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Managing human resources
Muhammad Rashiid
Certainly; Managing the Human Resources (MHR) is a source to achieve
human objectives nicely. Amongst other, major sectors are: creative
knowledge; globalization; competition; rapid changes in products
designing; to increase importance of factual skills; quality &
productivity and many more. These factors have also an impact on MHR’s
policies and practices. In managing new changes, the key elements are to
include employee’s involvement in effecting change, greater customer
orientation, ensuring that the skills of employees are appropriate for
production of goods and provision of services acceptable to global
market. As such, managing people in a way so as to motivate them to be
productive is of course an important object of MHR sector.
Enterprises driven by market pressures need to include in their goals
improve quality & productivity, greater flexibility, continue
innovation, and the ability to change rapidly market needs and demands.
Effective MHR is vital for the attainment of these goals de facto.
Improved quality & productivity linked to motivation can be achieved
through training, employee’s involvement in extrinsic and intrinsic
rewards. In pay system, a critical attraction is needed to achieve these
goals with less labor cost but at the same time by increasing earnings.
Realizing the management goals, changes are needed for employee’s
involvement, commitment & training, participation, cooperation &
team-work, initiatives & activities so on and so forth.
The emergence of better educated workforce with higher expectations,
changes in technology and need for more flexible jobs have, in turn,
created need to incorporate MHR into central management policy. MHR and
IR are about people; how to be treated and their relevance increase;
where an enterprise takes a long-term view rather than a short-term.
Effective MHR in an organization links with an overall strategy
increasingly. Organizations with most effective MHR policies & practices
seek to integrate such policies, incorporate strategies and to reinforce
or, change an organization’s culture. Building strong culture is a way
of promoting particular organizational goals. A ‘strong culture’ is
aimed at uniting employees through a shared set of managerially
sanctioned values [quality, service, innovation etc.] that assume an
identification of employee and employer interests. Rapid changes demand
by the market is sometimes difficult to be met by an organization
without strong MHR. And those organizations that have strong MHR
remained always up - IBM is a case in point.
Increasingly, it is recognized that competitive advantage is only gained
through well-educated, trained, motivated & committed employees at all
levels. This recognition is now almost universal, and accounts for the
plausible argument that training & development is central pillar of MHR.
By the end of 1980s leading companies in Germany, Japan and USA were
spending upto 3 percent of their turnover on training and development.
The economic performances in East Asian countries - Japan, Korea, Hong
Kong and Taiwan and; in some South East Asian countries [Singapore and
Malaysia] are asurely connected with their high level of investment in
“education and training”. Other countries are now placing human
resources development at the centre of their national strategic plans –
Indonesia is a recent example. Thus the existence of policies and
practices designed to realize the talented potential of the workforce at
all levels become litmus test of an organization’s orientation.
MHR seeks to identify and promote a commonality of interests. Training
enhances employment security and higher earning capacity for employees
and; at the same time increases value of enterprise’s goals for better
Productivity and Performance [PAP]. If there is strategic thinking in
human resource management, these units are likely to wish to develop
employee-relations policies, based on high individualism. MHR is a mean
for achieving management objectives, at least in enterprises. The
utilization of human resources in achieving competitive edge becomes
clear from an examination’s goal of effective MHR. MHR is closely linked
to motivation, leadership and work behavior. An enterprise’s policies
and practices in these areas have an impact on - whether MHR contributes
to achieve management goals. The success process of adapting change
required an increasing degree of individual and group involvement. This
requires MHR policy which is conducive to change at all levels of the
organization.
Certainly, MHR goals are for: quality, quantity, quickness, less time
span, less pricing and the likes! This assumes existence of policy
practice to recruit, develop and retain skilled & adaptable staff for
formulation of agreed performance goals and measures of an organization.
Doing so two broader goals could be achieved - building a unified
organizational culture and; achieving competitive advantage through
productive use of human resources. The key to competitiveness is quality
of a product in the market surely. And; quality depends more on the
commitment of individuals than on their acquired technical skills - Be
they internal or imposed by legislator. Good human resource management
lies on behavior of each employee within an enterprise.
All in all, HR functions are still to a large degree administrative and
common to all organizations. To varying degrees, most organizations have
formalized selection, evaluation and payroll processes. Efficient and
effective management of Human Capital Pool [HCP] has become an
increasingly imperative and complex activity to all professionals. The
recent trend in Managing the Resource of Human is becoming competitive
scenario in developing countries especially. Human Resource Management
plays vital role in an organization no doubt. Day-by-day Recruitment and
Retention [RAR] of employees is becoming a challenge as well as a
concern area for all HR Managers. HR managers will experience tough time
ahead in hiring and retaining manpower, because, economic and social
environment is changing very rapidly. Markets are increasingly becoming
global. Deregulation is taking place everywhere. Deflation is common in
many sectors. The desire for retaining talent manpower once again is all
time high. The shelf life of any product has dramatically reduced.
Consumers are becoming more discerning and their behavior is
increasingly unpredictable. Evidence of these changes is ever present in
our daily life. The ownership culture stands on two pillars – trust and
coach.
Human Resource Managers should encourage line managers to determine
motivation levels and desire of each individual working for them and
then create a plan for either retaining or not to retain each one. It’s
HR job to guide and advise their managers on - how to do their job.
Successful HR departments always focus on organizational performance.
HR’s responsibility is to recruit right people at right time. HR role in
future will be multidisciplinary consulting around individual, for
example: team, business, unit and corporate performance. Managers will
depend more and more on HR professionals as they realize that good
people management can be the strategic advantage in future. Bringing
changes with a creative thinking will become HR’s greatest contribution
towards progress. Focus of HR functioning should be on human capital
development and organizational productivity. Certainly, in future,
creativity demands for changing terminology of Human Resource Management
[HRM] into Managing the Resources of Human [MHR] for achieving
objectives nicely!
—The writer is a student of MHR; based at Islamabad.
