Employers Do Not Adopt Integrated HR Policies and Lose Opportunities to Improve Business Performance - Essay Example

"EMPLOYERS DO NOT ADOPT HR POLICIES IN AN INTEGRATED AND PLANNED WAY, AND THEREFORE LOSE OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE." Introduction Human resource management is one of the emerging fields of business that has been crucial in the running of an organisation. It is the department in an organisation that is given the responsibility of taking care of the welfare of the employees. In this regard, the human resource department is given the mandate. Human resource is a term that is used to describe labour which is one of the most important capital investments of a business. Tradition human resource was used to describe the administrative function that was likening dot management of labour but the term has evolved to include other thing. There has been a change of approach in the way that labour is reviews in the organisation and the modern perception emphasize on viewing labour as an investment and not as a commodity or resources. In this regard, labours has stared to be seen as a made of creative and innovative social being who are able to give the organisation a competitive edge. (Michael 2006, p. 42) The term human resource has been changing to broader management and the concept of human capital has been applied more often in place of human resource. Therefore the modern perception of human labour has been changing the way organisation have been handling their human capital to a more liberalized way. It has been realised that having a competitive workforce can be an important way which can ensure that an organization creates a competitive edge that other organisation may find difficult to replicate. Therefore the focus of modern human resource management has been looking at the ways in which the workforce can be motivated in order to have a more competent and motivated workforce. This has been shown to translate to a more productive workforce who increases the productivity of the organisation. This is because intellectual capital has been shown to be more important that financial capital that an organisation invests in its operation. The modern focus of human resource management has been towards harnessing all the investment a getting the maximum from all of them. The organisation realize that its investment is not limited to only the financial input that it has put in the business but it goes beyond that to include human input. In some organizations, it has been found out that input in labour is bigger than capital input. (David 2007, p. 51) Therefore the concept of modern human resource management has been based on the above issue. Human resource management has found its place in management circle just recently but it has grown to be one of the most important departments in the organisation. This is because it is the department that holds the human capital to the organisation. In this regard it is given the mandate of looking after the welfare of the employees in all ways. Human resource management is a strategic, coherent approach that is used in management of organisation labour. It is the strategic organization, supervision, and all other aspects that are the most valued asset of an organisation. The aim of the department in any organisation is to help the organisation to have one of the most competent and motivated workforce that helps the organisation to achieve all its set goals and objectives. In the recent time, the term human resources management has been replaced by personnel management which is more likely to refer to the management of people in the organisation. This has been one of the branches that have been evolving rapidly in the organisation supported by the rise of success in other organisations. It has grown to develop theories and practical techniques that can be applied in management of the workforce for any organisation. Human resource department is given the duty of personnel management, personnel administration, manpower management, and industrial management. (Smit 2006, p. 61) The rise of human resource management was largely to bring closer the management of the workforce to the organisation rather than leaving it to the unions which were traditionally running them. In this regard. Human resource department has been able to act as a mediator between the workforce and the organisation in solving most of the matter that concerns the welfare of the workforce. The theoretical concept behind the human resource management has been the assumption that employees are individual who have varying goals and needs and therefore they should not be taken as business resources like trucks or machines. There is need to pay attention to the needs and wants of these individuals. Like the management they have needs and wants that have to be taken care of. This is a field that takes a positive look at the workers and tries to come up with means of helping them. Many of the workforce wishes to contribute to the welfare of the organisation but they are not given support and most of the obstacles to their endeavour are lack of knowledge, lack of training and development and failure of the process to integrated them into the mainstream running of the organisation. (Karen 2004, p. 142) In order to carry out it work effective, the human resource management department integrate a number of practices to its operation. It is supported by a number of polices which are all aimed at making the operation of the department smooth and responsive to the needs of the people. Therefore human resource polices become tool at hand which is developed to make it easy for the department to handle various needs by the employees. Human resource polices represents codified decisions which are established in an organisation in order to support administrative personnel functions, performance management, employee relations and planning of resources. Therefore there are tools which are planned in advance in order to act as guideline that can be used by the human resource department to manage the workforce. Human resource polices vary from one company to the other but they have similar purposes that they are supposed to serve. (Meisinger and Ulrich, 2005) Human resource police serve many purposes in an organisation. They help the employee to understand the organisation well in the sense that they try to define an organisation, its vision and mission and its culture. They reflect the nature of the organisation. They also information the employees what they should expect from the company and in the same way what the organisation would expect from them. In simple terms, they define the obligation of one party to the others so that there will be a sense of responsibility in fulfilment of these requirement. Human resource policies also define policies and procedures and how they work at the organisation. In this regard they help the organisation to define the roles of the employees and how these roles are to be fulfilled in their