Managing Equality and Diversity - Essay Example

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT By Date Introduction Personnel management is an integral part in the modern day management, as organisations are seeking to attract top talent and retain them. Therefore, to be able to successfully attract a top crème in terms of skill and talent, organisations need to have elaborate human resource management structures that implements policies that are favourable and friendly to new employees; to enable them retain such employees for a considerable amount of time. Thus, human resource management, can be described as a process of attracting and developing personnel through a value addition programme that enhances their skills and knowledge as the organisation leverages from their talent and skills (Cardy 2011). Moreover, personnel are important assets to organisations because the performance and productivity of the organisation depends on their input. Thus, elaborate measures need to be instituted to ensure personnel are developed, motivated and acquire additional skills to enable them to remain devoted towards achieving organisational objectives (Noe, 2013). Managing Equality and Diversity Massive globalisation of business activities across national and regional boundaries has led to trade being liberalised and personnel now can freely work in any country of choice as long as they fulfil legal obligations of those countries (Council, 2011). Globalisation has resulted in a diversity of the business environment especially in terms of gender, race, physical ability and other parameters of measuring human abilities. For instance, in the recent past, it was unlikely for women to head company boards but the situation has changed, since gender empowerment campaigns have kicked off in most parts of the world and women, are taking up leadership positions (Council, 2011). The recruitment process in organisations should, therefore, be done in an open and equal manner to ensure aspects diversity are met. Whenever the human resource department is conducting personnel audit in the company it is supposed to meet the near 50/50 composition of both genders in the organisation (Council, 2011). That notwithstanding, special groups like the gay community and transsexual individuals should not be side-lined because of their sexual orientation. In addition, we all know those conditions are natural and it is not a person’s choice to choose the social life that he/she wants to lead (Noe, 2013). Since intense lobbying has been going on for a while to realise gender equality in organisations, most of them have given in to pressure and are striving to realise equality. However, it is imperative to note that, despite of the fact that men and women are being given equal opportunities in organisations, it is prudent that men are given an upper hand in terms of remuneration in some occasions regardless of being in the same job groups with their female counterparts. Although, to achieve equality, all employees should be treated equally and be given equal chances to access benefits offered by the company. An efficient human resource management should encourage employee relation to enable it to understand and know the grievances and problems facing employees. Thus, organisations should freely allow their members to join trade union organisations because it is through such forums that they can get to know and solve employee problems without victimisation. Conversely, organisations through their human resource departments should step up sensitisation campaigns to educate their employees on the need for tolerance and embracing diversity in the workplace (Noe, 2013). This is because organisations hire people from various backgrounds with different beliefs and attitudes and thus, need to embrace each other and develop good working relations to enhance team work for the good of the organisation. For instance, research has shown that diversity is one of the factors that enhances success in organisations because it pools workers with different knowledge levels, skills and talent together, to work as a team towards achieving an organisation’s objectives (Cardy 2011). Human Resource Development The business environment is very competitive and firms are using all means possible to gain competitive advantage over their market rivals, in that processes firms invest in advanced technology and human resource development by enhancing the skills that their employees possess to make them more productive; thus, enhance quality in their output (Cardy 2011). The main intention of human resource development in any organisation is to evaluate the needs and objectives of the firm and seek to align them with those of its employees. In so doing the personnel needs and the organisational needs will have been streamlined and thus, conflict will not occur since both party’s needs, have been harmonised. Once a firm has acquired new staff the role of human resource development kicks in as this is the programme that is tasked with training development and retention of employees (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2012). Firms invest huge junks on personnel development with the hope of leveraging from the skills that have been inducted in the employees and it is a strategy to retain employees in the organisation for long since it will be to the advantage of the organisation since no extra cost will be incurred in developing new talent as a result of exit of old staff members (Noe, 2013). Human resource development process involves four distinctive stages, which are in a continuous cycle and they include; planning, reviewing, examining and implementation (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). Planning involves laying out the goals and strategies that the program seeks to achieve; thus, may involve strategic recruitment and formulation of policies. Reviewing is counter checking to determine whether the policies, which have been formulated, are specific, measurable and attainable within the set time frame. Evaluation involves routine checks and audits on the policies that are being implemented to establish whether they are in line with what had been earlier planned. Implementation is the final stage and it ensures the policies, which had been formulated, are put into action in a business environment (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). In addition, human resource development is important for