. Thus, seamless communication allows an organization to have a good operational efficiency (Greer, 2010). Thus, it can be stated that if the communication level of the organization can be improved then it will positively influence the performance of the organization. Keeping this in mind, the firms have incorporated ICT within the organization. As a result, it has completely changed the way the employees communicate with each other. Firms have been using communicational technologies like emails, voice over IP, video conferencing, etc. This as a result has allowed the firms to keep in contact with its employees. Moreover, email communication also makes it easier for transferring data and keeps communicational records (Bondarouk, 2011). The increasing usage of smartphones has also allowed the employees to access and send mails on the go, thereby keeping constant communication with the employer. Thus, it can be stated that the ICT has effectively improved the organizational performance and increase the productivity of individual employees. However, implementing ICT can also have certain challenges or ill effects on the employees and the organization. The employees who are most conversant with the traditional modes of communication may find it cumbersome to communicate via emails and other electronic mediums. Moreover, communication via electronic medium has also reduced the frequency of face to face communication, which may influence the motivational level of the employees. (Steijn and Tijdens, 2005) have also mentioned that increased level of email communication has also extended the working hours of the employees thereby increasing their work related stress, which eventually leads to poor performance and employee turnover. Impact of ICT change in HRM delivery ICT has been utilized in organizations for the past decade. Over the period, it has undergone several changes and has gradually evolved to a better version of communicational technologies. ICT has helped the companies to create a more connected organization which not only have a seamless communicational infrastructure, but at the same time it also incorporates a robust knowledge management system. One of the primary objectives of HRM is to improve on the human capital of the firm. The human capital includes the overall skills, abilities and knowledge base that the organization holds (King and Marks, 2008). These are the resources that the firms utilize to run its business operations. Thus, it is imperative for the organization to ensure that it bears the highest possible level of human capital, as the success of the firm is highly dependent on the level of human capital that the organization is capable of fostering. This can be achieved by conducting employee development programs to improve their overall skills and knowledge, thereby increasing their competency level. Incorporating ICT in the organizational structure has allowed the organizations to further improve the employee development programs (Goh, 2002). Owing to the technological advancements, communications within a firm have evolved far more than the mere email communication. Robust knowledge management systems have been developed to improve the employee development programs. Employee communication has also been improved by implementing executive social networking and secured intranet communication. The rising usage of internet has also made it easier for the HR managers to make their recruitments. It has allowed headhunting much easier for the HR executives owing to the online resume submission and several other third party job portals. Apart from the recruitment process, the HRM delivery within the organization has also changed over time within the organization (King and Marks, 2008). Almost all the well established firms have incorporated knowledge management system, which are a combination of database management and ICT. It allows the employees to share knowledge and gain organizational knowledge easily. Previously, in order to share knowledge with other employees, an individual needed to have a face to face conversation. This may have proved to be effective, but it came at the cost of precious organizational time. However, at present the seamless connectivity among the employees across departments and different business units has allowed them to share their knowledge and experience with other. This as a result has allowed the HRD to implement a far better employee development system. Furthermore, the employees are also capable of having access to the organizational data according to their convenience. Thus it can be stated that the ICT change has successfully improved the HRM delivery for the organization. The ICT has also allowed the HR managers to accurately monitor the employee activities owing the interconnectedness of the organizational intranet. This has brought the HR department and the employees much closer. The employees can communicate their issues and problems with the HR department with ease, and at the same time the HR executives can also counsel the employees regarding their problems. The primary advantage of ICT is that all communicational activities within the organization are secured and it cannot be eavesdropped by any third party. This as a result has increased the confidence level among the employees to report any ongoing issues or unethical activities. This has facilities the HR executives to have a clear insight of the organisational activities and take necessary actions accordingly (King and Marks, 2008). Several multinational firms have their branches distributed all across the world. Following traditional mode of organizational communication would make it quite difficult for the employees to communicate across borders and cost extensive as well. Implementation of video conferencing and VOIP has allowed the employees to easily make communication all across the world. ICT has also improved the way how vertical communication takes place. Previously, communicating with the higher authority used to be quite difficult as the communication had to go through several intermediaries. At often times, these intermediaries put barriers to communication between the higher authority and the employees (Tiwana, 2000). However, owing to the centralized intranet services, the employees are capable of communicating with almost any individual in the organization irrespective of the physical or hierarchical distance. Thus, it can be stated that the ICT along with other technological advancements has allowed the orgazanitions to deliver a higher HRM delivery at higher level of resource efficiency. Case study This section of the paper discusses about the secondary data collected by the researcher. The secondary data are collected from secondary sources of high credibility and authenticity (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). The case study talks about the implementation of technology and knowledge management in British Petroleum. It encompasses the discussion of how the HRM of the company has changed after the implementation of technological advancements and how the company has improved its business operations. As it has been mentioned in the previous sections, the employee development is one of the primary objectives of the HRM. The organizations always ensure that the skill sets and the knowledge base of the employees are at the highest possible level. Having the highest human capital will enable the firm to adopt new innovative business strategies and have higher productivity and efficiency. Thus, improving the overall HRM practices will lead to competitive advantage of the firm in the industry. Moreover, having the right skills for the allocated job role also allows the employees to give the maximum possible output. Several well established firms have taken up different strategies to improve the employee development programs and the organizational knowledge management system. This section analyses the strategies taken up by British Petroleum. British Petroleum (BP) is best known as an oil and energy company. It has four primary business segments, upstream, downstream, chemicals and gas and power. The company holds more than 150 business units across all the four business segments. Prior to the implementation of