Evaluation of Human Resource Management Activities - Term Paper Example

 «Evaluation of Human Resource Management Activities» TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 4 2. Employee Motivation……………………………………………………………. 5 3. Developing the individual at British Airways…………………………………… 9 4. Critical appraisal – Motivation and development……………………………….. 12 5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….. 14 Bibliography 1. Introduction British Airways (BA) appears to maintain a heavy focus on human resource management activities as part of the firm’s short- and long-term strategic policy. Unlike some other companies which focus on profitability as the primary factor, where human capital is considered an asset for only its value to the firm’s financial portfolio, British Airways appears to remain devoted to providing excellence in using equality to enhance staff motivation and has also developed a performance management system in which human resources leaders are much more active in implementing change and policy formation at the company. Additionally, British Airways openly acknowledges that the firm’s people are at the heart of business success as this is a company which requires excellence in customer service. In today’s difficult business climate, human resources professionals must come to recognise which HR models for reward and motivation are best-suited to enhancing the firm’s image in the minds of its customers. By providing staff with rewards for performance, as part of a performance management system, and establishing the appraisal systems necessary to provide accurate employee assessment, British Airways appears to have established an HR system which brings considerable value to the company. However, despite the company’s HR successes, there are noticeable defects in existing HR policy at the company which require adjustment in order to achieve maximum return on human capital investment. This report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of existing BA human resources activities and policies, offering a critical evaluation of these systems and philosophies on organisational success. 2. Employee motivation One of the main successes with existing HR policy at British Airways involves how human resources interacts with employees on a regular basis. At BA, it appears that human resources is required to take on a visible leadership role, acting as much more than an entity which merely creates HR policy but works as the key implementer of these functions. For example, British Airways’ HR model strongly reinforces the necessity for 360 degree feedback. Under the performance management model, British Airways recognises the importance of engaging employees throughout the entire year rather than measuring employee successes or failures in an annual appraisal meeting. One representative from British Airways offers that “traditional performance management systems which revolve around measuring an employee’s achievements against a set list of objectives in an appraisal meeting is simply outdated” (Peacock, 2008: 44). This suggests a more progressive organisation which relies on human resource professionals to involve themselves in employees’ daily activities rather than being an organisational figurehead in which they report yearly to receive small salary increases based on structured performance criteria. BA further recognises that yearly appraisal meetings tend to limit employee potential simply due to the fact that it forces employees to work in a pre-defined set of role tasks (Peacock, 2008: 45). Traditional HR systems appear to often establish a set of performance-related criteria which gets utilised over and over again even as the business evolves throughout the years. As job roles change and business improvements occur (such as changes to the management hierarchy or changes in customer service policy), companies require a flexible HR model which allows for routine analysis of business activities in order to measure how employees are affected by internal or external changes. For instance, in the mid-1990s, British Airways launched an organisational initiative entitled Leadership 2000, a company-wide change involving transfer of staff to different headquarters and a realignment of senior management (amid others). According to Axelrod (2000), British Airways realised that traditional HR systems, if improperly coordinated, can actually serve to decrease motivation to perform if change practices are not controlled by HR leaders. Essentially, if business decisions, such as Leadership 2000, are dictated at the senior level with no human resources intermediate, the results can be catastrophic to long-term business success and employee willingness to perform to company expectations. It would appear that British Airways recognises the importance of human resources intervention in the routine operations of the company. Unlike other companies, BA promotes the importance of a solid linkage between HR staff and the generic employee, allowing human resources to act much like a mentor for individual development and career-path assistance. In this respect, the human resources manager (or specialist) is granted significant authority to not only assess employee contribution to the company, but to actively engage staff members in order to assist them in performance excellence. Thus, it can be said that British Airways maintains a much more progressive appraisal system in which active HR feedback is taken into consideration as well as giving employees more flexibility in stretching their own ingenuity when assessing job role expectations. The HR model at British Airways is one in which effectiveness is the most noticeable