Strategic Human Resources Management - Assignment Example

Strategic Human Resources Management Introduction All over the world, employees’ engagement has remained a critical concern for organizations. In essence, the employee engagement has been considered a consistent predictor of performance of individuals and the result of organization as a whole. Companies have in several occasions tried many approaches in an effort to increase employee engagement, which they believe may be counterproductive. Moreover, mentoring has been rated as one of the easiest and most effective ways for companies to impact engagement. Saloner et al. (2006) argues that engaged employees are those that are modestly active, productive and connected. This means that engaged employees should be in a position to engage customers in their work hence, resulting in a sustainable growth, profit, and higher stock value for organizations. Most researchers suggest that, the increase in engagement is present when employees perceive leadership as caring and committed to their improvement and fellow employees as friends and collaborators with job expectations that are clear and reasonable. The Role of the Organization in Employees’ Engagement An organization should be in a position to handle the issues of the employees’ in engagement. Strategic management is the art of planning an organization’s operation at the optimum level (Armstrong 2006). It focuses on building of a concrete, underlying structure to an organization that is subsequently upheld through the combined efforts of employees. Every organization must have innovation whereby a team of professionals should be incorporated to come up with different ideas, which are useful to the company in terms of products and market. Through SWOT analysis, an organization is able to measure its strengths and weaknesses opportunities, and threat. The strength of an organization is based on the quality of its products and the speed of delivery. It earns the organization a great deal of customers and acts as a competitive advantage over its rivals (Moran, 2006). The weakness of an organization is mostly brought about by poor attitude that is given by the employees due to lack of proper motivation. This further creates unhealthy relationship between customers and the employees leading to a down fall in the performance of an entire organization. Strategic management should also entail effective communication channels. All information within an organization should be easily understood, and employees should be taken to be precious elements of the organization (Banister and Balkin, 1990). Planning determines where an organization will be in the future, its arrival and establishment. It ensures that productivity within the organization increases significantly through increased efficiency and effectiveness. It is widely used in solving major problems within the organization. For instance, this could be through predetermined problem solving before its occurrence. Moreover, it creates a base for the organization and ensures that any deviation is corrected before it gets out of hand. For effective planning to be established, the management must identify the purpose of the organization, which is the key objective (Bratton and Gold, 2007). This can be done through the use of the mission statement as it elaborates on what the organization seeks to achieve. Creativity should reign in ensuring that different individuals in the organization are given a chance to brainstorm for new ideas, and employees are involved in the formulation of a plan. Motivation is regarded as the alignment of the personal values, and the organization aims. It is the act of boosting the morale of the workers so as to increase their productivity and the efficiently in any organization setting hence the organization objectives are met, and workers are satisfied (CIPD 2001). For managers to get their work done, they must motivate employees. Various motivation theories such as McGregor theory Y, the most recent one, denotes that where employees are self motivated, and self driven there is a likelihood of enhancing lack of supervision in organizations. In particular, the theory examines two forms of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The intrinsic motivation is a self driven kind of will that comes within the person, while extrinsic motivation is a situation that comes from the external sources such as rewards, appraisals and trainings that are basically generated from the organization. Both forms of motivation lead to productivity improvement meaning that the products produced are of high quality. Motivation increases the commitment of employees culminating to work being taken seriously thus, enhancing the efficiency of an organization. In addition, motivation leads to smoother running of processes because perfection is highly regarded by the employees. This further leads to reliability of the employees, and the company as a whole. Motivation achieves outstanding results in the resources integration since employees who are well motivated make efficient maximization of available resources. Employees’ motivation in organizations leads to development of management (Huselid, 1997). Leadership style is a manner in which individuals are directed, plans implemented and people motivated. The major type of leadership styles that are present in most of the organizations include authoritative, participative and free reign. Authoritative leadership denotes a situation where management tells the employees what to do and how. However, this is the worst type of leadership and should not be used in any organization. Participative leadership and free reign leadership styles are the best in organization. The participative leadership is where the leaders involve the employees in processes pertaining to decision making. Hence, the employees are in a position to have a say and take part in the decision making processes. Free reign leadership style is whereby the leaders allow employees to make their own decisions in reference to their positions (Huselid, 1995). It is a situation where trust and confidence is built between the employees and employer and among employees themselves. Negotiation and Conflict in an organization must also be handled. Negotiation is the dialogue between two or more people in an effort to reach an amicable understanding, resolve differences and gain an advantage for an individual at the end of the dialogue. There are different types of negotiations like managerial negotiation, legal negotiation, and financial negotiation. Negotiations are often used to solve conflicts in an organization specifically between the employees and the employer/management. The negotiations may be in the form of pay terms and the working condition (Moran, 2006) Conflict is referred to as the upsurge of different opinions and values between people working together. Conflicts in the form of disputes emerge in an organization especially between the management and employees. Two common types of conflict include personal and role conflict in an organization. Personal conflicts have a negative effect in an organization because it affects the groups, and individuals that are involved. Role conflict emanates from role specification especially in job slotting. Management of conflict can be effected in an organization through avoidance where the management creates a total separation of the conflicting individuals. It can also be solved through harmonization being pushed to the conflicting parties. In addition, the top management in an organization should come out and use its power in the negotiation and management of the conflict even if it uses compromise. This is because an organization can not work with conflict and