Part I: Select a country and briefly examine the existence of the people management profession.
David Meyer, who is the owner of Coaching for Tomorrow, having more than 25 years of people management experience and once worked for companies such as Nobil Shoes, McDonough, Allied Stores, MCI and Nextel Communications, has a famous saying 'People are our most important asset' (Meyer, 2004). It can well illustrate why many organisations show great interest in human resource management (HRM), which might be defined as the effective management of people at work with the aim of making working people more productive and satisfied (Ivancevich, 2007). Although the concept of HRM emerged in China much later than developed regions such as Europe and US, and HRM seems to be developing at the primary stage, HRM in China is different from those in other countries because of different political and economic systems and social and cultural backgrounds, which makes it an interesting topic for researching HRM. Moreover, a variety of changes have taken place in HRM since the 1978 economic reforms (Zhao, 1994).
With the prosperity of socialist market economy in China, modern western concepts of organisational management are widely accepted and adopted by Chinese enterprises. For instance, HRM has been promoted and developed in many Chinese organisations since managers perceived it as a necessity of long-term existence for an organisation (Shen, 2007). Almost 75% enterprises in China have established independent HR departments and in the rest 25% enterprises, HRM related activities are carried out by other departments (ibid). Moreover, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) began to play an extremely important role in Chinese economy since 1990s accounting for 99% of total enterprises (Li & Rowley, 2007). However, compared with large state-owned enterprises, SMEs is less likely to realise the importance of strategic HRM for the overall development of an organisation (Shen, 2007). Business strategies or goals are given priority over HRM rather than integrated into it, which makes HRM policies meaningless. Even in organisations who attach great importance to HRM, there are still some problems. A great number of Chinese enterprises are at the transitional stage from traditional personnel management to modern HRM (Tsinghua Leadership, 2009). The most frequent tactic of HRM seems to be 'control', HR managers perceive employees as 'cost' and the policy goals tend to be cost minimisation. However, it is criticised that employees cannot be seen as a passive factor of production, rather cohesiveness and reciprocity should be encouraged between employers and employees (Forth, 2007). HR innovation seems to be complex and requires continued commitment and a long-term view while Chinese HR managers sometimes take short-term views being reluctant to carry out HRM activities. For example, they are less than willing to train employees on a large scale since it means a huge training cost.
Thanks to establishment of market economy and processes of globalisation, changes will take place in the nature of HRM in China. A typical issue is that it is difficult for foreign joint ventures to introduce their preferred approaches of managing HR in China because of differences in political, economic and cultural backgrounds (Siu & Darby, 1999). One of their key problems is the scarcity of qualified Chinese HR managers who are effective and can cope with the changing demands both of the internal and external markets. Since expatriate managers alone cannot meet total demands of joint ventures, a highly trained, competent cadre of indigenous Chinese managers who are equipped with managing change capacity and cross-cultural communication techniques need to be developed (ibid).
Part II: Find a newspaper article focusing on HR published in the last month and comment on its content.
One of the most interesting articles I have ever read might be 'Happiness can be turned into worries-SNS steals working time from employees' (Yang, 2009), which was appearing on one of my favorite Chinese HR newspapers called HR Newspaper. This article mainly talked about the Social Networking Services (SNS) usages, especially the most popular web page Kaixin 001.com among employees in China. Having found out the problems caused by SNS such as lower efficiency at workplace, some HR managers in China begin to abandon the usage of SNS.
According to Websence, who offers data for managing internet usage among employees, there are as many as 83% employees browsing webpages unrelated to work at their working time in 8 countries and regions. Moreover, Chinese employees seem to spend more time downloading music, chatting online, playing online games and checking personal emails than employees in other developing countries, which worry Chinese HR managers a lot. Kaixin 001.com, which copied from Facebook to a maximum extent, has won a great popularity among Chinese white collar employees (Clulow, 2009). HR managers believe there are at least three problems caused by overuse of SNS. Firstly, too much use of SNS might influence the wire speed at workplace, which in turn affects the efficiency of working. Secondly, addiction to the virtual world can make employees bored of working, which would have even more adverse effects on efficiency. Thirdly, frequent use of SNS might ruin the image of organisations, especially for governments. Fourthly, it will become even worse when employees contacting each other on SNS, in which case secrets, gossips and other confidential issues would be spread widely and quickly. Therefore, many organisations in China now have abandoned the usage of SNS at workplace.