outcome by allowing human resources to become an active advocate for employee development, offering them a very fair performance assessment based on actual, first-hand employee assessment stemming directly from HR professionals. In essence, British Airways recognises the vast importance of employee contribution and motivation to long-term business success, therefore HR has become a crucial component to both leadership and management successes. The end result is higher levels of employee motivation and increased organisational performance. Performance appraisals at British Airways (and other companies) are also vital to achieving long-term strategic success, from a senior management perspective. Strategic policy is created at the highest levels of the management hierarchy which dictates which specific activities or processes will be implemented in order to achieve long-term growth and profitability. Sound strategic policy cannot be created without the intervention and feedback of the firm’s HR professionals. This, then, creates a rather unique linkage between the HR function and the strategic, senior management leader, granting HR professionals at British Airways significantly-higher authority as a tool to assist in strategic policy formation. This is supported by Caruth and Humphreys (2008), who offer that traditional performance evaluation used at other companies is inadequate as a tool to measure employee performance and to give companies strategic control. The authors offer that “without consistent alignment between these two functions, the performance appraisal is nothing but an exercise in futility” (Caruth and Humphreys, 2008: 24). It is important to identify the linkage between strategic managers and the HR professional at British Airways as the company appears to recognise that equality is important for building positive staff motivation. Pettinger (2002) highlights recent changes at British Airways in which it was decided at the senior level that facilities changes were necessary to create a more rewarding and motivational staff environment. The business decided to take a club concept approach in which senior managers were required to abandon their upscale offices and work directly with subordinate employees and managers (Pettinger). The intention was to boost motivation by highlighting equality at British Airways and provide a comfortable and quality work environment. In this strategy, HR professionals were actively involved in the new club concept approach, organising change and using employee feedback as a tool for measuring the effectiveness of the new, unified office strategy. Though research did not indicate whether British Airways was successful in this new venture, it strongly reinforces the rather progressive measures being undertaken by human resources professionals at the company to go above-and-beyond traditional HR management systems and actively promote growth, equality, and rewards for performance which are strong motivational attributes to the existing HR policies at British Airways. One specific motivational issue faced by British Airways involved a recent outsourcing decision which did not heavily involve HR in the decision-making processes. British Airways works with a variety of trade unions which appear to sometimes complicate HR activities. One professional suggests that the role of an effective HR manager is to “rescue the mess when meltdown occurs” (Murphy, 2005: 15). Outsourcing contracts, by their very definition, tend to take jobs away from existing staff members or others in the local community who would benefit from employment at companies like British Airways. These decisions can create negative animosity between staff and management or even between union leadership and the company HR department. At BA, a recent outsourcing decision was undertaken by senior management without consulting human resources, leading to large-scale repercussions in terms of diminished staff motivation and the creation of negative publicity in the process. Why was outsourcing described as part of the HR function in motivating and rewarding staff? When senior management makes strategic policies or decisions without consulting HR at British Airways, who are aware of what employees need due to their consistent visibility in daily job roles, the end result can be policies which are both ineffective and serve to decrease employee loyalty to perform to company expectations. When staff members are witnessing their long-time friends and colleagues being replaced with outsourcing contracts and having no HR advocate to discuss these complicated issues, this might potentially create a rift between employees and management at the top levels of the management hierarchy. In the case of British Airways outsourcing strategies without heavy HR involvement, the company experienced employee disengagement from task performance and created a wide-variety of animosity both internally and externally. Even though British Airways recognises the importance of the HR function in keeping employees motivated and given opportunities for personal development, it does appear that there is a weakness between the senior management levels at the firm and the HR department. Strategic policies are being created without the counsel of HR professionals who are well-aware of employee needs, leading to long-term disengagement toward meeting company objectives. It is quite clear that British Airways, despite its many successes, maintains a significant weakness in policy creation and implementation between senior management and the HR professional. Though the company’s annual report often expresses the firm’s commitment to excellence in employee management and satisfaction, there are clearly deficiencies in the linkage between strategy and human resource management. 