E-Human Resource in Organizations - Assignment Example

E Human Resource in Organizations Introduction Emergence of the global economy, technology and a shrinking workforce accounts for the some of the major factors which have pushed the human resource managers in the forefront. It is also uncertain to predict things which lie ahead in businesses. This is where the role of human resource departments comes into play which helps companies to compete with each other. This is in regard to the making of practical suggestions for compensation planning, recruitment and the retention strategies, formulation of training programs and a variety of other strategies with the view to compete in the market. With the technological revolution, the management of human resource have become easier and faster and the execution of human resource activities in an integrated environment have also become possible (Right Team, 2005, p.2). E human resource have been specifically useful in activities like payroll, benefits, compensation, career and succession planning, health and safety, position management, grievance management, security, work flow capability and numerous other activities as well. The above activities require extensive transportation and exchange of data via electronic data. E human resources have specifically been useful in preventing theft of data. The project makes an analysis of the present condition of e human resource management in organizations. Along with this it provides relevant examples with regard to the application of the practice in organizations. It also makes an analysis of the impact of e human resource management in enhancing the efficiency and productivity of employees and organizations. Finally it provides recommendations towards implementation of the same in organizations. E Human Resource E Human Resource is referred to the management, regulation and use of electronic processes and information relating to human resource and the employment laws. It is an extremely broad term and has been continuously evolving in its field. With the emerging trends like globalization, customer orientation, and specialization, companies have been especially emphasising on recruitments, evolution and sustainment of qualified employees. Companies have gained extensive awareness about the fact that human resources have been gradually transforming from being a cost factor to a success factor. They have also realized that a shrinking population and a shrinking workforce would be the most crucial crisis in the years to come. Many of the activities of the human resource departments can be delegated to the employees using the modern system f information and technology. Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) is a tool which is web based and which helps in automating and supporting the human resource processes. Implementing e-HRM would provide the opportunity to delegate the process of data entry to employees themselves. Moreover it facilitates the use of human resource marketplaces (e-Recruitment) and allows greater amount of self service to employees (Biesalski, n.d., p.1). It is the outcome of the combination of various technologies. Firstly the growing importance of the knowledge factor in organizations has been the driving force behind the evolution of IT. Information systems like e-HRM that provides information allows companies to gain comprehensive and consistent concept for knowledge management. It is important to explain the concept of knowledge management in this regard. Knowledge management is considered to be a collection of various techniques. Using this large variety of techniques, organizations are able to acquire knowledge, organize the knowledge and finally make the knowledge transparent. Intelligent data analysis and e-HRM combined helps to disburden the employees of the human resource department (Biesalski, n.d., p.1). Application of E Human Resource in Organizations An important example with regards to the application of e-HRM is “DaimlerChrisler AG Plant Worth” (Biesalski, n.d., p.1) in Germany. The company has recently replaced its conventional HR system with the web based solution. The software used by the organization is PeopleSoft. The new system is referred to as ePeople within the organization. Under this system which is a centralized web based application has been extremely effective in supporting the company’s human resource activities in the fields of administration, managing candidates and human resource development and payments (Biesalski, n.d., p.1). Apart from the above factors the software also provides a central point of contact for all HR tasks which is unlike the previous host based environment used by the company. The software has made possible a number of changes for employees and executives in the organization. The task of consulting in the human resource department accounts is the time consuming of all tasks. In order for reducing the time exposure greater responsibility to given to the employees, for example, changing their bank account numbers, getting their payrolls. The above activities can now be handled by employees themselves. Resulting from this, employees have been able to achieve greater freedom in their work. The philosophy of ‘ePeople’ is to cover the employees’ entire lifecycle beginning from the candidature and ending at the withdrawal. The following figure depicts the employee life cycle in ePeople. Figure 1: Employee Life Cycle at ePeople (Source: Biesalski, n.d., p.1) The figure shows that starting from entry; the process is done online by the employee himself and the way the data is taken over. The ongoing process shows the dislocation application and skill management. These steps are processed by ‘ePeople’ system itself. The system is independent and does not require delegating works or