I believe there are some rationales behind such actions. Working efficiency seems to be important for every organisation, HR managers should take responsibility and have the right to do something that can raise or at least will not lower the efficiency of working. However, solely forbiddance of SNS might not work or can even bring adverse effects. According to this article, employees found some ways to rebel against HR managers, for example, they began to use cell phones that can browse Kaixin 001. com, which makes it more easily to use and hide. Employees hold the opinion that SNS is the best way to release the stress of heavy workload and keep them happy. Although there are some lazy workers shirking tasks or responsibilities, many workers put priority on work over other things and they believe they could find a balance between work and SNS. Some experts contend the best way for HR managers to handle this issue is not forbiddance, but moralisation. As we know, organisational culture means assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organisation members and their behaviors (McNamara, 2000). HR managers should try to establish and maintain an organisational culture that clearly defines what is right or wrong and leads employees to do something that benefits the organisation as a whole. Moreover, high commitment model seems to help in this sense. Walton (1985) recognised the importance of commitment believing people will not go 'beyond contract' if poorly treated. In the case above, employees worked against managers because they felt they were badly treated. In order to make them highly committed to the organisation, HR managers should take actions to empower them and make them feel they are a part of the organisation, for instance, let employees take part in the decision making of how to handle the SNS issue.
HR Newspaper address:
http://epaper.scol.com.cn/rlzyb/20091026/
Part III: Drawing on module content, personal experience, recent newspaper features and journal articles, briefly discuss to what extent managers should be involved in:
a) Recruitment and selection, and HRP processes
Human resource planning (HRP) can be defined as both a process and a set of plans which identify an organisation's current and future human resource requirements, developing and implementing plans to eliminate any gaps that exist between supply and demand for human resources and monitoring their overall effectiveness (Beardwell et al, 2004). Effective HRP should require managers to involve in four phases or stages: environmental scanning, forecasting demand for human resources, examining the supply of human resources and developing plans for action (Ivancevich, 2007). Traditionally, it is believed that managers should be involved in HRP processes to a great extent since HRP can be regarded to bring at least four advantages to an organisation (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2005). Firstly, it could make it easier for employers to integrate business plans with HR plans more effectively. Secondly, there will be better control over staffing costs and numbers of employees employed. Thirdly, it will help managers better understand the skills and attitude mix in organisation so as to achieve the right skills mix among the workforce. Lastly, HRP might provide a profile of current staff promoting equal employment opportunities (EEO).
However, someone argued HRP was worthwhile only when world markets were stable and predictable. Modern organisations are often labeled as 'new and flexible', which might limit the effectiveness of HRP in a turbulent and increasingly insecure competitive environment (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2005). While my personal experiences might contradict this view since one of my best friends, who has worked as an intern in HR department of several multinational companies in UK, told me the different story. She said UK companies are still committed to the idea of HRP, the only adjustment HR managers seem to make is prone to long-term HRP rather than a previous short-term one.
When an organistion find shortages in its human resources needs during HRP processes, recruitment, which refers to activities designed to influence the number and types of applicants who would apply for a job and whether the applicants accept jobs on offer (Ivancevich, 2007). It is widely believed that managers should attach great importance to and largely involve in recruitment since a tight labour market will plague organisations of all sizes during the coming years. Of all the methods of recruitment, the Internet or E-recruiting seems to become one of the most prominent one worldwide. Many of my undergraduate classmates have got access into multinational companies in China through E-recruiting. However, sometimes managers are not suggested to largely involve in recruitment because of its high cost and permanence, alternatives to recruitment might be used. Overtime, outsourcing and temporary employment can be regarded to replace recruitment to some extent (ibid).
After recruitment, there is a process called selection by which an organisation chooses the person(s) who best meets the selection criteria for the position available. Managers are supposed to be highly active in selection in order to find out the applicants who have the highest chance of meeting and exceeding the organisation's standards of performance. But the most important caveat managers should always remember is that all decisions must be made efficiently within the boundaries of EEO laws (Liff, 1999). However, discrimination of employment based on criteria such as race, age, religion, disability and gender is common to see at workplace worldwide. For example, Simpson (1998) conducted a research finding that 'long hours culture' in companies is purposefully used by male managers as career barriers for women managers. Women, who has dual responsibilities of home and work, cannot work overtime as late as men do, might give them disadvantages over employment opportunities compared with men, who prolong working hours intentionally. It is advisable that HR managers should carefully monitor and manage these actions in a proper manner. Although managers have realised discrimination means losing access to talent and integrating traditionally discriminated employees into the work force can strengthen firm's competitive advantage, according to a case study by Hoque & Noon (2004), EEO practices seem to be an empty shell in many UK organisations.
b) Human resource development
According to module content, Human resource development (HRD) might be defined as long-term strategic processes preparing an organisation's competitive advantage in the future with main focus on cultural aspect. It shapes an organisation's goals and missions of filling the gap between organisational requirements and current employee skills. Managers, including top management, senior management, line managers and HR professionals are supposed to involve in the process of HRD since everyone related to an organisation could be regarded as stakeholders of it (McCracken and Wallace, 2000).
