Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Abstract
Departments are the entities organizations form to organize people, reporting relationships, and work in a way that best supports the accomplishment of the organization's goals. Departments are usually organized by functions such as human resources, marketing, administration, and sales. But, a department can be organized in any way that makes sense for the customer. Departments can also be organized by customer, by product, or by region of the world.
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Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4 Key functions .............................................................................................................. 5 Positive aspects of Roles and Functions of the Human Resource Department ......... 6 Negative Aspects of Functions and Roles of the Human Resource Department ....... 8 Management trends and influences ......................................................................... 10 Strategies to Improve Human Resource Departments Value to the Organisation . 14 Evolution of HR Department ..................................................................................... 16 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 17 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 18
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Introduction
The Human Resource Department deals with management of people within the organisation. There are a number of responsibilities that come with this title. First of all, the Department is responsible for hiring members of staff; this will involve attracting employees, keeping them in their positions and ensuring that they perform to expectation. Besides, the Human Resource Department also clarifies and sets day to day goals for the organisation. It is responsible for organisation of people in the entire Company and plans for future ventures and objectives involving people in the Company. Research has shown that the human aspect of resources within an organisation contributes approximately eighty percent of the organisations value. This implies that if people are not managed properly, the organisation faces a serious chance of falling apart. The Human Resource Departments main objective is to bring out the best in their employees and thus contribute to the success of the Company. These roles come with certain positive and negative aspects. However, the negative aspects can be minimised by improvements to their roles and functions. These issues shall be examined in detail in the subsequent sections of the essay with reference to case examples of businesses in current operation.
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Key functions
Human Resources may set strategies and develop policies, standards, systems, and processes that implement these strategies in a whole range of areas. The following are typical of a wide range of organizations:
Maintaining awareness of and compliance with local, state and federal labour laws Recruitment, selection, and on boarding (resourcing) Employee record-keeping and confidentiality Organizational design and development Business transformation and change management Performance, conduct and behaviour management Industrial and employee relations Human resources (workforce) analysis and workforce personnel data management Compensation and employee benefit management Training and development (learning management) Employee motivation and morale-building (employee retention and loyalty)
Implementation of such policies, processes or standards may be directly managed by the HR function itself, or the function may indirectly supervise the implementation of such activities by managers, other business functions or via third-party external partner organizations. Applicable legal issues, such as the potential for treatment and disparate impact, are also extremely important to HR managers.
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for keeping up this trend. These compensation packages can come in the following ways; - Holiday Offers - End of Year Bonuses - Equities - Awards - Salary Increments - Provision of Flexible Working Hours - Straight forward Promotion Schemes and Career Developments If the HR department includes these incentives, then it will ensure that employees are satisfied with the Company. It will also contribute towards good staff retention rates. This is especially crucial in increasing stability within the organisation. It also makes employees identify with the firm and instils a sense of loyalty. Planning in the Organisation The Human Resource Department is placed with the responsibility of ensuring that it plans adequately for all the organisations future engagements that will involve people. One important aspect of this is planning for employees in the organisation. It is important that the organisation ensures that all the employees under its wing are just enough to increase value to the organisation. The Department must ensure that staff members are not too many because if they exceed this amount, then the organisation stands to lose. It must plan adequately to ensure that staff members are not too few either, otherwise they will be overworking those who are already in place. Consequently, there will be poor motivation resulting from fatigue. The HR department is also bestowed with the responsibility of planning future organisational goal in relation to people or clarifying these same goals to staff members. This function of the department ensures that people in the organisation have a general direction which they are working towards. Organisations that have a clear direction are always more effective; those members of staff will be more result oriented rather than just working for the sake of it. The Department is also responsible for setting day to day objectives necessary for streamlining activities within the organisation and thus ensuring that work is not just done haphazardly.
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initially very successful in its operations prior to that fateful year. But in the latter years of its operations, the Company was involved in two accounting scandals that tarnished its name and subsequently caused failure. The Company failed to plan well for the kind of employees it recruited. This was witnessed when one of its employees in the Legal Department called Nancy Temple was fined in the Court of law for non adherence to accounting laws. This problem could have been prevented if the HR department had evaluated this employee before hiring her and also evaluation should have been done during her performance. If HR had been extremely critical, then they would have realised that the employee did not adhere to Company principles and would therefore have terminated her employment. Beside this, the Arthur Andersen Human Resource department also failed in its communication function to employees. The department should have ensured that they constantly communicate to members of staff about the goals and objectives of the Company on a day to day basis. This would have made them very clear in the minds of employees and would have prevented the downfall of the Company.
