The Management of Human Resources - Essay Example

1) Humans form an organization's most important assets. At present, organizations are constantly changing which in turn affect the business as well as its employees. In order to maximize organizational effectiveness, human potential need to be managed. In essence, human resource management ensures that employees meet organizational goals. For this purpose, jobs can be analyzed through various methods which include questionnaires, observations, interviews, employee recordings, or a combination of any of these methods. In addition, there are 2 important tools which are used in defining a job which are job description and job specification. Job description identifies the job, provides a listing of responsibilities and duties specific to the job, mentions performance standards, and specifies necessary machines and equipment. Job specification, on the other hand, states the required education and experience needed to perform the job (Mondy and Noe, 1996). This study studied the impact of job analysis on organizational performance among 148 companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Survey results indicated that a practice of proactive job analysis was strongly related to organizational performance. In addition, the relationship was strongest to the extent that companies maintained HR information systems, gave HR greater involvement in strategic planning and focused on competency-based characteristics of employees in the job analysis approaches they used. The main objective of a job description is to provide a comprehensive picture of the purpose, requirements and context of the job. Therefore, it needs to be written clearly in an easy language, contain information but not subjective arguments. This method of job analysis was developed by Ernest Primoff. It is a worker oriented method and is mainly used with semi-skilled workers and industrial occupations. Similar to the Critical Incident Technique, this method also focuses on satisfactory workers. It attempts to identify the characteristics or job elements of satisfactory workers. I agree that it is impossible for a standardized job description to capture employees everyday work experiences as an individual comes across a variety of situations while at work whereas a standardized job description simply mentions the key responsibilities at work. A worker may or may not be satisfied by his regular work experience which brings into focus the Motivation-Hygiene theory of Herzberg. Herzberg’s theory suggests that the factors responsible for job satisfaction and motivation are different from those causing job dissatisfaction. Later, he developed the motivation-hygiene theory to explain his findings. He termed the satisfiers motivators and the dissatisfiers hygiene factors. Herzberg also argued that job enrichment is a prerequisite for employee motivation and that it is a continuous management process. Further, his argument was that the job should be challenging enough to utilize the employee’s maximum potential. Next, employees who demonstrate higher levels of ability should be given greater responsibility. However, if a job cannot be designed to make maximum use an employee's abilities, then the organisation should consider automation or replacement. This is because if a person cannot be fully utilized, then a motivation problem would arise. It is impossible for a standardized job description to capture employees everyday work experiences as five basic needs of an employee need to be fulfilled for him to be productive at work. This theory was put forward by Abraham Maslow. According to him, there are five levels of human needs which employees need to have fulfilled at work. All of the needs have been structured into a hierarchy and only when a lower level of need has been fully met, would a worker be motivated by the opportunity of having the next need up in the hierarchy satisfied. For instance, a person dying of hunger would want to achieve a basic wage in order to buy food rather than worrying about having job security or getting respect from others. Similarly, a business should also offer different monetary and non-monetary incentives to employees so as to help them fulfill each need in turn and move up the hierarchy. Furthermore, managers should also be cognizant of the fact that all workers are not motivated to the same extent and neither do they all progress up the hierarchy at the same pace. They may therefore have to offer a different set of benefits to different kinds of employees. 2) A letter writer is one who communicates by means of letters. A letter writer’s job could get monotonous if he does the same work over and again. Douglas McGregor developed a philosophical view of humankind with his Theory X and Theory Y in 1960. These are two opposing perceptions about how people view human behavior at work and in organizational life. Theory X assumes that management's role is to coerce and control employees as people have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible. Secondly, they must be forced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment in order to get them to achieve organizational objectives. In addition, people prefer to be directed, run from responsibility and are not ambitious while they also seek security above everything else. Theory Y, on the contrary, suggests that management's role is to develop the potential in employees and help them to release that potential towards common goals. It assumes that work is natural and employees would exercise self-direction if they are committed to the objectives. Also, commitment to goals is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement. The theory also assumes that human beings learn to accept and seek responsibility. Lastly, people are creative and have the potential to solve an organizational problem. In case a letter writer feels less motivated at his work and does not have another option at the same time he can redesign the job as well. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is one such approach to redesigning. It is a management practice that aims to enhance the efficiency of the business process. The key to BPR is for the letter writer to look at their business processes from a clean slate perspective and determine how he can best develop these processes to improve how they conduct business. Reengineering is a basic and fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve radical improvements in cost, quality, speed, and service. Additionally, it combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of bringing forth major improvements to business processes so that the employee can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace. BPR aims to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. It starts with an assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Some also propose a customer-oriented approach, as opposed to an IT-centric, methodology. As an example, Ford reengineered their business and manufacturing process from just manufacturing cars to manufacturing superior quality cars, where the key objective was quality. This helped the company save millions on recalls and warranty repairs. It has achieved this goal by incorporating barcodes on all its parts and scanners to scan for any missing parts in a newly assembled car. This method helped them guarantee a safe and quality car. This can be similarly applied by a letter writer to redesign his job. At the same time, a letter writer should be motivated to do his job or else he would not be productive and efficient. Motivation is the individual, internal process that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior. It is also termed as a personal "force" that causes one to behave in a certain manner. Successful managers have been found to be highly motivated and therefore, those who avoid work are said to be unmotivated. Motivation and morale go together as morale is the employee's attitude toward the job, superiors, and the organisation itself. High morale is a result of job satisfaction which leads to dedication and loyalty towards work while low morale leads to substandard work, absenteeism, and high rates of turnover. The more motivated the letter writer the better he would manage his work. The equity theory of motivation is based on the fact that people are motivated first to achieve and then to maintain a sense of equity. Equity also refers to the distribution of rewards with equality according to the contribution by each employee to the organization. The letter writer should be treated fairly by his organization and also be motivated to achieve his goals of writing a certain umber of letters each day or each year. Expectancy Theory developed by Victor Vroom assumes that motivation depends on how much an employee wants something and how likely is he to get it. A short scenario related to expectancy theory explains it. Two airline sales representatives are candidates for promotion to a sales reservations manager’s job. Mr. A has had a very good sales year and always gets good performance evaluations but he is not sure if he wants the job because it requires extensive travel, long working hours, and hence, entails stress and pressure. Mr. B, on the other hand, wants the job as much as Mr. A, and he even assumes that he has the potential to get it as Mr. B’s sales have shown improvement in the past year, and her evaluations are the best in the company. Expectancy theory would predict that Mr.A is not very motivated to seek the promotion while Mr.B is quite motivated to seek the promotion, because he wants it and thinks he can get it. Therefore, if the letter writer expects himself to do a task within a given time and is motivated enough to do it then he would manage his work in such a manner that he would achieve his objective. Expectancy theory also suggests the letter writer’s manager recognize the former’s work and show the letter writer how he can achieve the outcomes he desires. Another theory in context is the Reinforcement theory which states that behavior that is rewarded is likely to be repeated, whereas behavior that has been punished is less likely to recur. Reinforcement is considered as an action that follows directly from a certain behavior and can therefore be used in a number of ways to generate a certain behavior. A positive reinforcement strengthens desired behavior by providing a reward while punishment is an undesired consequence which follows from undesirable behavior. In most cases, reinforcement works effectively particularly, positive reinforcement. It is important for any company to understand that there is no business without their employees, so they should be treated fairly and be provided a conducive working environment. In addition training and rewards also enhance productivity. We can therefore conclude that human resource management plays a vital role in the success of an organization. It is responsible for how people are treated in an organization, helps them perform their work and solve problems that might arise. Bibliography Cherrington, David J., 1995. The Management of Human Resources. 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