any organisation since it is the moral obligation of any business firm to have a personnel development program as stated in the provision of the employee act. Therefore, training and development of employees is not a favour that organisations extend to their employees, but it is a constitutional mandate required of organisations as a way of adding value to the employees, on condition that they remain with the organisation so that in return the firm will leverage from these skills in terms of improved quality output. Thus, it is evident that because the business environment is competitive, firms have an obligation to invest in human resource to have an edge in terms of having skilled and specialised personnel to enable them cut the amount of resources used in the production process as well as to help them improve the quality of output (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). Flexible Working and Career Management Business is a dynamic sector that requires a flexible approach because things will keep on changing with time. Flexibility of business organisations is the ability of an organisation to approach changes and effectively embrace them without any major disruption of their daily operations (Kattenbach, Demerouti & Nachreiner, 2010). Thus, we can define flexibility as the degree to which firms adapt to changes in the business environment that have been made towards them. In business, flexibility can be discussed from four major angels these include; technology, labour, structure and system. Our emphasis will be on labour since we are dealing with human resource management. The business sector undergoes a lot of changes in any particular financial year and these changes are replicated right to individual organisations since they need certain measures to be taken to address the situation (Noe, 2013). For instance, during inflation or financial crisis periods business will run into losses due to low turnover and maybe losses that have been incurred due to adverse financial times leading to a freeze of assets. This will reduce by a large percentage the liquidity of firms; thus, making them have limited funds to run their operations (Gibson, 2003). Such scenarios will lead to change of prices in the labour markets and also influx of cheap labour from markets that were not affected by the crisis. It is in such situations that business needs to embrace the flexibility aspect since they will have to go adrift with their plans and embrace favourable changes that will ensure they remain competitive in the market. For instance, if a business is running into losses it will have to take precautionary measures such a laying off workers or reducing salaries to be able to sustain a favourable operation (Noe, 2013). Flexibility in labour takes shape in three forms namely; numerical, functional and cultural. Numerically the number of employees in any particular organisation will tend to change depending on the prevailing conditions in the business environment. For instance, in case of a low turnover in sales the units produced will be scaled down and this means some of the personnel will have their services rendered redundant since the organisation will not find it viable to have them in job. Alternatively sometimes the business condition may be brisk and thus, the organisation finds it necessary to hire additional labour force to match the demand in the market (Noe, 2013). The organisation will keep on restructuring to meet both financial and structural viability in that light when restructuring some functions in the organisational hierarchy will be rendered redundant while new functional positions will be created to streamline the organisation to fit into the new structural requirements. Culture is yet another aspect of flexibility in labour. Globalisation has liberalised markets such that there is a free transfer of goods and services from one geographical position to the next. This makes it easier to find multiracial personnel working in the same organisation. Therefore, organisations need to review their organisational culture periodically to accommodate new members that are joining the firms by enhancing the process of adapting to the new changes (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2012). Employee Relations Employee relations with the management of organisations are mainly in the context of salary bargain. It is common that management does not engage its employees on a one on one basis as far as remuneration bargains are concerned due to fear of victimisation from the employees side and thus, they choose to be represented by a few individuals who present their grievances to the management and broker a deal that would see the demands of the employees being met. (Blyton & Turnbull, 2004). Employee relation is a kind of a mediation process that seeks to harmonise the problems of employees by presenting them to the management through their representatives and at times through their unions (Blyton & Turnbull, 2004). Thus, this presents management with an opportunity to listen to the problems and demands of their employees and seeks to find a lasting solution either through better working conditions or increase in employee remuneration (Blyton & Turnbull, 2004). This process is founded on a number of issues as they are discussed below. To begin with the initial and most paramount issue that necessitates employee relations is pay negotiations. Employees cannot face the organisation management and demand foe pay rise or better working conditions a few individuals will be singled out and be victimised as a result of fighting for their case. This necessitates for a few representatives being chosen to lead the mediation team to strike a deal with the management whenever an issue arises (Noe, 2013). Discipline is another issue that brings employee relation into practices. Employees will find themselves in the wrong at times and the punishment that will be imposed on them, may be too harsh. It is the duty of individuals that are tasked with employee relations to negotiate on behalf of the employees to have them receive a fair hearing and eventually a reasonable fine for their actions (Noe, 2013). For instance, employees may be subjected to harassment by senior officers in the organisation in terms of sexual harassment or any form of unjust action being taken against them like being made to work for extra hours minus pay just to name but a few. It is the right of employees