3. Developing the individual at British Airways This report briefly identified the role of the HR professional at British Airways in moulding and developing individual talents. This appear to be a strong focus at the firm, which is attributed to the firm’s long-term successes both in profitability and in enhancing the overall customer service experience. British Airways, it appears, deconstructs existing, traditional HR models in this respect by identifying specific skill-sets that the company is looking for and moulds these expectations into the performance management criteria designed to build a staff of highly-skilled employees and the creation of diverse work groups. To create a more enhanced HR system designed to foster employee development, the company established what is known as the Employee Involvement Index, a twice-annual survey which allows employees to identify perceived deficiencies in the organisational design, in policy formation, or any other number of internal or external suggestions for improvement (BA Annual Report, 2007). Says current British Airways senior management, “Investing in and developing our people, through training…is a fundamental building block in support of our plans” (BA Annual Report, 2007: 34). Other companies might not consider a human resources survey such as the Employee Involvement Index to be a positive skills development tool or motivational incentive to participate in open discussion about company issues. Such a survey might allow for employee bias to be incorporated into survey responses, thus somewhat invalidating responses. However, the fact that British Airways devotes such a significant amount of human resources capacity to fulfilling the developmental needs of employees speaks loudly of the firm’s dedication to streamlining human resources and making this job function much more interactive in daily employee activities. Because this survey is so new within BA, the programme’s successes have not yet been identified. However, in the first year, employee participation in this survey reached 65 percent, with a goal of at least 75 percent participation in 2008 (BA Annual Report). This represents a focused human resources approach for employee engagement and allowing them to identify specific job-related issues which require attention. Likely, if an employee believes they are being under-utilised in their current job role, the survey will allow HR professionals to engage the employee at the individual level and work to develop their skills to move on to a new job role or correct the job-related deficiencies which exist. Though no literature fully describes the specific developmental targets set by British Airways as part of the new focus on employee engagement, it is clear that the firm has dedicated a significant volume of resources and strategic knowledge toward satisfying employee developmental needs. It was previously identified in this report that there is a deficiency in the linkage between senior-level policy formation and HR involvement in these activities. It would appear that by the end of 2007, British Airways had developed new systems to develop employees by making them more interactive and vocal regarding their unique job roles and provides human resources with a template by which to promote or suggest organisational changes designed to enhance employee satisfaction and their individual career paths. This business philosophy allows HR professionals to remain visible and active in the daily operations of the business, allowing employees to observe that the company is taking their job roles and expectations seriously. With the firm’s long-term commitment toward a more progressive performance management system and 360 degree feedback policy already identified at BA, this new developmental focus appears to inter-link performance management with individual mentoring to build a more dedicated and positive staff. There was no research which provided evidence that British Airways maintains any deficiencies in employee development or that the firm has created HR policies which are not congruent with building a more well-rounded and skilled staff. Employees appear to genuinely enjoy working at British Airways, which might be the catalyst for why the firm is currently the UK’s largest airline companies (British Airways, 2007). Positive employees will generally create positive customer service, giving customers the impression of a well-structured and dedicated staff who only serve to enhance the customer experience when flying BA. It appears that HR professionals at British Airways are consistently scanning the environment for potential employee dissatisfaction and create innovative and flexible programmes to achieve the maximum of human capability and potential. In this respect, employee development is on the forefront of business decision-making and is supported by HR professionals in nearly every capacity. This might give British Airways the distinction of a company worthy of benchmarking in terms of how HR and employees communicate and promote internal change. The firm’s apparent focus on building employee competencies through routine HR intervention likely creates a rewarding, equal, and motivating work environment which only leads to long-term business success by having such a unified HR system. 