at the same time conflicts are unavoidable in such situations (Torrington et al., 2011). Building Employee Engagement MacLeod gave a contribution to the building of blocks that were necessary in employees’ engagement and identified some of the key connotations for employers, trade unions and employees. Additionally, he considers some of the tools that can be used to support employers in their effort to assess and enhance employees’ engagement in their workplace. The main importance of this is that employees, who have been dedicated to their work for several years, as well as their and employers, have more likely positive, cooperative ways to the benefit of the organization and themselves. Employee engagement also known as organization citizenship behaviour denotes the positive attitudes and behaviours at work although this differs according to countries and organizations (Moran, 2006). Management consultants argue that, employee’s engagement wholly depends with the duration in which the employee wishes to work and stay with the employer, and are proud to work with the organization. Moreover, the employee must be in a position to put forth more effort on behalf on the organization at all times (Hemkin, 1995). For this reason, there are three types of employee engagement, which include intellectual engagement, affective engagement and social engagement. Intellectual engagement is the extents at, which individuals are absorbed in their work and internalize ways, which performance can be improved. Affective engagement is a situation where people have positive emotional connections to their work experience and with the company, as well. Social engagement entails the extent in, which employees talk to colleagues concerning work related improvements and change. Thus, engagement can have a number of dimensions, and what stimulates one group of employees differs from another (Saloner et al., 2006). Several factors have been noted as great contributors of employee engagement. There must be employee trust in management of the organization. There must be satisfaction especially on the job that one is doing, and the payment that is been received. Employees must be satisfied with involvement in decision –making at the organization level. Quality of relationship between management and employees is crucial for the betterment of an organization. True employee engagement does not only require, but demands a comprehensive, strategic approach that creates positive, lasting results once they are implemented effectively (Rucci 2008). Its engagement encourages productive and dedicated team members with a vested interest in the organization managers are also motivated by positive results, and a bottom line being benefits from increased employee retention, and efficient operations. Simply stated, employee engagement is vital in building and maintaining a successful organization (CIPD 2008). According to MacLeod, there are four broad drivers to engagement, which are critical. They include leadership, engaging managers, employee voice, and integrity. Leadership is a strong phase that is used to provide a clear, shared vision for any organisation that is at the core of engagement of an employee. It is important to understand that leadership does not revolve around an organization only. It also determines how individual roles contribute to that vision (Louis 1995). Employee engagement with their managers in quite overwhelming, it offers clarity for what is expected from every individual member of staff, which includes treating people with respect and fairness. Additionally, there should be apprehension for employees’ wellbeing hence, ensuring that work is designed efficiently and efficiently. Of most important is that, the growing interest in employee voice has led to the modification of traditional meanings of the term over the recent years. Previous meanings of employee voice have been combined with more consensual methods such as team working, problem solving groups and joint consultation. Traditional meanings included collective bargaining and grievance procedures, and these have proven to be insufficient in defining modern applications of the concept of employee voice (CIPD 2001). In the exit- voice- loyalty model, voice refers to any attempt to change instead of escaping from an undesirable situation. Another model described voice as actions taken to remedy a violation. Such actions may include minimizing losses and restoring trust through talking and changes in behaviour (Sparrow and Cooper 2003). In the modern context of employee relations, loyal employees would, therefore, protest against management by exercising voice. Boxall and Purcell 2003 defined employee voice as processes and structures, which enable and empower employees to contribute to decision making in the organization. The empowerment that employees get as a result of these structures may be direct or indirect (Dietz et al 2005). Employee voice at the most basic level could be in indirect form in, which the voice of employees could be channelled through trade unions, joint consultative committees (JCCs), non- union structures of collective representation and European Work Councils (EWCs). The employee voice could also be through direct voice in which mechanisms such as self directed teams, excellence circles, problem solving groups, attitude surveys, appraisal systems, suggestion schemes, and meetings between managers and the entire workforce (Dundon and Gollan 2007). Employee involvement is a range of processes designed to engage the support, understanding, the best contribution of all employees, and their commitment to the objectives of an organization. Employee participation, on the other hand, is a way in which an employees involvement is designed to provide an opportunity to influence and take part in decision making on matters which affect them (CIPD 2001). Employee participation is one of the four policy choices for managing the employment relationship that gives employees the right to question and influence decision making in an organization. The other policy choices include worker subordination through managerial prerogative, employee commitment via employee involvement and union incorporation via collective bargaining. There is a clear difference between employee involvement and employee participation. Employee participation is a collective or pluralist approach, which creates a shift from no involvement to employee control (Lucas et al 2006). Employee participation may involve mechanisms and processes such as collective bargaining, work councils, joint consultative committees, employee share schemes, worker directors and European Work Councils. Employee involvement is aimed at harnessing commitment to organizational objectives. It relies on the maintenance of management control and as such is more individualistic and unitarist. According to Block et al 2001, employee involvement is considered a soft approach to human resource management and it involves upwards and downwards communication flows (Hillman and Bierman 1999). Upward communication flows are both formal and informal and include employee suggestion schemes, staff surveys and appraisal schemes. This includes both formal and informal tools. Downward communication flows run from top management down to line management through written communication and other formal channels such as team briefings and staff forums. Written communication includes staff newsletters, notice boards, staff handbooks and house journals. Conclusion Employees’ engagement is important in every organization. It denotes the role in, which an employee play in ensuring that an organization perform well in it production and activities. 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