Human capital management
This report has been prepared in response to a request made to us by Google Company seeking advice on the appropriate ways to manage human capital, and thus increase its performance. After conducting research on this field, the following sets of recommendations have been formulated to assist your companyâs management to manage human capital effectively.
Recommendations
Human capital is an important factor of production, especially in labor surplus countries. Human capital, if well managed, plays a critical role in ensuring the success of a business. The key to successful management of labor is to examine the marketplace environment and create employment coupled with profit-making opportunities that provide potential growth and financial viability of a business (Inman, O’Sullivan & Murton 2014).
In todayâs business environment where competition is high, labor management is indispensable, and thus businesses have to manage this important factor of production effectively (Friederichs & Labes 2006). However, in most businesses, the importance of human capital is overlooked. The majority of businesses today focus on maximizing their output at the expense of managing their human capital effectively (Williams & Adam-Smith 2010).
Managers focus mainly on improving the overall output, and thus they ignore the importance of managing labor capital. This report will analyze the basic elements of human capital management with reference to Google Company that has faced criticism over the mistreatments of its employees. Google is an international corporation that offers Internet services globally (Mondy & Mondy 2014). The company provides a wide variety of Internet services to its consumers including Internet marketing, cloud computing, and software among others. Google is one of the companies in the world with the largest number of employees.
However, it has faced criticism over the mistreatment of its workers over the last few decades. This report will advise the companyâs management on the best ways to manage its human capital in order to maximize profits. The report will offer recommendations to the companyâs managers on how they could manage the human capital effectively.
Planning
Planning is an essential element of human resource management. It involves timely identification of the objectives of the business, assigning duties to the suitable employees, and formulating strategies that aim at achieving the set objectives (Boxhall & Purcell 2011). In addition, planning entails timely determination of the tasks to be accomplished coupled with formulating the means to accomplish them. In addition, planning outlines the process of accomplishing such tasks and assigns employees duties according to their expertise and experience. In the planning phase, the goals and objectives of a business are determined and suitable ways of achieving them are formulated.
The cost of accomplishing the tasks are well laid down before determining the source of any required additional capital (Kramar & Syed 2012). The management ensures that every employee is aware of the goals and objectives of the business and his/her role both individually and as a team. Directors at Google Company should embrace this aspect of human resource management in order to make viable decisions.
Staffing
Staffing is an important aspect of human resource management. It involves selecting the best persons to engage in the company in different capacities (Inman, O’Sullivan & Murton 2014). Therefore, the management of the company should determine the cost of hiring new staff, the expertise required, and the number of employees required (Klein 2009). In a bid to ensure that the company hires only qualified candidates, individuals should be invited through adverts.
Google Company should invite candidates from a wide range of skills and expertise through making advertisements for new jobs and inviting people from all backgrounds. Posting adverts in newspapers and other communication media boosts the reputation of a firm not to mention that it encourages people with different skills and expertise to apply for the post. Google Company should select its employees through a rigorous hiring process based on the vacant positionsâ requirements.
Only the best candidates should be selected to fill the advertised posts. Once the best candidates have been selected, the next stage should be an orientation. Orientation involves allowing the incoming employees to interact with their existing counterparts in a bid to gain first-hand information regarding the organizationâs culture and objectives (Mondy & Mondy 2014). Each new staff of the Google Company should be oriented before being engaged.
Employee Relations
Employee relations denote a set of strategies designed to encourage employer-employee interaction. Employee relations boost morale and motivation amongst workers (Mondy & Mondy 2014). In addition to the aspect of employee relations encouraging employeesâ interaction with employers, it provides a venue through which disputes arising in the course of performing business operations are resolved (Friederichs & Labes 2006).
Employee relations ensure that disputes are resolved in time before they translate into complicated problems. Employeesâ misconducts and undesirable behaviors are also detected and corrected in time, thus leading to good performance in the workplace. This strategy also creates a venue through which employees can raise their grievances to employers, thus deterring instances of strikes and reduced morale within the workforce, which may affect business operations negatively.
The problems at Google should be resolved through implementing effective employee relations, for instance, by encouraging employees to join workersâ unions. Through such unions, employees will have a chance to communicate their issues to their employers coupled with encouraging collective bargaining (Kramar & Syed 2012). Issues affecting employees will be raised through the workersâ unions for prompt resolutions to avoid instances of strikes and other inconveniences. Collective bargaining may also go along way in averting diversity issues since employees are united within the unions.
Team working
The human resource manager of Google Company should come up with strategies that encourage teamwork in the organization. Employees in each department should be encouraged to work in groups to achieve the set objectives. Such teams should reflect heterogeneity with regard to cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Team members should be trained on the importance of diversity in the workforce and the best ways to manage diversity issues (Friederichs & Labes 2006).
