Human Resource Paper

Human Resource Paper Introduction Human resource management can be defined as a branch of management which deals with issues that pertains to personnel. The branch of management is normally tasked with the responsibility of resourcing employees on behalf of an organization, developing the employees and finally maintaining the achieved efficiency of the employees.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Human Resource Paper specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Specifically, human resource management looks into an organization’s issues such as establishing and planning the goals of the department of human resource management, making arrangement for the works and activities to be carried out in the department as well as the organization, filling in of an organization’s vacancies, reviewing and controlling the efficiencies and effectiveness of workers and regulating work related activities. It is actually an extensive department in an orga nization since the human resource is equivalently employed in almost if not all departments of each and every organization. This paper seeks to discuss various aspects of human resource management with specific interest on the management of employees. The paper will look into these issues with respect to the final desired output of the employees. People-Related Problems Likely to arise due to Changes in an Organization The changes that could be experienced in an organization are of varied degrees and types. An organization can for instance resort to changing its internal structures. Joining another organization through mergers, amalgamation or even acquisition are other ways through which an organization can change its structure. The changes could be radical or incremental. Radical changes involve an absolute transition in the system in which almost if not all aspects of organizations are subject to change. Incremental changes, on the other hand, are transitional changes which are i nitiated in steps and bits and occasionally take a longer time to be completely implemented. The changes initiated in an organization will eventually have effects on its employees in relation to the extent of the change initiated in the organization as well as the time period that will be required to effect and finally complete the implementation of the change. The changes in the organization, which could either be radical or incremental, are also diverse. Change in an organization can be in the form of redesigning the organization’s structures, functions and activities. This could be internal to change the roles of the employees or external when it include moves like mergers with other organizations or the subject organization changing ownership to another entity (Jackson et al., 2009 ).Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More When changes take place in the forms o f organizations merging, some old problems from the former organizations are brought up in the newly formed organization. There is a possibility of increased workload in the event of such changes. A change in an organization that has downsized will experience problems related to downsizing which may include issues to do with not meeting deadlines due to overworking of employees. The laying off of workers could be done in a general trend or based of some criteria such as age, departmental or even experience. No matter the trend, some people are subject to losing their jobs and the people who remain in the organization might be forced to increase their efforts to cover for the extra work. Both of the groups of employees in this case, those who lose their jobs as well as those who remain in the organization, are faced with problems. The people who lose their jobs due to organizational change have the problem of foregone incomes in the form of salaries and wages. This can have an extend ed negative impact on the families of the affected persons especially if they were sole bread winners of their respective families. The individuals retained in the organization’s system on the other hand, are faced with problems of being forced to work harder or even moved to new departments that that they are not familiar with. The interdepartmental transfers and even promotions poses a threat of stress to workers as they are forced to quickly adjust to the organizational change and increased amount of work due to downsizing of employees, especially if it were a radical change. Changes in an organization could as well have a negative effect on the efficiency of employees. A change that could be positive towards improving the efficiency of an organization could render an employee redundant or discouraged as the employee would feel outdated in the presence of the improved systems of the organization. This could lead to frustration and stress which, if not checked, could eventu ally lead to burning out of the employee. The effect may be as worse as a laid down employee (Labor, 2004). The human-related problems caused by the organizational changes as discussed above can be avoided or controlled at two levels of administrations. The first, being the organizational level at which the managements are to be enlightened on what is right and what is wrong, both legally and morally.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Human Resource Paper specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Training and awareness is recommendation for managers to help safeguard the welfare of employees during such changes in organizations. Governments, through policy making can also pass legislations to ensure that employees’ rights are protected during such changes. Policies that limits the powers of employers to hire and fire employees at will can help in reducing the number of laid off employees or ensure adequate compensation is done if an employee has to be laid off by an organization (Labor, 2004). Components of an Effective Human Resource Policy Designed To Prevent Sexual Harassment The rate of sexual harassment is significantly noticeable in workplaces with over thirty percent of women reporting harassment cases. The sexual harassment cases are experienced more by minority women as compared to the majority class of women in America. Harassment can be experienced from senior employee of an organization taking advantage of the workplace position, or can be due to a hostile environment at the workplace that exposes people, especially women, to harassment. An organization is, however, charged with the responsibility of acts of offensive commissions by its employees (Jackson et al., 2009). According to Myers (2003), a sexual harassment policy or any other protective policy put in place by an organization should have provisions that will ensure the effectiveness of the policy. A sexual harassment policy fo r example should include an official statement that indicates the organization’s opinion in relation to sexual harassment. The policy should also illustrate the process of launching harassment complaint by an offended employee. Also inclusive of the necessities of a sexual harassment policy is a code of conduct together with a statement of prohibited behavior. The statement of sexual harassment policy should be clearly spelt and should in addition be consistent with the tradition or culture of the organization. This is specifically important to prevent conflict of interest within the organization. The next important component of the sexual harassment policy is the procedure of launching harassment complaints. The process should be free from any sort of harassment or intimidation.