Importance Of HRM In Organizations: HR Strategies, Planning, Training, And Change Management

HRM and the HR function

The report has been formulated by the HR manager of Palermo Safe Storage, where there is a serious drawback in hr functions has been identified by the author. This report aims to perceive the board members about the importance of human resource strategies in contemporary organizational success by understanding HR roles and functions, planning and managing the change within the organization. Lastly, the author has recommended improvements from the existing situation at the organisation based on analysis of the topics covered within the report

Human resource management is the practice that contains four primary activities, namely, acquisition, improvement, motivation, as well as continuance of developing performance of the labour or work force (Bratton, and Gold, 2012). It is the branch of management that is accountable on a staff basis for focusing on the factors of actions and functions that are mainly involved with the connection of management to workforce and employees to employees and with the growth of the individual and the organization as a whole. It is a tool to maintain a harmony within the organization and cannot be removed from fundamental management functions. HRM is the planning, organizing, directing and governing of the accruing and improvement of labour resources to the end that individual and social purposes are achieved profitably. Thus, HRM can be considered as the backbone of any organization which is responsible for the growth, development and sustainability of the business. Effective management of human resource facilitates an assurance of the right person at accurate place at the precise time.

The function of the human resource management is to provide labour resources for the organization to meet up challenges of an increasing and progressive competitive sector. The basic tasks of a human resource manager are comprised of enhancing labour force, contractual diversification and modifications in demographic profile of the organization to rearrange the function and importance of human resource management (Armstrong, 2011). Thus the basic functions of human resource department are-

• Manpower planning that engages the method of recruiting the most deserving candidate for the required position in the organization.
• Training and development is an important tool to enhance employee knowledge and productivity at work and it is the HR manger’s duty to recognize individual employee’s strengths and weaknesses and knowledge gap and arrange training and development accordingly.
• Determining salaries and wages is another important role that human resource department negotiates with the candidates in an organization.
• Promotions and appraisals are also determined by the hr department after reviewing the performance of the employee and reward him according to his capabilities. Rewards and promotions motivate employees to perform better in an organization.

 Every business organization needs to plan for the posts that will certainly get vacant as a result of employee retirements, resignations and promotions. Planning is also necessary for the new vacant positions as a result of business expansions. Therefore, human resource planning is a continuous process for most of the organizations. An effective human resource planning is always interrelated with business strategies. Human resource planning should forecast the demand for labour force and estimate the available resource to meet the growing demand so that it can avoid excess or shortage of employees (DeCenzo, et al. 2010). If the supply of the labour force is greater than the actual demand then the hr manager needs to plan for cutback of employees, for instance, recently, due to decrease in oil prices in international market, the market of gas and oil is facing a slow down as a result L&T has sacked 4000 of its employees at a turn to reduce organizational processes and sustain in long run. In the fast paced competitive globalized market, human resource planning has been more evident in organizational success and substance. Organizations should be swift in taking decisions in relation to situational needs so it is evident that the human resource manager plans accordingly and forecast labour resources.  Human Resource Planning is the practice of evaluating & anticipating about the organization’s human capital inline, executing jobs responsibilities that will meet the requirements of the business and which offer employee satisfaction (Werner and DeSimone, 2011).

Human Resource Planning

HR planning in the initial stage of an organization requires the hr department to constantly monitor and plan- labour requirements, expected skills and abilities for a particular job responsibility, placement of employees according to their skills and abilities, negotiation, rewards and promotions and training and development of the workforce.

Human resource planning is the practice of forecasting the potential human resource needs of an organization and planning for utilization of the existing human capital to optimize its capabilities. Thus it is the basic concept of human resource planning is to fulfil the demand and supply perspective of an organization.  The human resource planning trail the following steps-

• Forecasting labour capital requirement
• Evaluating the present labour capital inventory
• Anticipating the quantitative and qualitative capability of human capital in future
• Meeting the human capital requirements through efficient planning, recruitment, selection and training processes.

