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Strategic Role of HR in the Organization
The human resource department plays a very crucial role in the management of an organizations workforce. HR recruits the right candidates, trains them, motivates them, and administers performance appraisals to them. These functions are not easy as they require strategic approaches. Human resource management should be connected to the organizations objectives, goals, and strategies. This can be achieved through strategic management of the workforce to improve business performance, advance innovation, competitive advantage, and flexibility (Gupta, 2020). Strategic HR also helps in the development of an organizational culture that is fit for purpose.
The effectiveness of strategic human resource management requires the HR department to take part in the implementation of the companys policies. Hiring, rewarding, and training employees are the primary activities through which HR can be demonstrated. A strategic HR practitioner should also scout for ways through which human resources can create direct impacts on the growth of the business. An organization is more likely to succeed if its workforce is working towards shared objectives. A strategic HR practitioner analyzes the employees to determine the specific actions that are needed to enhance their value to the organization. The outcomes of such analysis should be used to develop HR techniques that address weaknesses among employees.
Job Analysis and Safety
Job analysis is the process and activities involved in collecting relevant information about a particular job and assessing its details. There are different requirements, responsibilities, descriptions, pay packages, and qualifications that characterizes jobs. Within an organization, there are various positions that require individuals to possess certain attributes to fill them up. It is vital to study different jobs to establish the responsibilities and activities they entail, their necessary qualifications, their significance, and their working conditions. Therefore, job analysis puts much emphasis on the job itself and not the individual doing the job. However, this does not prevent the Human Resources Department within an organization from collecting relevant information from the person who holds the position about some details of the job.
As a leader in any organization, job analysis is an integral element of management that avails useful data for the management of performance, selection and recruitment of employees, and workforce planning. Information gathered from the process of job analysis also helps in succession and career planning, employer and labor relationship building, risk management, training and development, as well as compensation administration. A business leader will also obtain first-hand information on the safety, health, and security characteristics of various jobs for proper planning.
Staffing Systems
Staffing within an organization should not just be done haphazardly without following some laid down procedures. Instead, an organization should come up with a system that ensures that employee attrition is dealt with in more effective and better ways. Indeed, the leadership of many organizations often grapples with the thorny issue of employee unproductivity and high turnover rates among the best and highly skilled employees. A staffing system can help address this by providing business leaders with clear visibility of all their staff members. The staffing system helps to manage employees and ensure that their collective and personal interests are aligned with the objectives of the organization.
Staffing can be approached in two ways: staffing strategy and staffing plans. A staffing strategy is a long-term plan that illustrates how an organization will perform over a certain time period, like five or ten years. The leadership of an organization needs assurance that its staff will match its needs. On the other hand, staffing plans are short-term and tactical initiatives designed to address prevailing staff surpluses and gaps. Both approaches are important for an organizations staffing requirements.
Performance Management
Performance management is a management tool that organizational managers use in monitoring and evaluating work done by employees. The objective of performance management is to create an atmosphere where employees can perform to the best of their skills and abilities and effectively and efficiently produce high-quality work. It helps both managers and employees to have shared goals, career progress, and expectations. Managers use this tool to ensure that each employees work is aligned with the overall vision of the organization. Thus, it is incumbent upon a manager to establish relevant performance management programs to measure and create goals, milestones, and objectives. Conventionally, performance management is often conducted through end year reviews paradigm. However, these are traditional tools that cannot produce effective results in some setups. The best approach to review the performance of employees is to turn every opportunity that a manager interacts with employees into a learning occasion.
Performance management is used by business leaders to recommend new actionable courses, make important decisions that would assist employees in attaining their objectives and adjust workflow. In addition to individual employee benefits, performance management also helps an organization attain its overall goals. Performance management should be tailored per department in line with its goals and objectives. For instance, the sales department in an organization can set a target that requires staff to have sold a certain volume of goods within a specified time. In performance management, the manager of the sales department will guide the sales personnel to attain the numbers set for them.
Training and Talent Management & Development
In every industry, there is a cadre of employees with special skills and talents that organizations are not willing to lose. The primary objective of training and talent management is to maximize the strengths of every employee, encourage innovation and creativity, and champion diversity. It intends to create a work atmosphere where an organization reverberates with drive, passion, and energy that employees befit (Elegbe, 2016). Skills and talents are not constant variables but rather upgraded, retained, and nurtured continuously.
This justifies why an organization needs to coach and train its employees to keep a talent culture that is viable within it. In the context of talent management within an organization, training implies entails counseling, coaching, and obtaining feedback from employees in regard to their performances. The primary area of focus of training and talent management is to support employees either in an individual capacity or in groups to deliver their best performances.
