Human Resource Managers' Issues

The manner of the management of people at workplace contributes to the variation in organizational performance as it influences the performance returns of an organization. With the innovation of high performance working, it has been possible to select and retain workforce with greater focus on job involvement, where the level of performance is enhanced. Some of the critical areas addressed by the high performance working include human resource, work organization, employee relation, management and leadership within the organization (Belt & Giles 2009, p. 41). In this regard, the human resource contributes immensely in the attempts to enhance workforce performance through appropriate management and improvement of motivational approaches adopted in the organization.

Initially, the human resource management has had to address issues, regarding the compensation system, offered to the workforce to boost their morale. This includes the provision of better remuneration and incentive. For this reason, the human resource management has to manage intricate complexity of the compensation system. Some of the problems include the determination of the direct financial compensation, indirect financial system and non-financial compensation. In attempting to address this element of human resource, managers face various forms of pressures from policies and practices that must be observed. Initially, the union pressures influence the compensation system. Labour unions exert pressure on the organization, against which minimum wages and salaries have to be attained. Depending on the strength of the labour unions, the human resource management is influenced on the compensation system (DeCenzo & Robbins 1996, p. 58).

The knowledge and skills of the job influence the level to which the organization can pay an employee. In this regard, various opportunities within an organization are graded, based on efforts and responsibility (Dessler 2000, p. 118). Similarly, the size and ability of the organization determines the level top, which an organization can pay its employees. The product or service competitiveness and prospects for higher profits influence this fact. This necessitates the organization to plan its compensation systems accordingly to allow for higher performance working.

When deciding on the compensation system, the human resource management is usually under the pressure of the government policies and action in wage determination. In this case, the government usually exerts pressure, based on the cost of living or consumer price index. This effort aims at ensuring that all people attain the minimum level of living to avoid adverse poverty in the country. In addition, the human resource needs to counter employees’ psychological and ethical factors to prevent dissatisfaction that might lead to lower productivity and low returns.

To counter the effects of the weakness in the compensation system, the organization should structure the system so that it meets the employees’ needs. In this case, they should initially take into consideration the direct financial remuneration, which includes wages and salaries. The non-direct financial services include insurance cover, housing benefit, leave allowances, and others. The non-financial compensation includes items like recognition, power, authority, and status within the organization. Through this consideration, it would be possible to enhance employees’ morale (Fisher 1998, p. 91).

Performance management is another crucial element of human resource that must be address cautiously. This process involves the act of indentifying, measuring, and developing human resource performance in an organization. This implies that the process of undertaking appraisal is a difficult task that requires appropriate execution. In this regard, it is not easy to evaluate subordinates and even go to the extent of conveying the results in an amicable manner. Nevertheless, the process is essential and realizable in formal or informal way. Some of the challenges, which human resource managers face in the exercise, include central tendency errors, leniency errors, halo effects, interval errors, and personal biasness (Gilmore& Williams 2009, p. 74). Therefore, it necessitates the organization to undertake the process with the assistance of experienced and skill personnel, which demands additional costs. In the struggle to ensure that the appraisal process occurs appropriately, it is essential for an organization to adopt modern techniques, which yield the best outcomes from the process. In this case, the organization has several techniques, which it can use like graphic rating, behavioural rating, work standard approach, management by objectives and ranking method.      

The importance of this form of appraisal is that it appreciates the efforts of the employees who work hard to improve the organizations’ performance. For the staff, the appraisal serves the need to clarify the essence of goals and standards in the organization, which they should fulfil. This is realized through the elaboration of their needs and weaknesses in a positive context, resulting in increase in confidence and awareness. Similarly, the appraisal assists them to generate solutions for their problems and accept responsibility for their own development. On the other side of the management, the appraisal serves the need to select the staff who are talented and experts in areas of their specialization. In addition, it assists in the selection of members for matters of retrenchment, transfer, or promotion. This whole process leads to the enhancement of the high performance working, which, in turn, contributes to the organizational performance (Ivancevich 1998, p. 129).

In the enhancement of the productivity within an organization, it is essential to undertake staff training and development. This exercise seeks to impart more knowledge and skills to the existing staff, so that they can meet the current job performance and develop programs, from which they can gain considerably. In this regard, the human resource is compelled to determine the few employees from the organization, on which they are ready to spend to gain the benefits. When handling this task, the human resource management has to evaluate ways, in which they can conduct training and development. Some of these exercises are executed within the organization through practices such as job rotation, apprentice training, coaching, and allowing subordinates take acting capacities (Kleynhans 2006, p. 187). On the other hand, development could entail offering employees with study leaves, participating in conferences and external exposure with other competitors. The involvement of all personnel, including seniors and subordinates, help employees to obtain additional skills and knowledge, through which they can improve the effectiveness of organizational performance.  