Training and development are designed to improve boost and enhance employee skills and talents, which is very crucial for organizational and personal development (Huber, 2011). Often new recruits need training and development according to their skills and experience. Existing workforce also needs training and development constantly upgrade their skills and new technological improvements and increase productivity at work. Training and development is a process by which employee’s skills and abilities are upgraded so that they become more jobs responsible and impart new knowledge in a particular area (Fee, 2014). An effective training results in increase in employee productivity, improved employee loyalty and higher level of motivation. Generally developing and sustaining a business organization requires employee training and development to make them job ready. Usually, employees look forward towards employers to offer them with chance of development and become skilled and eventually progress in employability which ultimately profitable for the organization as the whole process increases employee motivation and better performance at work (McDowall and Saunders, 2010).  

An effective training aims at long-term transformation in skills, abilities, perception, principals and awareness of the employee in order to advance workplace environment and performance of the organization (Niazi, 2011). But the truth is that, most of the time, business organizations lacks to identify the training and development needs of the workforce. It is unfortunate as an effective and successful training and development program facilitate improvements for both employees and organization as a whole. It is significant that a well-planned and well-presented training and development session improves and sustains a business organization’s sustainability and growth while achieving competitive advantage (Ulrich, 2013).

Benefits of training are

Employee	Organization
· Opportunity for self awareness and self improvements. · Better job skills would lead to better job satisfaction. · Chance of leaning new techniques and ideas that can be applied for better and optimized performance at work. · Better adaptability will allow employees to cope-up with new changes and challenges.	· Efficient use of human resources. · Better job performance will increase the overall performance of the organization. · Effective and successful achievement of the goals and objectives. · Highly satisfied and loyal workforce.

Human resource department plays a very important role when managing change management within an organization. A HR department in an organization should make certain that an employee participates and motivated to undergo the transformation process (Hendry, 2012). A change management in the contemporary scenario is all about human capital and its ability to adapt change.

David Ulrich’s model for human resource change management is regarded as one of the most revolutionary change models because it considers individuals and their roles in organization as priority. As, human resource departments engages in management of human capital of a business, it is regarded as one of the most important functions of organization management in contemporary times (Lengnick-Hall, et al. 2011).  The Ulrich’s model does not consider the function of the hr department rather its role in change management. To be specific, he identified four primary roles as the key components that a HR department applies when managing change in an organization (Lucio, 2013). They are-

1. Hr Business Partner: It is term referred to those how are responsible to communicate with the organization’s stakeholders (employees, investors, creditors, suppliers, etc. The HR Business Partner is responsible for identifying talents within the organization, attracting talents for recruitment process, share human resource objective of the organization and make sure that it is correctly implemented in the organization, motivates employees to increase organization’s productivity, shares feedbacks with organization’s internal customer about the quality of experience and lastly, maintains synchronization within the workplace.
2. The Change Agent: When an organization is undergoing certain change and transformation, it is the job of the Change Agent to communicate about the transformation internally within the organization. He is also responsible for identifying training needs and arranging training and development sessions so that the workforce can upgrade their skills and abilities to sustain the change.
3. Administration Expert: The basic task of an Administration Expert is to track alteration in legislation, guidelines, occupational health and safety policy, and changes in labour laws and assists the organization adjust in order to continue to sustain. He is also responsible for keeping the organization updated with employee information by utilizing Human Resource Information System software which facilitates the organization to adopt a more technologically improves, modern paperless policy for accumulating information, securing private data, sharing files within the organization.
4. Employee advocate: The Employee Advocate takes initiatives to develop self-confidence and employee satisfaction, assists the change agent by aiding training and skilled growth opportunities, and make certain that active workforce are given opportunities to grow and sustain.

Training and Development

Business organizations should take the Ulrich Model as guidance in change management but also be creative with the plan according to situational needs.

