Traditional vs. Modern Human Resource Management

Human resource is a specific term that was being used in the 1900s; it was used widely in 1960s. It was introduced for people that work for numerous organizations in aggregate. Human Resource management can be defined as employee management as well. In this management the employees are considered as assets of that particular business. In the context of Human Resource Management, employees can be referred to as human capital (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). The management of human resources aim in making effective use of its employees maximizes the return from investment and reducing the number of risks faced by the organization.

Traditional human resource management was very different from modern human resource management. In the modern days, the term modern HR technology called Human Capital Management (HCM) is more frequently used that HRM. The later mentioned term is more widely adopted by small, medium and large companies as well as different organizations related to software in order to manage numerous functions belonging to HR. Human Resource Management consists of numerous functions, the areas include recruitment of employees, retention as well as on boarding, talent management as well as workforce management, assignment on various job roles, compliance of labor law, compensation, training and learning, performance management, planning regarding succession, employee recognition and engagement and many more (Brewster, Chung & Sparrow, 2016). These functions should be followed in a proper manner, in case they are not carried out appropriately the department of HRM faces numerous problems and the problems in turn affects the performance of employees.

The assignment discusses regarding various issues faced by Human Resource Management in details. It also provides some recommendations that can be utilized by the organizations in order to avoid the issues and enhance the performance of employees and organization in whole.

Employees are considered a company’s asset. Businesses that invest in the teams that they have would enjoy great growth, it would also outpace the competition. Effective Human Resource Management is very important for any organization, this is because it creates a unique culture in the workplace, and it emphasizes expectations, rules as well as standards for the workplace (Chelladurai & Kerwin, 2017). Good HRM can help everyone to understand work diversity, facilitate effective communication between employees and HR, it strengthens the value of training as well as development and it eliminates the uncertainty of employees.

It is important to know the common HR problems that persist in an organization. this would help the organization to put right policies as well as procedures in proper place. The organization should understand the complexities in employee benefits, leadership development, employment laws and many more areas would help the organization to stay ahead of the competition as well as meet their business goals in future (Brewster, Houldsworth & Sparrow, 2016). There are numerous human resource issues that are significant. These issues are faced by employers as well as employees. As the small and large scale businesses, the requirement of human resource management and the ability to prevent the problems which accompany it is also growing. Various issues faced by Human Resource Management are as follows

Functions of Human Resource Management

Recruitment and outsourcing: managing a workforce can be managed by knowing the best ways to recruit the workforce. Recruitment has turned to be a marketing exercise in recent times. In order to recruit appropriate candidates, knowledge regarding ways to generate interest in an organization or a certain job placement should be acquired (Wilton, 2016). Usually people look for jobs that would address their requirements of a good family, home and work balance. A good department of HR is not usually aware of this. The company also does not consider the prospect of their security in a job in most of the times. Companies mostly concentrate on their stability, employment and health benefits in the economic conditions that are unstable than before.

Outsourcing is also considered as one of the major parts in the role of Human Resource Management. Usually numerous organizations tend to hire freelancers in order to carry out their extra tasks instead of recruiting salaried employees (Reiche, Stahl & Mendenhall, 2016). Outsourcing creates problems for organizations because they are not aware of the policies followed by the organization and there is not certain discipline followed by employees.

Compliance with laws and regulation: the laws related to employment keep changing as the organizations develop and they try to improve the working principles of the company. Coping up with the continuously changing employment laws is very difficult for the business owners. Many organizations chose to ignore the laws of employment. They believe that these laws do not apply to their organizations (Helmreich & Merritt, 2017). This might result in lawsuits and audits. If this is done to the extreme point, the company might also get demised by the company. This proves to be an issue for organizations.

Changes in management: the strategies utilized by an organization and its structure changes when the organization grows its business. The internal processes change as well. The growth of organizations produces new and innovative strategies, methods and structure. The HRM as well as employees need to cope up with the changes. Sometimes it is difficult for the employees to cope up with these changes that have been brought about because with these changes, the working principles of the organization change as well (Bailey, Mankin & Kelliher, 2018. A huge number of companies experiences a huge amount of decrease in their productivity as well as morale while the changes are taking place. This instead of improving the state of operations, many companies fall during the period of change.