The nature of work designs is another element that the human resource management must address to ensure that there is effectiveness and efficiencies in operations. Some of the key elements include job design and team working. The job design entails the manner of division and allocation of work among employees for the attainment of organizational goals and objectives. For several organizations, this task is critical, since there is no exact job design that can meet the interests of all organizations. Thus, the organization needs to establish some of the most appropriate methods of job design to enhance its performance (Longenecker & Simonetti 2001, p. 258). In this regard, the organization has to analyze the assignment of jobs, which could be through the adoption of specialization for divisional labour. Although this approach has several weaknesses such as wastage of time in task management and boredom, it yields the desired benefits of an organization. Therefore, to deal with various problems, it is essential to consider other forms of job designs like job rotation, job enrichment, and job enlargement. All these designs facilitate freedom and growth in knowledge and skills of the organizational tasks.

In the case of team working, it is mandatory for the human resource to design jobs that allow for coordination among the employees in an appropriate manner. This implies that the organization should take into consideration the various means, through which it can improve the relationship between those in authority and the task enforcers for the achievement of organizational goals. In this case, the organization should structure its management to serve the purpose of goal attainment and motivation of the employees. Based on the nature of operation the organization could be departmentalized or divisional. In each department, the employees will be controlled under flat span of control if the employees are experienced with little need of supervision since they like their work. On the other hand, the organization could adopt the tall organization if the employees are widely spread and their tasks are distinctly different. Through the enhancement of teamwork from both seniors and the subordinates, everyone feels part of the contributions to the organization, leading to improvement of organizational performance (Mondy et al. 2005, p. 265).

Employee relations are another crucial element that arises in organization that the human resource management must address. The level and type of contributions that employees make in the organizations may cause conflicts within themselves. In this regard, it is understood that naturally, man is a selfish individual under conditions of rivalry, which arises out of completion (Noe 2007, p. 159). This implies that based on the performance level and level of remunerations, attributable to each employee, jealousy automatically emanates, which causes friction in operation. As a result, the human resource management must employ appropriate policies and procedures, when handling such as the psychological and sociological part of the employees. Through guidance and counselling, the employees’ differences can be settled if the adversity of the conflict entails mental. Additionally, for the difference in benefits attributable to tasks, the organization must seek ways of ensuring that their employees understand the systems used and ways they can boost their own compensation. Through this process, the employees relation in the organization is improved, which lead to the enhancement of the organization performance through the high performance working.

Management is another element of the human resource, where the organization has to structure effectively to realize its goals and objectives. On this note, the organization should be structured appropriately, based on their functionality and necessity in the organization. Similarly, the organization must not only consider the structure of the organization based on their roles but other factors like the geographical and market segmentation elements. This will guide the organization to come up with a structure that will ensure that all the activities within the organization are addressed according (Stone 2002, p. 221). Additionally, it will reduce the inefficiency, since the management will be effective in underrating its operations. For the employees, the management will able to assess them and guide in the fulfilment of their tasks. Nevertheless, the employees could contribute to the decision-making at strategic level based on analysis and observation. This implies that good management practices will build teamwork within members of the organization, resulting in the attainment of the organizational goals and objectives. Through this, all employees within different department of the organization can develop and get recognition for their participation in the organization.

Since management of most organizations is a distinct feature from leadership, leadership style, adopted by the organization, influences its overall performance. The human resource play crucial role in influencing the design of leadership. Depending on the approaches that are adopted by the organization, it must ensure that their applicability is suitable for the realization of the organization goal and objectives. Some of the best leadership for varied traits include autocratic, democratic and laissez faire style. This form of leadership suits different conditions, thus, the organization should go for a hybrid of the three types of leadership on different levels of management. Nevertheless, the leadership should ensure conditions between the leaders and the subordinates. For the leadership to be effective, several factors must be taken into consideration to ensure that the functionality of leadership conforms to the needs of the organization and the subordinates. In this regard, factors like personality and experience matter a lot for efficiency struggle (Torrington 2011, p. 181).

Overtime, the human resource management should structure organization in a manner to suit the changes in the market. This implies that the organization should undertake restructuring of organization and business process reengineering, when necessary to conform to the business needs. Through this, effectiveness is enhanced within organization. Despite the fact that there are needs to undertake such business dynamism, the organization has to incur huge costs to incorporate the changes. As a result, organization can comply with the market needs (Ulrich 1997, p. 260).

The search for organizational performance demands the adoption of the high performance within the human resource that addresses the needs of the employees. In this case, the high performance working seeks to improve the standards of the employees as well as their productivity. This implies that for the organization investing in its employees, it will return in the long-term, while retaining the necessary expertise. In addition, the organization would be able to perform the expected tasks even with the changes in the market since their employees are well informed and have the capacity to handle current tasks as expected by the market. Generally, this indicates that the employees will benefit at the long run, while the management of the organization will realize the increase in returns, boosting its opposition and performance in the market.