ICT and other technological services, the company faced certain challenges in communicating organizational knowledge across all of its business units. Owing to its extremely large business activity and the overseas presence of BP, it was quite difficult for the higher management to make seamless communication with its employees and disseminate knowledge among them. Previously, knowledge sharing only took place through face to face communication and telephonic conversations. This process was quite cumbersome and required the employees to travel great distances to attend meetings. As a result a large amount of organization’s useful time was wasted. Moreover, the HR department also found it difficult to communicate with a large number of employees (Valot, 2010). In order to overcome these challenges and to improve the overall business operations of the company, BP decided to implement a knowledge sharing system in the year during the 1990s. The knowledge sharing system uses technology based on communication systems and information technology. The primary objective of this initiative was to create “virtual teams” where the members are capable of working with each other in close collaboration without having to cover great physical distances. To put it simply, the implementation of ICT would help the company to bring the entire workforce together. This initiative allowed the geographically separated teams to work together on one projects and share their valuable inputs with each other by using the technological tools like intranet communication and video conferencing (KM Best Practices, 2014). Implementing such system deep into the organization requires huge change management. It requires radical changes within the workforce and to start a completely new organisational culture based on knowledge and innovation. Such huge changes often come with challenges from inside the organization. It has been mentioned by (Armstrong, 2008) that any new changes brought to an organization is seen with scepticism and pessimism. The older employees are reluctant to move to a new organizational culture as they feel comfortable with the older practices. However, it is the responsibility of the HR department and the higher management to prepare the employees for the new upcoming changes. Bondarouk (2011) further mentioned that almost every initiative to make an organization better comes with certain internal barriers and dispute in the form of conflict of interest. Before implementing any new technological tools that is capable of changing the way the employees conduct their daily scheduled work, the organization needs to prepare to face the transition. BP also faced these challenges; its employees were reluctant to use the new system and preferred to stick to the traditional practices. Some of the older employees perceived that the new technology may replace their services. However, BP successfully communicated the essential truth about the new technological implantations and how it will help the employees to deliver higher value for the company. Over time, the company motivated the employees to utilize the knowledge sharing system and allowed the employees to work in collaboration by creating the virtual teams. Overcoming the challenges and implementing the ICT in the organization in a global perspective allowed the company to improve the overall performance of the company. The company was able to share knowledge and improve the skills of the employees. The ICT made it easier for the firm to have a successful knowledge management system that covers a wide range of knowledge base from managerial practices to engineering works involving drilling and project management. Creating a huge archive of knowledge allowed the employees any of their required data under one roof. It also allowed the employees to share their knowledge with each other. This helped the BP to create a unified knowledge management system which allowed all the employees irrespective of his physical location could leverage from the experience shared by another employer who may be present half way across the world. The robust knowledge management system and the seamless interconnectivity within the organization allowed it to gain high competitive advantage in the industry. Boxall and Purcell (2009) mentioned that any company who has the higher level of knowledge is most likely to have long term success in the new future. The company holds potential future in the technological advancement, particularly in advanced cloud computing and executive social network. The rise of social networking has allowed several firms to create a dedicated social network that allows the employees to openly discuss about work related issues or any ongoing project. In terms of HRM delivery, it will prove to be effective in maintaining high levels of employee engagement owing to better communication and transparency. Cloud computing, although at its infancy stage will allow the company to create web based applications that can be accessed by the employee from anywhere with a computer. These applications will give more interactive knowledge management solutions to the employees. Moreover, it will also increase the organizational security against potential cyber security threats. BP needs to constantly innovate on the grounds of improving its people management to ensure future growth and sustainability (Gratton, L., 2008). Conclusion This research paper has revealed the importance of human resource management and how it can be improved by technological implementation particularly the incorporation of Information Communication and Technology (ICT). The function of human resource is to manage the human work force of the company and also to ensure that the employees are capable of delivering value to the organization. In order to achieve that the firms must incorporate a robust communicational system that allows the employees to work in collaboration. ICT allows the firms to not only implement a better communicational system but also to incorporate an effective employee development system in the form of knowledge management system. The knowledge management system allows the company to increase the overall human capital of the employees. It facilitates the employees to learn from each others’ experience and mistakes. Moreover, it also allows the firms to create virtual teams where the employees can work in collaboration with each other irrespective of their location. British Petroleum is one the first companies to incorporate technology to improve the people management by introducing knowledge sharing tools and intranet connectivity. The company like any other faced significant challenges while implementing the new system. The employees were sceptical about its usage and utility. However, the company successfully managed the change by conducting training and making proper communication about the necessity of the ICT implementation. This as a result allowed the company to gain competitive advantage in terms of efficiency and productivity thereby ensuring future growth and sustainability. Reference List Armstrong, M., 2008. Strategic Human Resource management. A Guide to Action. 4th ed. London: Kogan Page Ltd. Barber, A. E., 2008. Recruiting Employees: Individual and Organizational Perspective. 4th ed. CA: Sage Publications Bondarouk., T., 2011. Electronic HRM in Theory and Practice. 5th ed. London: Chapman and Hall. Boxall, P. and Purcell, J., 2009. Strategy and human resource management. 7th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dove, R., 1999. Knowledge management, response ability, and the agile enterprise. Journal of knowledge management, 3(1), pp. 18-35. Goh, S. C., 2002. Managing effective knowledge transfer: an integrative framework and some practice implications. Journal of knowledge management, 6(1), pp. 23-30. Gratton, L., 2008. Strategic Human Resource Management. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Greer, C. R., 2010. Strategic Human Resource Management. 4th ed. London: McGraw-Hill Education. King, W. R. and Marks, P. V., 2008. Motivating knowledge sharing through a knowledge management system. Omega, 36(1), pp. 131-146. KM Best Practices, 2014. Bp Profile. 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