Compensation
Compensation is the benefits that are given to employees in exchange for the services they offer to their employer. Employees can be compensated in different ways, including wages and salaries, health insurance, paid leave, bonuses, time off, retirement plans, disability allowance, and life insurance (Belcourt et al., 2019). Compensation is often linked to employee performance appraisals, where workers who perform better are rewarded with some perks. Not all employees qualify to receive the same amount of compensation. Instead, the compensation of employees is based on internal influences and pay structure and external influences and pay levels.
The salaries, benefits, and wages that are given to employees depend on their levels of skills and experience. Those with the highest levels of skills and experience, like the chief executive officers, president, and chief financial officer, are compensated at the highest rates. In addition, the salaries and wages that competitors pay their workers also influence the amount of compensation to be paid to employees. A competitor firm that pays its employees high wages might cause workers from a different firm to join it. It is, hence, important for HR practitioners to regularly regulate the number of wages given to employees of competitor firms to avoid high turnover rates.
The Legal Environment and Diversity & Inclusion
The legal environment of a business involves the roles that law plays in all perspectives of business owners. It is not just complying with the relevant laws but also understanding a business legal frameworks upon which a business operates to achieve and maintain compliance. A multinational corporation is bound by public international law, which refers to a set of principles and rules that govern the relationships and conduct between states and the firms and their employees (Hays-Thomas, 2016). The legal environment plays a crucial role in the operations of a business and customer behavior.
Some of the factors that determine the legal environment include employment contracts, taxation laws and regulations, and immigration laws. These factors can determine the success or failure of a business. This explains why business organizations should have a deep understanding of their legal environment. Organizational law is the most important legal factor that affects the legal environment. The scope of any firms activities will be determined by its type of entity before registration. Different countries have different employment laws on several issues, including minimum wage. For instance, in operating a business in the US, one will be required to pay more to employees as compared to running the same business in China.
Lessons Learned
The texts, discussions, and readings have indeed offered vital lessons on a myriad of topics. In each of the seven sections, I have drawn crucial lessons as a business leader. I have learned that an organization is more likely to succeed if its workforce is working towards shared objectives. A strategic HR practitioner analyzes the employees to determine the specific actions that are needed to enhance their value to the organization. The outcomes of such analysis should be used to develop HR techniques that address weaknesses among employees. The significant role played by the job analysis process has also been a key highlight of the lesson. It is only by conducting job analysis that the leadership of an organization will be able to distinguish different jobs. Such distinctions should be based on knowledge, skills, experiences, performance standards, work behavior and activities, equipment and machines used in the job, financial impact, and budgetary allocations. Although it is not easy to determine the tasks that employees should perform within an organization, job analysis is an important element of human resource management that cannot be avoided.
When it comes to staffing systems, it has emerged that it helps identify and address the staffing inferences of an organizations plans and strategies. Over time, there will be instances where discrepancies among staff will be observed in an organization. Some tasks will require a greater number of employees than others. All these can be addressed through staffing strategies that ensure fair and equitable distribution of staff among different departments. On its part, performance management is an accountable and continuous process that creates a more transparent and healthier environment in the workplace. It can best be implemented through effective communication that can be achieved by holding regular meetings. There must also be concrete rules in place to allow every employee to understand what is expected of him. This will help avoid instances where employees just perform random tasks in the hope that they impress their managers.
As a business leader, it would be instrumental in finding out from individual employees why they failed to deliver in certain areas or activities and explaining what should be done. Training is intended to make employees feel stronger and motivated to build their capabilities. It also helps in developing talents for the organizations future needs, improving performance, managing conflicts, solving problems, improving communication, nurturing talent, and managing stress and time. When it comes to compensation, competitive salaries and wages should be provided within an industrys geographical area. An organization that has a reputation for paying below-market wages to its employees will most likely repel a skilled workforce. In addition to competitors compensation, an organizations compensation is also determined by its efficiency, employee productivity, and its financial position. Employees can either be directly or indirectly compensated by their employer. Direct compensations are the salaries and wages, while indirect compensations are the services and benefits extended to employees as rewards.
Finally, I have learned that the legal environment across different countries affects the diversity and inclusion of employees. In some countries, it is prohibited to have more than one-third of an organizations workforce drawn from one gender, race, or ethnic group. In other countries, especially those in the Middle East, women are forbidden from exposing their faces and heads to strangers. This means that their employment fields are limited. Still, some countries are very strict when it comes to child labor. A business leader must strive to clearly understand the legal environment of the business to avoid problems with law enforcement authorities.
References
Belcourt, M., Snell, S., Singh, P., & Morris, S. (2019). Managing human resources. Nelson.
Elegbe, J. A. (2016). Talent Management in the developing world: Adopting a Global Perspective. Routledge.
Gupta, A. D. (2020). Strategic human resource management: Formulating and implementing HR strategies for a competitive advantage. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Hays-Thomas, R. (2016). Managing Workplace Diversity and Inclusion: A Psychological Perspective. Taylor & Francis.
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