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Individual responses In regard to how individuals respond to the changes in a labour market, the following must be understood:
Geographical spread: how far is the job from the individual? The distance to travel to work should be in line with the pay offered, and the transportation and infrastructure of the area also influence who applies for a post.
Occupational structure: the norms and values of the different careers within an organization. Mahoney 1989 developed 3 different types of occupational structure, namely, craft (loyalty to the profession), organization career (promotion through the firm) and unstructured (lower/unskilled workers who work when needed).
Generational difference: different age categories of employees have certain characteristics, for example, their behaviour and their expectations of the organization. Framework Human Resources Development is a framework for the expansion of human capital within an organization or (in new approaches) a municipality, region, or nation. Human Resources Development is a combination of training and education, in a broad context of adequate health and employment policies that ensures the continual improvement and growth of the individual, the organization, and the national human resourcefulness. Adam Smith states, The capacities of individuals depended on their access to education. Human Resources Development is the medium that drives the process between training and learning in a broadly fostering environment. Human Resources Development is not a defined object, but a series of organised processes, with a specific learning objective (Nadler, 1984) within a national context, it becomes a strategic approach to inter sect oral linkages between health, education and employment. Structure Human resources development is the structure that allows for individual development, potentially satisfying the organizations, or the nation's goals. Development of the individual benefits the individual, the organization - and the nation and its citizens. In the corporate vision, the Human Resources Development framework views employees as an asset to the enterprise, whose value is enhanced by development, "Its primary focus is on growth and employee developmentit emphasizes developing individual potential and skills" (Elwood, Olton and Trot 1996)Human Resources Development in this treatment can be in-room group training, tertiary or vocational courses or mentoring and coaching by senior
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employees with the aim for a desired outcome that develops the individual's performance. At the level of a national strategy, it can be a broad inter-sect oral approach to fostering creative contributions to national productivity. Training and development At the organizational level, a successful Human Resources Development program prepares the individual to undertake a higher level of work, "organized learning over a given period of time, to provide the possibility of performance change" (Nadler 1984). In these settings, Human Resources Development is the framework that focuses on the organization's competencies at the first stage, training, and then developing the employee, through education, to satisfy the organization's long-term needs and the individual's career goals and employee value to their present and future employers. Human Resources Development can be defined simply as developing the most important section of any business, its human resource, by attaining or upgrading employee skills and attitudes at all levels to maximize enterprise effectiveness. The people within an organization are its human resource. Human Resources Development from a business perspective is not entirely focused on the individual's growth and development; "development occurs to enhance the organization's value, not solely for individual improvement. Individual education and development is a tool and a means to an end, not the end goal itself" (Elwood F. Holton II, James W. Trot Jar). The broader concept of national and more strategic attention to the development of human resources is beginning to emerge as newly independent countries face strong competition for their skilled professionals and the accompanying brain-drain they experience. Recruitment and selection Applicant recruitment and employee selection form a major part of an organization's overall resourcing strategies, which identify and secure people needed for the organization to survive and succeed in the short- to medium-term. Recruitment activities need to be responsive to the increasingly competitive market to secure suitably qualified and capable recruits at all levels. To be effective, these initiatives need to include how and when to source the best recruits, internally or externally. Common to the success of either are: well-defined organizational structures with sound job design, robust task and person specification and versatile selection processes, reward, employment and human resource policies, underpinned by a commitment for strong employer branding and employee engagement and onboarding strategies. Internal recruitment can provide the most cost-effective source for recruits if the potential of the existing pool of employees has been enhanced through training,
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development and other performance-enhancing activities such as performance appraisal, succession planning and development centers to review performance and assess employee development needs and promotional potential. For many organizations, securing the best quality candidates requires external recruitment methods. Rapidly changing business models demand skill and experience that cannot be sourced or rapidly enough developed from the existing employee base. It would be unusual for an organization to undertake all aspects of the recruitment process without support from third-party dedicated recruitment firms. This may involve a range of support services, such as: provision of CVs or resumes, identifying recruitment media, advertisement design and media placement for job vacancies, candidate response handling, and shortlisting, conducting aptitude test, preliminary interviews or reference and qualification verification. Typically, small organizations may not have in-house resources or, in common with larger organizations, may not possess the particular skill-set required to undertake a specific recruitment assignment. Where requirements arise, these are referred on an ad HOC basis to government job centers or commercially-run employment. Except in sectors where high-volume recruitment is the norm, an organization faced with sudden, unexpected requirements for an unusually large number of new recruits often delegate the task to a specialist external recruiter. Sourcing executive-level and senior management as well as the acquisition of scarce or high-potential recruits has been a long-established market serviced by a wide range of search and selection or headhunting consultancies, which typically form long-standing relationships with their client organizations. Finally, certain organizations practice outsourcing complete responsibility for all workforce procurement to one or more third-party recruitment agencies or consultancies. In the most complex of these arrangements, the external recruitment services provider may not only physically locate, or embed, their resourcing team(s) in the client organization's offices, but work in tandem with the senior human resource management team in developing the longer-term HR resourcing strategy and plan.