to air their grievances and have a fair hearing; thus, the representatives will have the obligation of initiate such talks to ensure justice is done and employees are compensated whenever they are wronged (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). On the other hand, whenever the management feels certain employees are not performing to their satisfaction or according to the agreements they signed they would have to engage them in employee relations before terminating their services or offering them warning letters. In a nutshell, employee relations are the perfect communication tool for the organisation’s management and its employees concerning vital matters that are affecting them both (Blyton & Turnbull, 2004). However, recently the number of employees’ subscription to unions have decreased owing to the politicisation of the unions as some leaders are elected to serve their political interests and not those for the employees. Managing Performance and Reward Performance management is perceived to be a necessity for any firm as success for any business organisation must come from the workforce (Cardy 2011). Thus, the employees must be refined in a manner that their skills and talents are duly aligned towards the goals and objectives of the firms to ensure congruence and thus overall success to be achieved (Cardy 2011). A research done by DDI and human resource society indicated that business firms, that incorporated performance management program in their human resource policies, were generally successful and among market leaders as compared to those that had not yet embraced the process as they were unsuccessful business wise and rated among the worst performers in the market. It is prudent to note that the impact of performance management in the business sector is so strong particularly in the 21st century where all business firms are competing for massive turnovers in a very competitive market (Noe, 2013). Performance management is a program that is driven first to promote the right behaviour and values among the employees. Morals are supreme to any element when it comes to work ethics. If the right morals are not initiated in an organisation the overall performance will not be impacted even with the deployment of state of the art technology. Thus, by cultivating ideal values in the workforce performance management as a business strategy is set to be a winning strategy for ensuring any given firm rises to success in any particular business discipline. However, according to Noe (2013), performance management cannot exist in isolation, any meaningful business strategy, that will bring positive results to an organisation, has to be integrated with other aspects to ensure overall success is achieved. However, it imperative to note that performance management over the years was done manually with the use of spread sheets, but with advancement of technology and to better the whole program, information technology programs have been developed that seeks to better the experience of performance management processes to enable organisation reap much benefit from them. Moreover, Cardy (2011), argues that the impact of performance management is not only limited to retention of talent and skills but also spreads across to other aspects of the organisation’s performance in terms of production, finance and customer satisfaction. Nonetheless, despite the positive impacts that come with performance management, it is crucial that the process be implemented effectively for it to realise desirable results. For instance, the vital element in the implementation of performance management is that, it should be supported by senior management because they are the people responsible with outlining the policies and strategies of how the whole program will be run to benefit the organisation (Noe, 2013). Generally, performance management can help organisation improve significantly on the quality of their product and services they provide (Cardy 2011). This will be as a result of employee dedication to their duties on the pretext of having better performance records so that they can get an upper hand to be retained in the organisation in event of lay-offs and redundancies. Therefore, this will alternatively boost employee job satisfaction as they will perceive themselves being in their job position by virtue of their skills and talents and not on any other exterior factor; thus, boosting their overall job morale and productivity geared toward achieving organisational objectives and goals in line with the organisation’s strategies (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). Ultimately, studies indicate that the whole idea of performance management needs to be conducted with a certain mechanism for it to be viable businesswise. The study suggested that feedback from the program should be multi-facet in the sense that there should be more communication channels through which management and employees communicate (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). That notwithstanding, employee performance is often motivated by the associated compensation that they receive. Thus, there should be a strong correlation between the quality of performance and the payment that is associated with it so as to ensure the whole idea of performance management positively impacts on employees’ job satisfaction (Martocchio, Joshi & Liao, 2012). References Blyton, P. R., & Turnbull, P. J., 2004. The dynamics of employee relations. Palgrave Macmillan. Cardy, R. L., 2011. Performance management: concepts, skills, and exercises. [Place of publication not identified], M E Sharp. Council, E. B., 2011. Diversity and Equality. Gibson, V., 2003. Flexible working needs flexible space?: Towards an alternative workplace strategy. Journal of Property Investment & Finance, 21(1), 12-22. Kattenbach, R., Demerouti, E., & Nachreiner, F., 2010. Flexible working times: Effects on employees exhaustion, work-nonwork conflict and job performance. Career Development International, 15(3), 279-295. Marchington, M., & Wilkinson, A., 2012. Human resource management at work. London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Martocchio, J. J., Joshi, A., & LIAO, H., 2012. Research in personnel and human resources management. Volume 31 Volume 31. Bingley [UK], Emerald Group Pub Ltd. Noe, R. A., 2013. Fundamentals of human resource management. New York, NY, McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Read More