MGMT 300 Chapter 9: Human Resource Management PDF

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Human Resource Management, training, development, orientation, employee needs, strategic management, effective workforce, grand strategy...

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MGMT 300 Chapter 9: Organizational Structure 9.1 Strategic Human Resource Management Major Question How do effective managers view the role of people in their organization’s success? The Big Picture Human resource management consists of the activities managers perform to plan for, attract, develop, and retain an effective workforce. Planning the human resources needed consists of understanding current employee needs and predicting future employee needs. Human Resource Management: Managing an Organization’s Most Important Resource  Human resource (HR) management – consists of the activities managers perform to plan for, attract, develop, and retain an effective workforce.  People are an organization’s most important resource.  The Container Store have discovered that putting employees first has been the foundation for their success. Human Resources as Part of Strategic Management  At many companies, human resources has become part of the strategic-planning process. Thus, HR departments deal not only with the employee paperwork and legal accountability – a very important area, but also with helping to support the organization’s overall strategy.  The purpose of the strategic human resource process is to get the optimal work performance that will help the company’s mission and goals.  Two concepts important in the view of human resource management, are human capital and social capital. Strategic Human Resource Management Process 1. Establish the mission and vision 2. Establish the grand strategy 3. Formulate the strategic plans 4. Plan human resources needed 5. Recruit and select people 6. Orient, train, and develop 7. Perform appraisals of people 8. Purpose: Get optimal work performance to help realize company’s mission and vision

Human Capital: Potential of Employee Knowledge and Actions

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Human capital – is the economic or productive potential of strong, trusting, and cooperative relationships. “We are living in a time when a new economic paradigm – characterized by speed, innovation, short cycle times, quality, and customer satisfaction – is highlighting the importance of intangible assets, such as brand recognition, knowledge, innovation, and particularly human capital.

Social Capital: Potential of Strong & Cooperative Relationships  Social capital – is the economic or productive potential of strong, trusting, and cooperative relationships. Planning the Human Resources Needed  We are concerned with something more than simply hiring people on an “as needed” basis.  Strategic human resource planning – consists of developing a systematic, comprehensive strategy for (a) understanding current employee needs and (b) predicting future employee needs. Let’s consider these two parts. Understanding Current Employee Needs  To plan for the future, you must understand the present – what today’s staffing picture looks like.  This requires that you (or a trained specialist) do, first, a job analysis and from that write a job description and a job specification. 

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Job analysis. The purpose of job analysis - is to determine, by observation and analysis, the basic elements of a job. Specialists who do this interview job occupants about what they do, observe the flow of work, and learn how results are accomplished. Job description and job specification. Once the fundamentals of a job are understood, then you can write a job description – which summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it. Next you can write a job specification – which describes the minimum qualifications a person must have to perform the job successfully.

Predicting Future Employee Needs Predicting future employee needs means you have to become knowledgeable about the staffing the organization might need and the likely sources for that staffing:  The staffing the organization might need.  The likely sources for staffing. You can recruit employees from either inside or outside the organization. In looking at those inside, you need to consider which employees are motivated, trainable, and promotable. A device for organizing this kind of information is a human resource inventory – a report listing your organization’s employees by name, education, training, and languages. 9.2 The Legal Requirements of Human Resource Management

Major Question To avoid exposure to legal liabilities, what areas of the law do I need to be aware of? The Big Picture Four areas of human resource law any manager needs to be aware of are labor relations, compensation and benefits, health and safety, and equal employment opportunity. Whatever your organization’s human resource strategy, in the United States it has to operate within the environment of American law. 1. Labor Relations The earliest laws affecting employee welfare had to do with unions, and they can still have important effects. Legislation passed in 1935 (the Wagner Act) resulted in the National Labor Relations Board – which enforces procedures whereby employees may vote to have a union and for collective bargaining. Collective bargaining – consists of negotiations between management and employees about disputes over compensation, benefits, working conditions, and job security. A 1947 law (the Taft-Hartley Act) allows the President of the United States to prevent or end a strike that threatens national security. 2. Compensation & Benefits The Social Security Act in 1935 established the U.S. retirement system. The passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established minimum living standards for workers engaged in interstate commerce, including provision of a federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) and a maximum workweek (now 40 hours, after which overtime must be paid), along with banning products from child labor. 3. Health and Safety From miners risking tunnel cave-ins to cotton mill workers breathing lint, industry has always had dirty, dangerous jobs. Beginning with the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970, a body of law has grown that requires organizations to provide employees with nonhazardous working conditions. Later laws extended health coverage, including 2010 health care reform legislation, which requires employees with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance. 4. Equal Employment Opportunity The effort to reduce discrimination in employment based on racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry and gender stereotypes begin with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This established the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Commission – whose job it is to enforce antidiscrimination and other employment-related laws. Title VII applies to all organizations or their agents engaged in an industry affecting interstate commerce that employs 15 or more employees. Three important concepts covered by EEO laws are discrimination, affirmative action, and sexual harassment. Discrimination