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More An organization is for this matter supposed to acculturate friendly procedures that can motivate employees to report cases of sexual harassments. In legal terms, an employer is liable for an act of sexual harassment by his or her employee if the employer has not provided for protective measures and a friendly environment for reporting such harassments. The policy should therefore provide for adequate measures to prevent and correct the offence. This provision will in case of harassment transfer the liability of offence to either the victim for failing to take advantage of the harassment protective policy or the individual offender employee. The harassment policy should clearly include its implementation which should essentially provide for an administrator and personnel to investigate the claims of sexual harassment. Both the administrator and the investigating team should be competently trained to impartially and comprehensively inquire into claims to establish truths before any pa rty can be victimized for alleged offences (Myers, 2003). Another necessity in an effective sexual harassment policy is the operational commitment of the organization’s human resource management to the implementation of the policy. Lack of commitment to implementation generally undermines the aim of a policy and even promotes an offence as employees will have the notion of not being penalized for their offences. The human resource management should therefore put its employees on a tough notice that sexual harassment is strongly condemned by the organization. Effective implementation that involves employee awareness of acts amounting to sexual harassment, encouraging employees to submit harassment claims as well as ensuring that actions are taken against offenders is also critical to the effectiveness of a sexual harassment policy. The anti harassment statement must be directed to any party who is in a position to commit the act of harassment. These parties include â€Å"all employees, contract personnel, customers† (Myers, 2003, p. 1) and any other third party with whom the employees relate in their course of work. This notification can be achieved through the organization’s modes of communications like memoranda and other internal circulations. The training of employees on the sexual harassment policy can be achieved through seminars and workshops where employees can be explained to on how the policy works. Enlightening the employees into changing their attitudes and mentality towards sexual harassment is another effective step towards the effectiveness of the policy. This step can promote the employee’s understanding to view the harassments as immoral, improper and undermining thereby reducing the offence. The last component of the policy should enforce the internalization of the policy. Encouraging employees to report sexual harassment by ensuring a free atmosphere for the process of reporting the offences and ensuring that inves tigated offences are properly dealt with will improve employees’ confidence in the management and even encourage victims to raise their complaints as well as sounding a warning to potential offenders of sexual harassment (Myers, 2003) Effective Integration of Workforce Planning With the General Business Plan Integration of workforce planning with the general business plan can be effectively achieved by considering the workforce planning as a component of the overall business plan. Workforce planning as a component of the organization’s management shows interrelationship which forms a basis for its integration into business plan. Efficiency in planning and implementation of the workforce processes will therefore ensure effective integration of the workforce planning into the business plan. Workforce planning, or in other words human resource planning, is a set of activities that relates to: Scanning and assessing environment, specifying the objectives to be achieved by human resource activities along with measures to be used to achieve those objectives and developing plans for human resource policies and practices along with time tables for implementing the plans (Jackson et al., 2009). The first step of the planning involves the process of scanning. Scanning looks into the internal and external environments to determine the features and nature of the workforce. After scanning, analysis is done into the objective of the workforce planning which in this respect is dependent on the objective of the business plans. A plan by the organization to increase its productivity or sales will for instance influence the workforce plan to increase the number of employees in the respective departments of production or sales. After the metrics of the workforce environment is taken into consideration, a human resource objective is set. The objective will both be quantitative and qualitative to express the value and efficiency to be achieved by the workforce plan. Again the achievement of the workforce objectives is as well achievement of the entire business plan. Planning is then done on human resource. The planning stipulates the roles of individual parties to the planning as well as the timing of activities to be carried out. The process of workforce planning is therefore an outline of how workforce policies and procedures are to be integrated into a business plan and how the policies and procedures are to be implemented into the workforce (Jackson, 2009). The functions of the human resource management are to source, develop and maintain the productivity of employees of an organization. The human resource department, therefore, following its organization’s business plan, carries out its qualitative and quantitative surveys to determine the business’ need for workforce. Workforce planning makes sure that the organization gets the workforce