Development of leadership: most of the companies do not perform well in the field of developing leadership. They do not even bother to implement leadership development programs. As per a survey that has been carried out, 36% of organizations found out that the leadership development programs are not well developed and perform very poorly (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). Lack of leadership development programs would make a company lose its focus from the main objectives. This also makes causes interruption in its disciplinary, decorum and many more policies usually,

Workforce, development and training: investing a certain amount of revenue as well as time in the process of providing training and development of the employees who belong to a low level is a very common HR problem (Blaikie, 2016). Usually businesses find it difficult to arrange resources in providing training. Employees who are present in the front lines are some of the organization’s hardest workers. These workers usually stay busy with their busy schedule of work and are unavailable to provide training and people who belong to different organization or not from similar background would not be able to provide training to the employees. This is because they would hardly know anything regarding the organization and its operations.

Importance of good HRM

Adapting to innovation: Technology has been changing continuously, with these changes organizations tend to update to these technologies. They try to update their working principles by adapting the newer technologies. Usually businesses are quite quick in adapting them and this leaves a chance for the competitors to leave a dust in this attempt.

Compensation: numerous companies struggle with the process by which they can apply effective ways to structure employee compensation. Usually small businesses need to compete with businesses that are small in size as well as the businesses that have bugger payroll budgets (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). Along with this, the organizations need to factor in the cost of training, benefits, taxes and many more expenses that might range from 2 to 3 times the salary of employees.

Understanding various benefits package: the Affordable Care Act is a pain point for various organizations. The rise in healthcare costs meant that the companies must pass the costs on the employers or take a hit to the bottom line (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Since better benefit packages might be a factor that needs to be decided for the various potential hires, understanding these hires is very important for the organization.

Recruiting talented employees: recruitment of employees in the organization might be a very long process because just recruiting the employees is not the work, the actual work is to recruit talented employees who can actually contribute their maximum to the business and help in increasing the revenue of the company. Attracting employees who are talented is a great investment of money as well as time. It usually proves very difficult for various entrepreneurs to balance between hiring the appropriate people in the appropriate time and keep the business ongoing (Tietenberg & Lewis, 2016). Along with these difficulties it is very difficult for a recruiter to know if an individual is really capable to do his job. It is very tough to know if the person who is participating in the process of recruitment would be a good fit for the job. This is unpredictable until the person works for the company for a few months.

Retaining talented employees: there has been a very fierce competition for talented employees. Startups as well as very small companies usually do not have enough budgets to implement retirement plans, insurance plans and many more employee benefits program which are naturally provided by bug companies (Shields, Brown & Kaine, 2015). With this it is difficult for small organizations to hire talented employees or employees with great knowledge. Along with these, the employee turnover rate is more and this creates a great problem for the organization in the field of operation as well as in terms of revenue.

Diversity at the workplace: usually an organization consists of employees belonging to multiple generations. People belonging to elder generations have different cultural as well as ethnic differences. These are few among a wide range of factors that make the workplace diversity a continual change for various small businesses (Taylor, Doherty & McGraw, 2015). These risks of the lawsuits of failure to protect the employees from harassment are real.

Major Issues in HRM

Creation of a culture of team work as well as respect would help the organization to maintain a positive and productive working environment. Employees would stay motivated and dedicated to contributing their hard work for the betterment of the organization (Ross, 2017). Along with these practices, a diversity training program should also be implemented. Employees are responsible for setting the specific standard of certain behavior in the working environment. Standard as well as system regarding accountability must be set up as early as possible, it would help the organization to keep its employees happy, as a result increase their productivity.

On boarding is very effective for various employees (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014). According to numerous researches that have been carried out, implementing an on boarding process that is structured is very helpful for an organization; it increases the chance of employees to stay in the company for three years or even more by 58 percent.

A staffing company can also be used by an organization. Staffing company is proved to be one of the best ways to look for the right people for any business. They usually provide solutions of temp to hire, this solution helps an organization to try and recruit new employees. This provides hardly any risk or no risk in recruiting and trying new employees. This would save money, time as well as decrease frustration of the organization (Head & Alford, 2015). Sometimes this process also provides a business partner or a future executive to the organization. Hence a staffing company can be used by an organization; it might be beneficial for the organization.

An organization should ensure that they are in compliance with the local, federal labor laws as well as the state. This should be ensured by every organization, weather it is a start up, small organization or a multinational organization. There are numerous regulations for various processes. The process might be anything, hiring practices, workforce safety, wage payment and many more (Banfield, Kay & Royles, 2018). The organization should go through the Department of Labor’s Employment Law Guide. This would help the organization, to follow the rules and work accordingly.