Members in each group should be allowed to make decisions on their own devoid of consulting their supervisors. This aspect promotes invention and innovation, thus leading to excellent products and services. A case in point is the invention of G-mail and Orkut, which came due to such freedom being accorded to employees. Therefore, employees should be allowed to assign jobs amongst themselves. However, such freedom should be in line with the companyâs policies (Torrington et al. 2014).
Each groupâs work should be assessed against the companyâs objectives. The company should design an incentive program that will encourage teamwork amongst its employees. Such incentives may be in the form of monetary benefits and recognition of the best teams. Praise should be used effectively to foster teamwork and encourage the spirit of togetherness in the company (Klein 2009).
Functional flexibility
The management of Google Company should embrace the concept of functional flexibility within the organization. Functional flexibility involves training certain employees to handle multiple tasks (Williams & Adam-Smith 2010). The availability of flexible workers in the firm will ease the reshuffling process. Such reshuffles ensure that people from different departments within the firm interact with their counterparts from other departments, thus averting diversity issues.
Since Google Company is an international firm, its workforce is composed of people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Therefore, the presence of flexible workers in the organization may offer a lasting solution to diversity issues. In cases where some members of a team are harassed, flexible workers can be deployed in such departments to replace the harassed individuals to avoid further crisis (Kramar & Syed 2012).
Employee Involvement
The decision-making process should not be an exclusive function for the top managers. Employees at each stage of the hierarchy should be engaged (Inman, OâSullivan, & Murton 2014). Google Company should aim at creating a corporate culture that encourages the employeesâ inputs in the decision-making process (Legge 2005). Employees feel highly satisfied working on goals that they have made for themselves.
The company should hold constant roundtable meetings with its employees to avoid making uninformed decisions on top of solving problems amicably. Communication amongst all stakeholders in the company will reduce the chances of protests and encourage employees to work industriously to achieve the set targets (Compton 2005). Communication will also provide solutions to diversity issues since employees are pooled together to deliberate on various issues affecting the company.
In addition to encouraging communication between managers and their subordinates, the company should empower its employees to make certain decisions devoid of consulting their supervisors (Gennard & Judge 2010). This move will ease the decision-making process and instill a feeling of involvement and ownership amongst employees (Zhu, Chew & Spangler 2005). However, the firm should formulate certain follow-up measures to deter instances of violation of the cooperation spirit amongst some employees (Friederichs & Labes 2006).
Reward Mechanisms
Rewards mechanisms are a set of instruments designed to cultivate loyalty and a positive attitude towards the company amongst employees (Torrington et al. 2014). Reward mechanisms should be designed in such a way that they encourage employees to work energetically for the success of the company. Google Company should introduce a reward mechanism that encourages industry and loyalty amongst its employees.
The rewards should not only come in the form of monetary benefits, but also as other fringe benefits such as promotions of the most industrious workers, retirement benefits, medical benefits, and other non-monetary perquisites (Inman, O’Sullivan & Murton 2014). The existence of such benefits in the firm will propel workers to work extra hard towards attaining the companyâs mission and vision. The reward system should target both individuals and groups (Bontis & Serenko 2007).
This aspect creates a corporate culture that embraces teamwork together with eliminating diversity issues that may arise due to cultural and ethnic multifariousness within the workforce. Employeesâ benefits should be matched with their roles and responsibilities in the firm (Baron & Armstrong 2007). The firm ought to pay its employees competitive salaries to ensure the retention of the best skills. The salaries could be determined by comparing those of persons holding similar positions in other competitor companies and act as a guide to the human resource manager of Google Company.
Workforce diversity
Diversity in the workforce denotes engaging employees from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds in the workforce (Bontis & Serenko 2007). Diversity in the workforce works for the benefit of the company since it brings different ideas into the firm. It may boost the companyâs reputation as customers view the firm as all-inclusive (Baron & Armstrong 2007). Inasmuch as workforce diversity is beneficial to the company embracing it, it can also be problematic if not well managed (Klein 2009).
In Google Company, diversity has been a source of problems in the past. The first setback posed by workforce diversity in the company is workplace prejudices amongst employees. Even though workers are forced to work together in order to achieve the set targets, discriminations amongst them are inevitable (Becker 2009). The management of the Google Company should understand that certain groups of employees might face discrimination due to their racial or cultural backgrounds. The minority in the workforce will face discrimination from the dominant groups, which may affect the firm in its efforts to accomplish its targets.
Therefore, managers of the company should formulate strategies to ensure that the aforementioned issues are managed effectively. The company can deal with the aforementioned issues in two ways, viz. breaking down the process of implementing diversity in the workforce into phases and introducing a new human resource strategy, and aligning it with diversity.
Reference List
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