work. They also define to the employees how they are supposed to behave in the organisation as they define the acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the organisation. In the same context they define framework for reward and for punishment. Therefore human resource policies come as a framework that defines how the organisation is supposed to operate in its relation with the employees. The polices that are established are meant to help the organisation to achieve success as they define the terms of relationship with the employees. They must meet the requirements for diversity, ethics, training and development needs of the employees and other issue that are necessary in order to ensure that an organisation performs as expected. The laid down procedure represent the accepted way of conductive business between the employees and the company which means they are likely to reduce conflict in the work. (Rich 2000, p. 41) What is the relevant of the human resource policies to and organisation Human resource policies are very important for any organisation as they are important determination of how the organisation handles its employees. In this regard they are important in helping the human resource department to deal with various issues concerning the employees. They assist the human resource management to come up with a frame work that will guide the organisation in all matters dealing with the employees. In this regard they act as the guide line that defines what the organisation wants to achieve in its endeavour to come up with a competent workforce that is well motivated and that can help an organisation to achieve all its objectives. Therefore human resource polices are important in planning the operation of the human resource department as they assist in workforce planning, recruitment, induction and orientation, management of skill, training and development, administration of personnel, compensation and other incentives, management of time, payroll, management of travels in the organisation, benefits for employees, personnel cost planning, performance appraisal, and other functions that are related to the operation of the human resource department. (Sarvadi 2008) Therefore it is imperative for an organisation that wants to achieve its best in the marketplace to come up with efficient policies that can help them to manage their employees. In this regard an organisation will be able to plan in advice its entire labour requirement and hence will have framework that will define how they are going to recruit and retain new people they are going to recruit. It will also be able to determine how the recruited employees will be inducting to the organization and how they are going to be managed. In short it will be a guideline with the organisation will follow in order to manage the new recruited employees. An organisation is likely to lose a lot if it fails to adopt proper polices that will help it manage its labour. It is likely to lack as good framework that can be used by the human resource department to cater for the needs of the workforce. In this regard an organisation will be running its human resource department in an adhoc manner which is likely to have various shortcomings for the orgnioat. One of the issues that may arise if an organisation does not have planned and effective labour polices is that there is a likely hood of having less motivated employees who do not perfume to their maximum. This is because there will be no integrated approach to the needs of the employees and hence there will be poor relationships between the management and the workforce. (Michael 2002, p. 62) As we said earlier, a competent workforce is more important than the capital investment that a company makes. Human resource policies comes up with an integrated plan the will help to implement programs that are meant to improve skills and knowledge of the workforce in the sense that they will plan training and development in advance. Therefore one of the most important reasons of having human resource policies that are adopted in the operation of the organization is in order to plan in advice how they employees will be undergoing further training in order to make them more competent. In an era like this one where technology changes now and then, organisation will be required to have a competent workforce that can help it adopt new technologies as they are changing. This will help them to cut an edge in the market. (Dave 1996, p. 49) Human resource policies should be integrated in the overall plan of the organisation. This is important in order to make it a part of the operation for the organisation. Strategic human resource plan when integrated in the overall growth strategy of the organisation help to inculcate the objectives and values of the growth strategy to the workforce. In our case study we are going got look at how PureAqua Company has failed to achieve the best in the market by failing to interaction human resource polices in the overall growth strategy. Human resource policies in PureAqua Company After working for more than 15 year in a large water bottling company, Mathew was more than eager to settle down and start his own company. He felt that he had gained enough experience in his work and hence he could set up and operate his own company. So first he started to look for the best site to set up his own company and finally he settled at North Wales as the best location. This is because there was a spring nearby where he could be getting the needed supplies daily. As he didn't have enough capital to set up the business, he approached two of his friend who agreed to provide for capital but he had to part with 40 percent of ownership in the business. Since he did not have collaterial for securing loan from a bank, the was the best option for him. To start with in the business, he approached some of his fellow workmates and they agreed to move with him in the new plant as his employee but on the agreement that they would be working at a higher position than that were currently working in the company. Mathews found it appropriate to share some of the managerial duties with the employees since they were well experienced the work. Since they could not handle the operation of the company alone, they decided to hire 10 more workers who would work at various capacities in the organisation and in addition they hired one human resource specialist. At the start Mathews in his capacity as the human resource director called for the meeting of all the concerned parties and chattered the way forward for the business. They came up with a comprehensive strategic growth plan for the business including expended expansions in a period of 3 years. They also came up with a comprehensive human resource plan that was closely integrated in the overall growth strategy and all were up beat that they would be somewhere by the end of the three years initial operation phase. But when it came to the implementation of the overall growth strategy and the overall plan, things