A large gap exists in perceptions between the sexes as to whether men or women have more opportunities for advancement. Discrimination – occurs when people are hired or promoted – or denied hiring or promotion – for reasons not relevant to the job, such as skin color or eye shape, gender, religion, national origin, and the like. A fine point to be made is that, although the law prohibits discrimination in all aspects of employment, it does not require an employer to extend preferential treatment because of race, color, religion, and so on. When an organization is found to have been practicing discrimination, the people discriminated against may sue for back pay and punitive damages. Affirmative Action Affirmative action – focuses on achieving equality of opportunity within an organization. It tries to make up for past discrimination in employment by actively finding, hiring, and developing the talents of people from groups traditionally discriminated against. Steps include active recruitment, elimination of prejudicial questions in interviews, and establishment of minority hiring goals. It is important to note that EEO laws do not allow use of hiring quotas. Affirmative action has created tremendous opportunities for women and minorities, but it has been resisted more by some white males who see it as working against their interests. Sexual Harassment Sexual harassment – consists of unwanted sexual attention that creates an adverse work environment. This means obscene gestures, sex-stereotyped jokes, sexually oriented posters and graffiti, suggestive remarks, unwanted dating pressure, physical nonsexual contact, unwanted touching, sexual propositions, threatening punishment unless sexual favors are given, obscene phone calls, and similar verbal or physical actions of a sexual nature. There are two types of sexual harassment:  Quid pro quo – tangible economic injury. In the quid pro quo type, the person to whom the unwanted sexual attention is directed is put in the position of jeopardizing being hired for a job or obtaining job benefits or opportunities unless he or she implicitly or explicitly acquiesces.  Hostile environment – offensive work environment. In the hostile environment type, the person being sexually harassed doesn’t risk economic harm but experiences an offensive or intimidating work environment. Guidelines for Preventing Sexual Harassment  Don’t request or suggest sexual favors for rewards related to work or promotion.  Don’t display sexual pictures on the wall or on your computer.  Don’t laugh at others’ sexually harassing words or behaviors.

9.3 Recruitment & Selection: Putting The Right People into the Right Jobs

Major Question How can I reduce mistakes in hiring and find great people who might work for me? The Big Picture Qualified applicants for jobs may be recruited from inside or outside the organization. The task of choosing the best person is enhanced by such tools as reviewing candidates’ application forms, resumes, and references; doing interviews, either structured or unstructured; and screening with ability, personally, performance, and other kinds of employment tests. Recruitment: How to Attract Qualified Applicants At some time nearly every organization has to think about how to find the right kind of people. Recruiting – is the process of locating and attracting qualified applications for jobs open in the organization. The word qualified is important: You want to find people whose skills, abilities, and characteristics are best suited to your organization. Recruiting is of two types: internal and external. I. internal Recruiting: Hiring from the Inside Internal recruiting – means making people already employed by the organization aware of job openings. Indeed, most vacant positions in organizations are filled through internal recruitment, mainly through job posting – placing information about job vacancies and qualifications on bulletin boards, in newsletters, and on the organization’s intranet. II. External Recruiting: Hiring from the Outside External recruiting – means attracting job applicants from outside the organization. Notices of job vacancies are placed through newspapers, employment agencies, executive recruiting firms, union hiring halls, college job placement offices, technical training schools, and work of mouth through professional associations. Which External Recruiting Methods Work Best? In general, the most effective sources are employee referrals, say human resource professionals, because, to protect their own reputations, employees are fairly careful about whom they recommend, and they know the qualifications of both the job and the prospective employee. Other effective ways of finding good job candidates are e-recruitment tools, such as “dot jobs” web-sites; membership directories for association and trade groups. Realistic Job Providers Often an organization will put on its best face to try to attract the best outside candidates – and then wonder why the new hires leave when the job doesn’t turn out to be as rosy as promised. A better approach is to present what’s known as realistic job preview – which gives a candidate a picture of both positive and negative features of the job and the organization before he or she is hired. Selection: How to Choose the Best Person for the Job

Whether the recruitment process turns up a handful of job applicants or thousands, now you turn to the selection process – the screening of job applicants to hire the best candidate. Three types of selection tools are background information, interviewing, and employment tests. I. Background Information: Application Forms, Resumes, and References Checks Application forms and resumes provide basic background information about job applicants, such as citizenship, education, work history, and certifications. Unfortunately, a lot of resume information consists of mild puffery and even outrageous fairy tales. II. Interviewing: Unstructured, Situational & Behavioral-Description Interviewing, the most commonly used employee-selection technique, may take place, face-toface, by videoconferencing, or – as is increasingly the case – via the Internet. The most commonly used employee-selection technique, interviewing, takes three forms. 