that it requires in terms of qualifications, number and time period. According to Jackso n et al (2009), the alignment of business planning and workforce planning have increasingly been enhanced over the past years. The human resource managers are currently being incorporated in the planning activities for their organizations as well as other departments in organizations. The authors further established that human resource management is being incorporated in a variety of aspects in an organization. Some of the aspects include: Development of business goals, creating strategies and processes to drive business results, alignment of business goals, implementation of strategies and processes to drive business results, creating and implementation of business strategies among others. (Jackson et al, 2009, p. 1) In its evaluation and assessment of internal and external environments of an organization, workforce planning looks into factors such as â€Å"economic globalization, labor markets and legal institutions† (Jackson et al, 2009, p. 1) among other factors. The work force planning team therefore determines and communicates the possible effects of these environmental changes to an organization. It then helps an organization in planning to adjust to these changes (Jackson et al., 2009). Erasmus et al (2003) on the other hand argued that effectiveness of a workforce plan depends on the business plan and the mission statement of a particular institution. The workforce planning relies on the business plan from which it plans and addresses the workforce needs of the organization. The workforce planning and implementation which forms the structure of an organization is always a reflection of the business plan due to its scope that determines the number and category of people to be employed into the organization’s system. Some of the benefits of workforce planning include: planning to ensure that labor costs are maintained at the lowest cost possible while the human resource supply is kept sufficient for the organization’s operations impr ovement of the general business plan (Erasmus et al., 2003). Important Factors Considered when developing a Recruiting Policy The recruitment policy is an outline developed by the human resource management relating to the process of recruiting employees. The policy describes the requirements for a person to be recruited into the organization and can sometimes include issues related to gender or marginalized groups. The recruitment policy is an important document to both the human resource management and the organization’s management as it is a determinant in the achievement of the goals and purpose for which the recruitment is to be made. The important factors that affect an organization’s recruitment policy can either be internal or external factors. One of the important factors considered when developing a recruitment policy is the human resource policy of the parent organization. The human resource policy of an organization normally outlines the guidelines for all a spects of human resource activities. This means that the human resource policy outlines aspects of recruiting, modeling and keeping employees among other things. The human resource policy is, therefore, an important factor for consideration when developing a recruitment policy to avoid conflicting of policies within an organization. Another factor to be considered in developing a recruitment policy is the nature and type of the vacancy to be filled. The nature and type of vacancy may relate to the administrative level to be filled in the structure of the organization, the type of vacancy to be filled and even the number of vacancies. The administrative level of the vacancy for example will outline the recruiting process and policy. Filling the vacancy of an organization’s top manager for instance requires a lot of skills, expertise and experience due to its sensitivity in the organization’s decision making. A recruitment policy that is extensive will therefore be adopt ed to widen the recruitment scope so as to increase chances of getting the finest candidate for the job. A lower position in an organization could on the other hand adopt a very simple policy for recruiting a local resident of the region. The number of vacancies to be filled also determines the recruitment policies to be formulated. Recruiting for a single vacancy may enlist a single panel and process policy while a large number of vacancies may call for the decentralization of the recruitment process to departmental levels of the organization (Durai, 2010). The main objective of the recruitment process is to source for applicants to fill a vacancy. The recruitment policy must therefore ensure that the process will bring on board a sufficient number of job seekers from whom the organization can select the individuals to employ. The reputation of the organization plays a very critical role in attracting applicants. An organization with outstanding reputation in its human resource man agement in terms of remunerations, benefits, security among other factors will easily attract applicants as compared to an organization that lacks the confidence and good will of the pool of job seekers. A simple recruitment policy will for instance be sufficient for a reputable institution while the organization that lacks confidence and goodwill of the job seekers may be forced to make extra efforts to attract applicants. Conventional practices and organizational culture is another internal factor that affects the recruitment policy of an organization. An organization’s human resource management will tend to follow its traditional practices in recruiting unless the practices have proved inefficient. A consideration is therefore given to the conventional recruitment practices before formulating a recruitment policy as it provides a basis for identifying the successes and weaknesses of past policies (Durai, 2010). External factors to be considered when developing a recruitmen t policy include the nature of the labor market, legislative provisions on labor recruitment as well as the socios of relatively regulated markets included markets in countries like France and Italy while the relatively liberalized markets included United States and Australia. Another effect of change in products and service markets that affects the relation between labor and management is the impact of market regulations on income inequality (OECD, n.d.). References ADOA. (2003). Assessment centre related exercises. Staffing and Recruitment. Retrieved from: hr.state.az.us/staffingandrecruitment/assessmentcenterrelatedexercises.htm Coffee, K. (n.d.). Assessment Centres. Google Documents. 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