Retaining a fair and safe workplace atmosphere and improving employee motivation and efficiency are essential for any business organization. Important societal, economic and demographic alterations have lead organisations to reconsider employee management and support. In contemporary times, labour laws and employee welfare practices are more flexible and employee centric.  Employment legislation is considered to be the backbone of human resource management and without involving labour laws within hr practices, hr management cannot be successful. Human Resource management does not validates if it does not follow labour laws, and ignoring labour laws can lead to serious consequences like, labour problem within the organization, unsatisfied employee, poor performance, etc. (Srivastava, and Agarwal, 2012). Also, ignoring or violating labour law can also led to serious legal problem for the organization. Every country has different employee legislature that has been formulated on specific laws. HR professionals should be aware of the labour laws and other rules and regulation to minimize the possibility of organization’s responsibility in every aspect of human resource operations.

The basic faction of human resource management is to follow the process of recruitment, selection, training, rewarding and making hr rules according to labour relations, safety at workplace, and welfare of employees. Sustaining a good employee employer relation and among co-workers is one of the most curial tasks of hr prioritising organizational performance. Miscommunication and disorganization often give rise to conflict within the organization, but solving it lies in the hand of hr department. Maintaining a good relationship within the employees and safeguarding employee interest can bring trust among employees for the human resource department of the organization. Employee welfare, safety at workplace and health measures is some of the crucial factors that must be safeguarded and executed by the hr department for its workforce. This is in reference to The Factories Act 1948. Complex issues like disagreement resolving, women employees’ welfare, gender equality, and child labour, and reimbursements in case of industrial accident etc. should be performed according to respecting the employee policy of the organization (Storey, 2014). The hr department should be more employee centric and should have details about every individual engaged within the organization so that it can resolve any dispute before it begins to appear by becoming proactive in managing legally mandated employee benefits and requirements. Lastly, the human resource department should engage in a communication with the employees about expectations for employees and referring to their concerns more professionally.

Globalization can be defined as the term when organizations starts growing its influence on international level or starts operating globally (Crane and Matten, 2016). The twenty first century is an age of globalization and it has a direct influence on the human resource management and practices. So, recognizing the influence of globalization on HRM can assists mangers to enhance their understanding of the organization’s situation under increasing influence of global business environment. As the businesses are becoming global, organizations are communicating with diverse customers who come from diverse socio-cultural, linguistic and economic background (Tiwari, 2013). As a result, organizations are also attracting global talents from equally diverse background to better understand, better relate and communicate with the diverse range of stakeholders (Sparrow, et al. 2016). Organizations are also respecting the aspect of different ideas and perspectives in solving problems in an organization.

Change Management

Now due to globalization and increase in competitions, organizations are also emphasising on professional development so that the workforce become diversely skilled in taking decisions at workplace resulting in better workplace performance. As a result, the training and development are getting greater prominence in globalized organizations. Human resource departments are responsible for constant monitoring and evaluation of employee performance to identify the gap in the expected performance and the actual performance of the employee (Scullion, and Collings, 2011). By identifying the Gap, hr departments needs to analyse the training need and arrange the training session according to individual needs as not employees have same skills and same needs. Finally, working in a globalized market with globally diverse workforce, now the hr department needs to recognize and execute the employee and labour laws of many different jurisdictions. Accepting the laws is crucially vital to the business since any violation of them will have a serious legal impact on business operational and financially and reputation of the organization.

Working on a diverse work culture can be cumbersome for some employees so it is the job of the employees to develop a multicultural work environment in the organization. This can be developed through accepting, respecting and recognizing different perspectives and customs by arranging training seasons where the employees should be trained about multiculturalism and how cultural intelligence can be developed (Schweyer, 2010).

Palermo Safe Storage should first develop an hr strategy according to its company objective, to develop itself as a more employee centric organization and should recognize and address employee issues like, employee welfare and safety. And make communicate with the workforce about the newly adopted changes in human resource policies for employee welfare. The organization is also facing a labour short-age and employees are not at all satisfied with over-loaded work environment. To manage the human capital shortage, the hr department should conduct a hr planning process to understand the requirement of workforce in the organization. In the present scenario, human resource planning in Palermo Safe Storage will solve the man power shortage, proper evaluation of employee skills and abilities and negotiating about remunerations to meet national standards of salary structure and increase employee motivation.

Reference:

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