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Unstructured interview. Like an ordinary conversation, an unstructured interview – involves asking probing questions to find out what the applicant is like. There is no fixed set of questions asked of all applicants and no systematic scoring procedure. As a result, the unstructured interview has been criticized as being overly subjective and apt to be influenced by the biases of the interviewer. Nowadays it is susceptible to legal attack, because some questions may infringe on non job related matters such as privacy, diversity, or disability. However, compared with the structured interview method, the unstructured interview has been found to provide a more accurate assessment of an applicant’s job-related personality traits. Structured interview type 1 – the situational interview. The structured interview – involves asking each applicant the same questions and comparing their responses to a standardized set of answers. In one type of structured interview, the situational interview – the interviewer focuses on hypothetical situations. Example: “What would you do if you saw two of your people arguing loudly in the work area?” The idea here is to find out if the applicant can handle difficult situations that may arise on the job. Structured interview type 2 – the behavioral-description interview. In the second type of structured interview, the behavioral-description interview, the interviewer explores what applicants have actually done in the past. Example: “What was the best idea you ever sold to a supervisor, teacher, or peer?”

III. Employment Tests: Ability, Personality, Performance, & Others

Employment tests – are legally considered to consist of any procedure used in the employment selection decision process, even application forms, interviews, and educational requirements. The three most common employment tests are the following;  Ability tests. Ability tests measure physical abilities, strength and stamina, mechanical ability, mental abilities, and clerical abilities.  Performance tests. Performance tests or skills tests measure performance on actual job tasks, as when computer programmers take a test on a particular programming language such as C++ or middle managers work on a small project. Some companies have an assessment center – in which management candidates participate in activities for a few days while being assessed by evaluators.  Personality tests. Personality tests measure such personality traits as adjustment, energy, sociability, independence, and need for achievement. Other Tests The list of employment testing techniques has grown to include – in appropriate cases: drug testing, polygraph (lie detectors), genetic screening, and even (a questionable technique) handwriting analysis. Reliability – the degree to which a test measures the same thing consistently – so that an individual’s score remains about the same being over time. Another legal consideration is the test’s validity – the rest measures what it puports to measure and is free of bias. 9.4 Orientation, Training, & Development Major Question Once people are hired, what’s the best way to see that they do what they’re supposed to do? The Big Picture Three ways newcomers are helped to perform their jobs are through orientation, to fit them into the job and organization; training to upgrade the skills of technical and operational employees; and development, to upgrade the skills of professionals and managers Orientation: Helping Newcomers Learn the Ropes The finalist candidate is offered the job, has accepted it, and has started work. Now he or she must begin, in that old sailor’s phrases, to “learn the ropes.” This is the start of orientation – helping the newcomer fit smoothly into the job and the organization Helping New Employees Get Comfortable: The First 6 Months The first 6 months on a job can be critical to how one performs over the long haul, because that’s when the psychological patterns are established.

The Desirable Characteristics of Orientation

The initial socialization period is designed to give new employees the information they need to be effective. In a large organization, orientation may be a formal, established process. In a small organization, it may be so informal that employees find themselves having to make most of the effort themselves. Following orientation, the employee should emerge with information about three matters (much of which he or she may have acquired during the job—application process);   

The job routine. The organization’s mission and operation. The organization’s work rules and employee benefits.

Training & Development: Helping People Perform Better With business strategy offers the highest returns: (1) downsizing, (2) total quality management, which focuses on work methods and process control, or (3) employee involvement, which focuses on upgrading workers’ skills and knowledge? According to a study of 216 firms, the winner is employee involvement. Five Steps in the Training Process 1. Assessment 2. Objectives 3. Selection 4. Implementation 5. Evaluation HR professionals distinguish between training and development. 

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Training – upgrading skills of technical and operational employees. Training – refers to educating technical and operational employees in how to better do their current jobs. Development – upgrading skills of professionals and managers. Development – refers to educating professionals and managers in the skills they need to do their jobs in the future.

Typical areas for which employee training and development are given are customer service, safety, leadership, and computer skills.

Summary 9.1 Strategic Human Resource Management Human resource management consists of the activities managers perform to plan for, attract, develop, and retain an effective workforce. The purpose of the strategic human resource management process is to get the optimal work performance that will help realize the company's mission and vision. Two concepts important to human resource management are (1) human capital, the economic or productive potential of employee knowledge, and (2) social capital, the economic or productive potential of strong, trusting, and cooperative relationships. Strategic human resource planning consists of developing a systematic, comprehensive strategy for (a) understanding current employee needs and (b) predicting future employee needs. Understanding current employee needs requires first doing a job analysis to determine, by observation and analysis, the basic elements of a job. Then a job description can be written,

which summarizes what the holder of the job does and how and why he or she does it. Next comes the job specification, which describes the minimum qualifications a person must have to perform the job successfully. Predicting employee needs means a manager needs to become knowledgeable about the staffing an organization might need and the likely sources of staffing, perhaps using ...