4. Critical appraisal – Motivation and development Though the company maintains room for improvement, in comparison to other firms which experience high turnover ratios or complications with unmotivated staff members, British Airways’ inclusive and progressive HR systems contribute highly to organisational successes at the firm. There appears to be a very strong focus on creating work environments and job role expectations which are flexible and do not rely on a single template by which to measure expectations toward performance. For example, by first measuring what an employee is actually capable of accomplishing, British Airways designs job roles and career path strategies which fit what employees are actually looking for in terms of job satisfaction. This is evident through the development of a 360 degree feedback system which engages many individuals in the company to offer feedback about employee performance. This system creates a unified company with a sense of community in which all members are consistently looking out for the well-being of others and identifying areas where skills can be developed further to enhance motivation and secure competitive advantage with strong human capital. Unlike other companies which might rely less on human resources professionals when making staffing decisions, British Airways relies strongly on the input of HR managers, giving them increased autonomy toward meeting worker needs. This likely motivates the HR manager as well as the employee by granting this flexibility in all angles of business operations and decision-making. The only missing linkage at the firm appears to be the lack of communication and engagement between senior management and the HR professional, allowing for poor strategic decisions to be made at the highest levels of management. Whenever strategic decision-making is going to impact more than simply the company bottom line and will potentially maintain complications in the business environment, the HR professional should be considered as a vital component to ensuring that nothing is over-looked. A strategic outsourcing decision which might, at first, appear to be a quality long-term strategy for boosting profitability by eliminating excess payroll can later become a human resources disaster if the HR professional is not actively involved. The largest strength, then, at British Airways is in the flexibility of management and HR design which places HR at the center of all business activities as a quality resource for internal change management and performance management. British Airways further works toward motivating others by expressing equality as a primary business focus and actually acting on these beliefs in a method which is visible by employees. By adjusting senior managers to a more club working environment and eliminating the intimidating or upscale offices, this has put managers into the forefront of lower-level staff activities and appears to have bridged the gap between management and subordinates in a way that is satisfying to employees. British Airways reinforces the importance of community and customer service as priority foundations for good business practices and applies the tangible steps necessary to achieve these goals by utilising human capital as a primary business decision. In many respects, British Airways’ willingness to take action, rather than merely distributing literature which emphasises a support for employee motivation and development, is likely why employees are satisfied and the company does not experience problems with high turnover from dissatisfied workers looking for new opportunities. 5. Conclusion British Airways clearly recognises where the firm’s problems lie, today, in terms of managing human resources. The company has made the HR role so centralised to the entire business model to the degree where employees are consistently engaged with the HR leader to provide excellence in job role satisfaction and reward for performance. British Airways, unlike other companies, takes this a step further by designing the entire HR function around creating competent human capital which can contribute to long-term business successes. In this area, the firm is highly competent and has found many successes. Though the linkage between senior managers and HR is deficient, the company recognises a need for change and is willing to adopt and implement new policies which are designed to fulfil employee needs. It seems that the company is coming to realise that few strategic decisions will have long-term value without consulting HR professionals prior to making long-term decisions which impact the entire organisational staff. However, this missing linkage is something the firm is working on which strongly emphasises the firm’s commitment to excellence in human resources management. Flexibility of design is the largest success factor for the firm and could be benchmarked in other companies looking to build a more competent and successful organisation. Bibliography Axelrod, Richard H. (2000). Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations, Berrett Koehler Publishing. BA Annual Report. (2007). ‘2007/2008 Annual Report and Accounts’. British Airways. Accessed 16 Dec 2008 http://www.britishairways.com/cms/global/microsites /ba_reports/pdfs/BA_Report_2007_08.pdf British Airways. (2007). ‘Who we are’. British Airways Investor Reports. Accessed 16 Dec 2008 http://www.britishairways.com/cms/global/microsites/ba_reports/pdfs/ 01_Oview_Who_we_are.pdf Caruth, D.J. and Humphreys, J.H. (2008). ‘Performance appraisals: Essential characteristics for Strategic Control’, Measuring Business Excellence, Bradford. 12(3): 24. Murphy, Rory. (2005). ‘BA case highlights the need for early HR input’, Personnel Today, Sutton. 23 Aug: 15. Peacock, Louisa. (2008). ‘Feed the feedback fervour’. Personnel Today, Sutton. 16 Sept: 44-47. Pettinger, Richard. (2002). Managing the Flexible Workforce, Oxford, United Kingdom. Capstone Publishing Ltd. Read More