Identify & explain three key ways in which human resources management can support the “strategy” of an organization
Formulating business strategies in an organization involves systematic planning and coordination between organizations’ departments. Thus, Human resource in aiding strategy formulation, it is tasked with;
Training
Effective training contributes to achieving the organization’s short and long-term objectives. Thus, the human resource department boosts this initiative by investing and developing its employee’s skills through providing adequate training aimed at increasing productivity levels. Training is executed in terms of both existing and new employees in the organization. Training strategy aims at equipping employee’s in terms of coping with any change arising as a result of a change of work responsibilities or duties within their jurisdiction or generally in the entire organization. Sufficient training stimulates efficiency which is linked to increased profits, increment in productivity levels, and reduction in supervision work and thwarts employee turnover rates.
Recruitment
Another strategic area of importance bestowed to HRM is recruitment. An organization’s success largely depends on the right personnel and skills. Human resource management ensures that only qualified candidates are selected for the right positions. Setting a selection threshold in terms of qualification required, skills, and responsibilities among other criteria contributes to improving performance levels in the organization. This fixes overall productivity in the organization.
Rewarding and motivating employees
Human resource management influences employee motivation in order to achieve the organizational anticipated goals. This is done by instituting various elements such as; the reward system schemes, establishing a healthy working environment, embracing and offering promotions top performing employees. These factors will not only make employees enjoy their work but will also lead to increased productivity.
In what ways can National Cultures affect the strategy of the organization when managing an International or multi-national organization?
When an organization is in the process of formulating its strategies, processes such as legalizing information thorough understanding of the information, choosing the viable solution, and scrutiny ought to be conducted. In a multi-national organization, the level of work satisfaction is predetermined by the national culture, since work values such as styles of leadership, the type of job assignments and the system to be used while rewarding have to be considered.
National cultures result in workforce diversity in which organizations have to adapt to the diverse culture of the workforce. If the problem of workforce diversity is not well addressed, it may lead to higher turnover rates and decreased productivity. The senior managers in multi-national organizations should address workforce diversity problem, to ensure greater productivity and employee retention. Failure to counter this challenge effectively can give rise to discrimination, difficulties in communications, higher turnover rates, and interpersonal conflicts among the employees.
When workforce diversity is dealt with efficiently, it results in quick solutions to work-related problems, increment in the innovative and creative mechanisms among employees. In addition, individuals from diverse cultural boundaries will be able to articulate their opinions thus, connecting the overall organizational productivity levels.
International or multi-national organizations are adversely affected by environmental factors since they operate in several countries with varied cultures.
Organizations adapting to cross-national diversity should be apt very in effecting operations due to existing challenges. The managerial practices and styles should be customized in tandem with the host countries to simplify operations. For instance, different countries have different reasons for conducting business operations, and also time allocation varies. National cultures tend to minimize social oppression within the organization.
Consequently, national cultures influence the operations of an organization towards gaining sustainable competitive advantage and developing global strategies. This will effectively be achieved by managers embracing diverse cultural imbalance. The organization should create room for learning from each other to facilitate service and productivity.
“We cannot manage culture”—critically discuss this statement
Organizational culture tends to change over time with changes brought about by work-related factors such as; changes in the economic, social, political, and technological factors. With these factors ever-fluctuating, an organization has to review and reconceptualize its norms and core values. An organization’s culture is critical in aiding the organization cope with the dynamic macro and micro environmental factors. A clear understanding and analysis of the organizational cultures will place the organization in a better position to be successful in managerial operations. Organizations’ executive levels have this strong desire for continual development and improvement within their organization’s system. Thus, the senior decision-makers in the organization need to effectively communicate with employees who are to absorb and digest the processes before the implementation process.
The strong desire to implement changes by the organization, through the introduction of new strategic measures normally creates confusion and inconveniences. Employees fear change since the change repercussions always affect them directly thus, chances of them resisting are always very high. Organizations undergo an uphill task whenever they are trying to implement a new vision to their organizational system. The challenges encountered such as constant war with employees while ensuring that a new vision is well implemented, without altering the entire organizational processes. Behavior and artifacts as an example of culture attributes may explain what people are doing, but cannot explain why people are doing so. The behaviors are greatly determined by the values which cannot be observed directly, but people will always measure their behaviors on the affirmed values. The affirmed values give rise to beliefs and assumptions that people may not be able to express.
There exists a likelihood that the prevailing culture will give rise to sub-cultures within an organizational system. Constant scrutiny needs to be in place to ensure that these sub-cultures adhere to the core norms, values, and ideologies of an organization. Organizations cannot manage culture but can only maintain the processes involved in the management of culture.
What are the HR issues caused by bureaucratic structures of organizations?
Bureaucratic processes are mainly employed in ‘tall’ organizational structures. A ‘tall’ organizational structure is structured to have many layers and levels and therefore greater formality is observed in its processes. For instance, a bureaucratic structure might have two owners, four vice-presidents, ten managers, twenty supervisors, and more than two hundred employees.
Many issues realized by the human resource management are diverse and they include;
A narrow span of control
A ‘tall’ organizational structure is supposed to have a narrow span of control to effectively manage all the layers involved in the work processes. This is due to the increment in the average number of subordinates per manager. At each level of management, a manager is supposed to be present to oversee the smooth running of operations. The manager may opt to delegate some of his duties to the junior staff to promote teamwork and team spirit.
Highly specialized jobs
Every individual in a bureaucratic system has to possess the necessary skills to handle well his or her job responsibilities. Organizations with specialized jobs are advantaged whenever it comes to monitoring and supervisory measures. These organizations have efficient and easy supervision criteria since one’s work is well designed.
The high degree of formalization
A bureaucratic organization has to emphasize written procedures and rules in policy formulation. The policies have to be clearly defined in the procedural and policy manual to enhance formality. An organization with a high degree of formality increases customer’s reliability and dependability thus increase profits margin.
Departmentalization
Grouping of individuals doing similar work in one department makes supervision of work effective. The idea of employee departmentalization facilitates team works and training whereby employees can freely interact with each other. Departmentalization eases the control of the business’s processes which facilitates work cohesion and integration.
Make a case for organizations including HR Planning in their strategic plans
Human resource planning involves efficient and consistent evaluation of the human resource needs to make sure that there is the availability of qualified employees on demand. Thus, in strategic planning, human resource ensures that a reliable workforce exists and capable of satisfying organizational needs. Forecasting strategies that an organization can employ include simulation, use of mathematical models, bottom-up approach, and zero-base forecasting. It is the function of the HR department to scrutinize the number of employees within the system to ensure that it is in accordance. In case the existing number of employees is more than the required number for the system to function accordingly, strategies such as downsizing, working in shorter time shifts, no more employment opportunities and the reduced duration of the working span should be employed. Incases of employee shortage, the HR department should be able to select and recruit the required number of skilled employees from the labor market.
Before the HR department implements the hiring and selection criteria, reviewing planning steps in terms of; determining the overall impact of organization aim on the precise organizational structure and analyzing among other factors should be embraced. This will ensure a solid action plan is implemented to achieve the anticipated human resource requirements.
For effective HR Planning, several factors should be considered. Such factors include; support from the top management, the proper understanding of the HR Planning processes by the HR Personnel, integration of the organization’s strategic business plan with the HR goals, and healthy and effective communications between the line management and the HR staff.
An organizational system that embraces HR Planning is likely to enjoy acquisitions and mergers by the top-performing organizations and developments of new technologies through training and education among other strategic growth in the organization.