data to the other systems. The employee’s life cycle ends with his pension at the time he leaves the organization (Biesalski, n.d., p.1). Some of the other companies using e human resource management are General Motors and International Union UAW. The main aim of this was to enhance and improve productivity and efficiency in the organizations. A plan was developed and introduced through the system which provided the human resource activities to the American workers via employee portals. The system was effective in connecting more than 200,000 numbers of employees in General Motors and around 100,000 employees in DaimlerChrisler. Through the HR portals employees could found opportunities for e-learning. The site also provided them with the training and development opportunities. In this case, the e human resource management successfully helped to enhance and developed the present skills of employees and consequently contributed towards external and internal marketability (Coronas & Oliva, 2005, p.132). The following figure throws an insight into how portals can act as a centralised repository of information which can be customized as per the user’s requirements and can be accessed from a single web browser. Figure 2: Increasing human resources efficiency with portal solution (Source: IBM, 2006, p.5) Impact of E Human Resource on employee efficiency and organizational productivity In order to improve the internal efficiency along with adding bottom line value to the enterprise, organizations are required to prioritize the resources. The aim is to look for getting solutions which allow delivering services of high value, automating the processes and aligning activities as per the business objectives. The achievement of these goals is made possible through the transformation of the human resource activities to the electronic human resource activities which demonstrates an approach of aligning people, technology and processes (IBM, 2006, p.2). Firstly the system of electronic human resource management helps in providing self support capabilities and self service to the employees “such as access to benefits information, and expense and travel systems, can free HR from handling time-consuming, low-business-value information requests” (IBM, 2006, p.4). Moreover, in this case the human resource departments can put more focus on the emerging requirements of the organization and greater emphasis can be provided to the critical business activities like training, recruitment, and the same time reduce costs and enhance efficiencies. In addition this, e HRM plays a crucial role in streamlining workflow and processes. Businesses across all sectors have been trying to streamline the costly and manual processes of human resource activities. E human resource have provided well designed solutions considering the usability and integrated data for accomplishing specific tasks which are able to produce measurable savings. However, the system of automation must be very accurate and without any loopholes for the system to work efficiently. Only then can the system can produce results which increases productivity for the employees and also the HR department in the organization. Most importantly, they serve the purpose of setting new competitive measures and benchmarks for employees (IBM, 2006, p.4). Another crucial role played by the system is aligning the activities with the business objectives. Businesses have been increasingly demanding HR departments to provide greater bottom line impact for seeking higher competitive advantage and new efficiencies. Competition hinges on knowledge and this consequently requires the HR departments to deliver specialized information and training. This is primarily done for the purpose of equipping the employees as per the demands of the market and making them more competitive to fight in the international market. In compliance to the regular mandates HR departments successfully deliver and administer new document and training awareness programs. E human resource management increasingly puts greater focus on recruitment, retention and performance which builds an agile corporate culture and increases employee profitability and productivity (IBM, 2006, p.4). E human resource management has effectively played the role of driving the efficiencies of workers with portals. Organizations have been increasingly resorting to evolving e-HR for improving overall organizational productivity. The portal is regarded as a personalized view of the information which is provided in the web browsers. “The volumes of human resources forms, data, applications and processes can present a great opportunity for centralized viewing in a portal” (IBM, 2006, p.5). The HR portals serves as cornerstones and act as the starting point for the organizations wide portal implementation resulting in comprehensive productivity gains in all sectors of the business. Moreover applications of portals as part of the e human resource management allow the HR departments to control the information which is presented to the individual employees. It provides role based HR information to the employees. The worker is able to access information suited to his profile, designation and job role. The profile can vary according to the departments, years of services or functions of the job. However, the information provided are subject to special security which ensures that there is no leakage of data. In addition to this, portals also provide employees to have access to multiple data sources and applications (IBM, 2006, p.5). Through these portals errors have been reduced significantly in organizations. In other words they have helped to enhance efficiencies. Portals are also able to validate the inputs from employees to data forms and at the same time verify that the numeric values that