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that employees do not simply report to work and that the time spent at work is directly proportional to output.
Improving Organisational Culture The Human Resource Department can try to improve organisational culture through a three step procedure. The first step of the process is observation. In this step HR finds out what makes ups or what the companys culture is like. HR should also be very intense on the organisational needs. Here, HR should realise that personal fulfilment works better and therefore should try to ensure that the change is relevant to every staff member. In this stage, HR should try to explain to all staff members or stakeholder the advantage of transforming the culture in the organisation. This should be made clear so that all can see the advantages at the individual level and not simply at the organizational level. Then HR should try to eliminate all inhibitions in staff members minds. It is possible that some may claim that they tried one or two strategies before and it did not succeed. This are what are called cries of despair and HR should try its best to explain to staff members the need of changing the culture of the organisation. The next step is the analysis of various aspects. Here, there is collection of data needed in making certain that culture changes. This stage involves checking out the success features or the factors that can facilitate its success. There should be calibration of data collected. Staff members should be made to understand that there are no perfect situations for implementation of changes. The analysis should involve assessing whether the information is sensible or not. Whether data gathered will be helpful or not and if it is too little or too much. Staff members should be requested for data that will help change the culture. Of course when trying to bring in change HR Department should have perceived benefits, a deadline for execution and also the realised gains in relation to the change in culture. In this step, there should be reality checks which should be done often. There should also be continuous integration. Through this scheme HR Department should be able to change the culture in the organisation and add value to it.
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Evolution of HR Department
You might ask yourself how the roles and responsibilities of HR professionals have changed during the past 20 years. Technology has played a key part in this transformation. Next one may ask how HR will continue to evolve. The needs of the many have and will decide the changes needed for future success, but we must listen and be flexible and not set in our ways. The role of HR professionals has evolved in many ways over the years. In the beginning everything was done manually. Pencil pushing was the main source of gathering data. Times have changed and technology has grown and things have become more efficient. Computerization has made things more accurate and the quantity much greater. As the market grew into other countries, technology helped with the communication gaps that were developed. A desire to change is the key. Everything could change around you but if you do not see the need then you will be left behind. The tools I think that has had a tremendous impacted are the advancement in data management. For example, to update an employee's file was quite a task in the past. The file needed to be pulled, placed in the in box, amongst other files. Then it had to be gone through and the proper information updated and then it had to be filed again. In today's systems, with a few key strokes and clicks of a mouse, the same thing can be accomplished. In order for an HR department to be successful in this day and time, they must be involved. The representatives should be a common face amongst all the departments. This has opened the doors for a smooth transition and an implementation of changes that take place in our work force today. The only thing that I think hurts a company, when they out source HR, is that they lose the personal contact with the employees. Some problems with this are that some of the problems need intimate understanding and mutual respect. Open door policy is great but you need to feel invited not directed.
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Conclusion
The Human Resource Management teams main function is to manage people. There are positive and negative aspects of this function; first of all, the HR department enriches the organisation through recruitment procedures and an example an effective HR team in this area is Tesco Ireland. HR department also ensures that members of staff follow a general direction by frequently clarifying and reminding them of the organisations goals. Besides this, they are also responsible for organising incentives or compensation packages to motivate employees. All these functions contribute towards organisational effectiveness. However, there are some negative aspects of HR; it has to bear the burden of blame if an employee performs poorly like the Arthur Andersen Company. Besides this, some policies made by the department may be detrimental to the Company like in the Home Depot Companys case. Improvements to their role can be done by arranging training for staff members, organising activities for the organisation and changing organisational culture
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Bibliography
The sources of this project are:
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