Human Resources Management in the New Millennium
| hrm new millennium |
1.
HR Can Help
in Dispensing Organizational Excellence: To achieve this paradigm
shift in organizational excellence there is a need for organizations to
reform how work is carried out by the Human Resource department.
By designing an entirely new role and agenda that results in enriching the
organization’s value to customers, investors, and employees, HR can help in
delivering organizational excellence. This can be carried out by helping line
managers and senior managers in moving planning from the conference room to the
marketplace and by becoming an expert in the way work is organized and
executed.
HR should be a representative of the employees and should
help the organization in improving its capacity for change. HR will help the
organizations in facing the competitive challenges such as globalization,
profitability through growth, technology, intellectual capital, and other
competitive challenges that the companies are facing while adjusting to
uncontrollably challenging changes in a business environment. The novel role of HR is to rapidly turn
strategy into action; manage processes intelligently and efficiently; maximize employee contribution and commitment and construct favorable
conditions for flawless change.
2.
Human
Resource Should be a Strategy Partner: HR should also become a partner in
strategy executions by propelling and directing serious discussions of how the
company should be organized to carry out its strategy.
Creating the conditions for this discussion involves four
steps. First HR needs to define an organizational architecture by identifying
the company’s way of doing business. Second, HR must be held responsible for
conducting an organizational audit. Third, HR as a strategic partner needs to
identify methods for restoring the parts of the organizational architecture
that need it. Fourth and finally, HR must take stock of its own work and set
clear priorities. In their new role as administrative experts, they will need to
shed their traditional image and still make sure all routine work for the
company is done well.
3.
HR
Accountability Should be Fixed to Ensure Employee Commitment: HR must be
held accountable for ensuring that employees feel committed to the organization
and contribute fully. They must take responsibility for orienting and training
line management about the importance of high employee morale and how to achieve
it. The new HR should be the voice of employees in management discussions. The
new role for HR might also involve suggesting that more teams be used on some
projects or that employees be given more control over their own work schedules.
4.
The New HR
Must Become a Change Agent: The new HR
must become a change agent, which is building the organization’s capacity to
embrace and capitalize on change. Even though they are not primarily
responsible for executing change the HR manager must make sure
that the organization carries out the changes framed for implementation.
5.
Improving
the Quality of HR: The most
important thing that managers can do to drive the new mandate for HR is to
improve the quality of the HR staff itself. Senior executives must get beyond
the stereotypes of HR professionals as incompetent support staff and unleash
HR’s full potential
6.
Change in
Employment Practices: The balance sheet of an organization shows human
resources as an expense and not as a Capital. In the information age, it is
perceived that machines can do the work more efficiently than most people
however; technology to work is dependent on people.
The challenges for Employment Practice in the New Millennium
will require that there should be strategic involvement of the people and labor-management partnerships
as they both have to take organization ahead.
7.
Benchmarking
Tool Must be Mastered by HR Professionals: HR professionals must master
benchmarking, which is a tool for continuous improvement- directing the human
side associated with the strategic path adopted by the organization. Through
this, the HR department will start appreciating the changes happening within and
outside the environment while expanding the knowledge about how to add value to
decision-making at the highest level of the organization.
8.
Aligning
Human Resources to Better Meet Strategic Objectives: Too often
organizations craft their strategy in a vacuum.
Some organizations don’t even include key people during strategy
formulation resulting in lacunae between the actual problems and the solutions
implemented- as critical inputs are not sought from those individuals who are
supposed to implement the new strategies.
A past CEO of Sony once said that organizations have access
to the same technology and the same information. The difference between any two
organizations is the “people”- the human resource. Empowering the workforce is
an essential tool for aligning human resources with the achievement of
corporate objectives. HR managers must hire talented human
resources and provide them with a positive environment where they will be
able to utilize their skills and potential and create an environment in
which these individuals are comfortable taking risks.
9.
Promote
From Within and Invest in Employees: Promoting
employees from within sends a powerful message that the organization’s
employees are valued. New blood and fresh ideas often come from newcomers to
the organization. To avoid stagnation of the firm, new ideas and approaches are
critical. Yet to improve employee morale, promoting individuals from within the
organization is essential. This communicates that the organization values its
employees and invests in their human resources.
10.
Review the
Recruitment and Selection Process: A key element of human resource
planning is ensuring that the supply of appropriate employees (with the right
skill mix) is on board when needed. This requires a proactive approach whereby
the organization anticipates its needs well in advance. It is important to
identify the competencies being sought. That is, the criteria upon which
selection decisions are to be made should be decided in advance. A firm must
identify those skill sets required by employees to be successful. Charles
O’Reilly suggests that companies should hire for attitude (perhaps even more so
than technical skills). That is, the fit of the individual with the values of
the organization and the culture of the firm should also be considered when
selecting employees. This has been referred to as the person-organization fit.
It is no longer enough to simply consider the person’s fit (and technical skillset) with the job. Part of the employee’s fit with the organization should
focus on the core values and beliefs of the organization. This will increase
employees’ contributions to the overall success of the organization if they
already embrace the core values of the organization before their selection
11.
Communicate
Mission and Vision: If employees are expected to contribute to the
attainment of the organization’s strategic objectives, they must understand
what their role is. This can be achieved in part by clearly communicating the
mission and vision statements of the firm. The old adage is certainly true. If
a person does not know where he or she is going, any road will get him or her
there.
The mission communicates the identity and purpose of the
organization. It provides a statement of who the firm is and what its
business is. Only those employees who understand this purpose can contribute to
the fullest extent possible. The vision statement provides a picture of the
future state of the firm. It should be a stretch to attain. This keeps all the
organization’s employees pulling in the same direction with a common endpoint.
It is much easier to align human resources with corporate objectives when these
employees are familiar with the mission and vision of the firm.
As the mission and vision statements are articulated,
organizational members begin to more closely embrace their very meaning on an
individual level. These statements provide a road map leading employees down
the road to achieving organizational objectives. Employees then identify how they
can contribute their unique talents toward the attainment of these goals.
12.
Use Teams
to Achieve Synergy: Synergy can be concisely defined as “two plus two
equals five”. In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
So much more can be achieved as people work together. Through the effective use
of teams, organizations can often achieve synergy. Team goals, however, must be
aligned with the organization’s strategic objectives. Aligning team objectives
with overall corporate objectives ensures that people are working toward the same
goal
1.10 Summary
Today’s organizations must align their human
resources to better meet strategic objectives. A failure to do so results in
wasted time, energy, and resources. Organizations are more likely to achieve
this alignment with their corporate objectives when they review their
recruitment and selection processes for fit, communicate the mission and vision
statements, use joint goal setting, design an appropriate reward system,
empower the workforce, promote and develop from within, and use teams to achieve
synergy. Human Resource Management is the management function that helps the
managers to plan, recruit, select, train, develop, remunerate and maintain
members of an organization. HRM has four objectives of societal,
organizational, functional, and personal development. An organization must have
set policies; definite procedures and well-defined principles relating to its
personnel and these contribute to the effectiveness, continuity, and stability
of the organization.
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