were exactly opposite. To start with Mathew assumed the role of a full Managing director in capacity and in authority. He became an authoritative lead who was supposed to be consulted before anything was done in the organisations. He wanted to be in control of everything as he felt it to be his personal investment that he had the outright role of controlling. As a result he controlled every aspect of the operation of to the organisation from production process to the management of the employees. He liked the warehouse to be always full so the company could sell any order that came. He wanted employees to be working from eight to five in the evening all through the week and he had to sign any leave the would be given to any worker. Mathew contrasted the entire initial plan for growth strategic and especially the human resource plan. He always said the rule was made for humans to obey and hence they could be adjusted at any one time in order to suit the moment. The independence that had been given to the human resource manager was not respected and the manager had to consult Mathew when he wanted to make any decision regarding the workers. The employees ended up being very much frustrated and some even opted out and resigned. His friend who they had started the company with also felt frustrated and had started leaving one by one. By the end of the three years, PureAqua was still the size it had started with. The company had not been able to expand its market and it remained selling to the local market. Though Mathew had approached many of the bigger supermarkets where he could sell his bottled water many customer he was met with a request of increasing his production capacity in order to suit the demand of such a bigger supermarket. He did not know how he could expand the business as it was still struggling with the problem of low sales and weak financial base. By the end of the forth year, the company had lost most of the employees that it had started with and Mathew was left with task of hiring new employees. Since the company had to grow he was torn between implementing various strategies as he did not know if eh had to sub-contract another bottling firms and close his altogether, if he had to hire new employees, if he had to find for financial assistance from banks, and many other solutions. He found out that the company had stick with the original brand of mineral water dubbed Good4U. Though it had recorded high sales I the market, the company could not sustain the market and within one year, the volume of sales had strategy reducing. This means that the company had not been able to encourage innovations in its workforce. This is a case of a company that has completely failed to integrate all the important components of a growth strategy in its operations. The managing director has failed to respect the need to delegate all the duties to other managers and hence it has not been to achieve the set objective. One of the way in which the company failed was in the sense that it did not considered the importance of the labour in helping it to achieve its growth strategy. We have scenario where the managing director became responsible for running of the organization. He assumed all the duties of running the organisation and he had to be consulted by even the human renounce department which is supposed to be free department from the rest of the management in order handle the issue of employees in an impartial and fairly manner. One of the reasons why most of the employees left the company was because they were not motivated. You cannot motivate the employees by overworking them. Though there are policies that have been laid down for handling the affairs of the employees they have not been closely followed. At the end of the there years, the company had remained static as it was started. It has not grown and hand remained with the same brand of products as before. This means that there was little innovation. Therefore the company has not taken initiatives to train and develop the skills of the workforce. The way the employees were treated did not motivate them at all and most of them left the company. As a result the company lost one of its most important investments as it had taken time for the employees to adapt to the culture of the organisation. The company has completely failed to live to its expectation which has been largely due to bad HR practices. The company has failed to identify the employees as one of the most important investment that it has made and therefore they have become less and less production. Currently the company has been left at a cross road as the owner does not realize whether he has to hire new employees or he has to sub-contract the service of another bottling company. The company needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with another growth strategy which will try to integrate all the areas of operation of the company. In this regard, the company needs to come up with a defined human resource policies that will be integrated in the overall growth strategy and make sure that they will have go be followed closely. After all even the company that the owner wants to sub-contract also have a human resource department and the company can as well develop its department to make its workforce more productive. Conclusion Human resource is an important department in any organisation that helps in the integration of the workforce into the mainstream of the organisation. It represents the workforce in the management of the organisation and deals with all the issue that relate to hiring and retention of the workforce. It aims at producing a competent workforce. Human resource polices are important as they act as guideline of the working frame for the organisation in the way it operates. They guide the human resource department on all the important steps that have to be followed in order to help it achieve its mandate. Therefore, human resource polices should be adopted as they are and integrated in the overall growth strategy in order to help an organisation achieve its objectives. Reference Michael, A 2006, Human Resource Management Practice, Kogan Page, London. David, T 2007, Human Resource Management, Columbia University Press Dave, U 1996, Human Resource Champions: Agenda for adding value and delivering results, Harvard Business School Press Smit, J 2006, HR model that can measure if it adds value, Harvard Business School Press Karen, L 2004, Human Resource Management: Rhetoric and Realities, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Meisinger, S. & Ulrich, D 2005, Human research management future, Willey, Virginia Sarvadi, P 2008, The importance of an HR Policies and Practice strategy, Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/humanresources/article76982.html on 18th April 2008 Rich, M 2000, Human Capital and knowledge management in new economy, Practical HR Applications, Switzerland, October 2000 Michael, A 2002, Mapping the future: strategic planning, Haworth Press, New York Read More