In every organization irrespective of their field and size, business owners must focus on communicating various benefits of change for everyone. This can be started with regular meetings among staffs. When a team understands what, how, when and why of change, there are more chances that they would agree to get on board (Marchington, Wilkinson & Donnelly, 2016). Any decision regarding going on board should be taken with the consent of employees not only from the consent of professionals from higher management.

Leadership development is very critical in keeping the management team busy as well as motivated. They are also involved in preparing them to take up more responsibilities in the future. They try their best to make it a part of their culture. Leadership development also helps an organization to create various opportunities for employees for using their strengths on regular basis. Leadership helps them to work in a cooperative manner in order to fulfill the objectives of an organization (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). It also helps them to fulfill their personal objectives. This way they are motivated and they are provided a chance to improve their skills that are required for improving their performance in a workplace.

Recommendations to overcome HRM issues

Organizations can arrange training and development program for every employee. Just hiring employees is not enough for any organization; it would not give success or boost the performance of the organization. Organization of training and development programs for low level employees is a must, but this usually is a problem for every organization. This problem can be mitigated easily because training and development do not really take a lot of money or time. The company must recruit senior leadership and managers for mentoring the subordinate employees (Brewster, Mayrhofer & Morley, 2016). Employees who do not have time to attend training and development courses differently due to huge pressure, the organization can arrange online training classes for them. This would help the employees to attend the training classes while they are at home. The organization must invest in their workforce which would help them to have a productive and loyal team. A productive team would help the organization to be productive as a whole.

Communication might be a serious problem for any organization, usually people belonging to a higher authority does not find it important to communicate with the employees belonging to lower posts. This leads to the problem. When any change is taken place in an organization, every employee belonging to every department should be informed as well as explained regarding the change that has taken place (Bryson, 2018). The employees should also be informed why, how and when the change has taken place. Clear goals should be set in order to adopt the initiatives as well as provide various employees with the training that they would require for getting accustomed to the new change.

Salary is definitely the important factor for employees but it is not always the factor of most importance for the job candidates. A system should be introduced that would be responsible for rewarding the employees for their excellent performance. This factor can be introduced in order to make up the low salary of the employees. Incentive programs can also be introduced with the help of which the employees would be motivated and encouraged to work hard despite their low salary (Deresky, 2017). The incentive programs can be bonuses provided to the employees or profit sharing.

In the case of small businesses that have very few employees, may be lesser than 50 employees, they have numerous options for providing health care benefits. The company can purchase a specific plan from different institutes like Small Business health Options Program (SHOP). Following this would help the organization to take the specific tax credit. This tax credit would help them in reducing offset costs. The organization can also provide various benefits like unlimited vacation time, free snacks, flexible shift timings, commuter benefits and numerous wellness programs (Brewster, Chung & Sparrow, 2016). These benefits are quite affordable for small businesses as well and it would also offer extra benefits to the employees which would keep them motivated and encouraged to work for the organization. This would also help the organization to be popular among the new generation of workforce.

Conclusion

From the above essay it can be concluded that, the human resource department faces various challenges because their responsibilities become more strategic as well as broader in the early 21^st century. Human resource is described as more than just a basic function where the department hires employees provides training and development programs for the improvement of their performance. It can be described as a key element where the work force is developed which aligns with the vision and mission of the company. With the increase in relevance obstacles increase as well. The capacity of the nation to face various challenges of industrialization and globalization of business depends greatly on the human capital and human resources available in the organization. Firms have human resources, technology and capital but the human resource is the factor that helps an organization to deal with various challenges faced by the business from business globalization. Capital can be generated properly with appropriate steps than by the organization. Technology can be generated as well. Unlike technology and capital human resource cannot be generated, it has to be driven. This is done with the help of approaching challenges with motivation as well as encouragement.

Human resource management usually focuses on fulfilling the needs of businesses along with the development and needs of employees. every organization depends on their employees because the skills of employees contribute to achieving their business objectives. This essay describes regarding various issues faced by any organization in the process of human resource management. The issues area describes in details. Along with the issues the essay also discusses some recommendations that can be implemented by organizations in order to improve their human resource development strategy and improve the performance of the organization as a whole.

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