were entered were correct and fell within the valid range. The fields which require names are checked and the benefits forms developed are repopulated with the names, addresses and the values from employee’s records (IBM, 2006, p.6). When portals are collaborated and integrated with the work flow it helps equipping the human resources to motivate, train, educate and finally retain employees with much richer variety of services. According to research results it is seen that organizations investing in human capital are able to develop more sustainable and competitive advantage. Tools for integrating like calendaring allow human resources to keep a track of when the benefit data requires updating on expiry of programs, or during periodic awareness and training classes. E human resource management also uses task portals under which the email messaging systems automatically notifies employees when they require attention. The customized and role based content can then be presented to the employees with tailored information and training. The electronic forms which are designed for every role can be used for verifying every field of data for updating of the human resource database. In this was the human resource departments are able to deliver more stable and high quality workforce and sustain higher quality at lower costs (IBM, 2006, p.6). Recommendations of implementing E Human Resource in Organizations While doing the project it was found that e human resource management plays a crucial role towards enhancing employee productivity and efficiency, however, it has little role to play to improve employee relations which accounts for one of the major aspects in the field of HR in organizations. Productivity largely depends on factors like interactions between employees and management and among employees themselves. It is recommended that the portals in the system may be used for purposes like exchanging information and data between employees or even between management, supervisors and employees. It can also include such factors like greetings from the top management for the employees during certain job achievements or for providing a certain certificate of appreciation for delivering quality services. This way it would be helpful in enhancing labor relations in the organization. In addition to this, it is recommended that e HRM must be designed with the purpose of enhancing efficiency of employees as per their individual requirements and standards. It is obvious that all employees would not have the same expertise or efficiency in all skill. Individual expertise varies and so does their efficiencies. Moreover, the level of expertise also varies according to the years of experience. This is the reason why it is recommended that the software must be developed with the purpose of catering to the individual capabilities and requirements. It should be designed in such a way that the employee’s drawbacks can be identified based on which proper training programs could be developed. The software so developed must be able to identify the gap prevailing between the target skill and the actual skill of the employees. The benefit that can be availed through this is that employees or employee groups can be identified whose capabilities are not likely to meet requirements in future so that they can be provided the required training or can be redeployed. Conclusion During the course of the project it was found that with the evolution of technology and innovation the role of human resource departments in organizations have changed considerably. The emphasis has greatly shifted to the development and production of such tools and techniques which reduce costs and at the same time enhance productivity. Thus the evolution of e-HRM has gained popularity in organizations. This has been especially effective in reducing dependencies of employees on the management. It has helped in self equipping the employees considerably in their work processes and make them less dependent on the management. Organizations which have especially gained from the implementation of e- human resource management are DaimlerChrisler, International Union UAW and General Motors. The organizations have recently introduced web based portals and replaced their old conventional techniques of operations. This has contributed towards the improvement of efficiencies of employees considerably and reduced costs substantially. One of the most well known software used by DaimlerChrisler is PeopleSoft which has specifically helped employees to conduct their work activities faster and with much less efforts. It is seen that the system has been specifically helped increase efficiency and productivity of organizations but has not yet been able effective in improving employee relations. It is recommended that the system could be used for the purpose of strengthening relations between management and employees. Further the system could also be used for sharing of mutual ideas amongst employees which would be effective in enhancing interaction, interdependence and mutual benefits for all. Reference Biesalski, E. (No Date). Knowledge Management and e-Human Resource Management. [Pdf]. Available at: http://km.aifb.kit.edu/ws/LLWA/akkd/fgwm/Resources/FGWM03_08_Ernst_Biesalski.pdf. [Accessed on April 13, 2011]. Coronas, T. T. & Oliva, M. A. (2005). e-Human resources management: managing knowledge people. Idea Group Inc (IGI). IBM. (2006). E-HR: Increasing human resources efficiency with a proven portal solution. [Pdf]. Available at: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ftp/lotusweb/gc28-7747-00.pdf. [Accessed on April 14, 2011]. Right Team. (2010). E-HR: The Technology Revolution in HR - Definition and Benefits. [Pdf]. Available at: http://www.rightteam.com/pdf/paper.pdf. [Accessed on April 13, 2011]. Read More