In order to make HRD effective, managers should not only be active in the fields of employee development, self and career development and management development, more importantly, they should take a proactive role in organisation development (OD), which could be defined as organisation's process to increase organisational effectiveness and health using behavioural science knowledge by planned interventions in organisation-wide scale (French & Bell, 1983). Because it is organisation-wide, some techniques based on building identifiable system or subsystem is extremely important. As we know, Total Quality Management (TQM) which is a philosophy originated from Japan, could equip an organisation with what is needed to increase its operational effectiveness (Ivancevich, 2007). In order to make TQM work, there must be changes in attitudes, communication, employee involvement and commitment because they would have effect on productivity and quality. In my homeland China, TQM is now widely accepted and adopted by many modern organisations. However, one of my relatives, who is an HR manager of a large state-owned company told me that practising TQM is difficult because of resistance to change. For instance, senior employees might feel reluctant to carry out new ways of doing things since they believe it will threaten their status quos. Thus, it is managers' responsibility to overcome those resistances by comforting senior employees and convincing them that change could bring benefits to the whole organisation as long as everyone cooperates with each other.
Learning can be one of the most important aspects in HRD. However, managers always find barriers of carrying it out, one is time pressures and the other is lack of support from line managers (Crofts, 2004). In order to overcome those problems, the most effective way for managers is to ensure the organisational culture is supportive of learning and development (CIPD, 2004). Learning organisations, which is popularised by Peter Senge, could well explain it. Learning organisations should be places 'where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together' (Senge, 1990). A case in point could be Xerox, who used a learning perspective including three stages: cognitive, behavioral and improvement of performance (Ivancevich, 2007).
c) Managing and rewarding performance
In order to achieve profitability, growth, effectiveness and valuation for an organisation, managers find it important to get involved in performance management, which could be defined as 'the process through which managers ensure that employees' activities and outputs contribute to the organisational's goals' (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2004). An effective performance management should include processes of defining excellent performance, using reliable evaluation systems of performance and providing feedback to employees, of which performance evaluation could be areas managers should pay special attention to. They are supposed to involve in performance evaluation process to a great extent since it could benefit both employees and organisations as a whole. For employees, it makes them aware of the organisations' expectations of them; for an organisation, it enhances quality of goods and services.
There are both formal and informal systems of performance evaluation. In an informal one, the problem could be that political and interpersonal factors might influence managers' decisions. That is to say, employees who have a closer relationship with managers might have a better treatment. Even in a formal system, for example, a 360-degree system might have negative features such as halo effects. A possible way to avoid or relief those problems could be rater training. Managers should make sure raters eliminate common rating errors and improve supervisor observation and recording skills, moreover, employees have a better understanding of the system and actively participate in it. Sometimes, managers are advised to be indulgent in performance management because self-evaluation can be a useful addition in some circumstances.
Reward management, which might be defined as 'the design, implementation, maintenance, communication, and evolution of reward processes which help organisations to improve performance and achieve their objectives' (Armstrong & Murlis 1994), is another function managers should attach great importance to. Performance-related pay, as the name suggested, may lie in the core of it. For example, in my homeland China merit pay is perceived as the most widely used and useful plan for managing individual performance since rewarding the best performers with the largest pay is claimed to be a motivating factor. However, sometimes employees would fail to make connection between pay and performance because secrecy of the reward is regarded as inequity. Therefore, Lewis (2001) suggested the implementation of strategic reward management should lead to 'a reward strategy that will automatically change employee behaviours in line with the organisation's business strategy.
d) Managing the employment relationship
Employment relationship, which means the relationship between employers and employees, contain common goals and divergent interests (Edwards, 2003). Therefore, it is characterised by both conflict and co-operation. It is managers' responsibility to greatly involve in employment relationship management fostering co-operation. The recent trend saw the rise of employee involvement (EI), which could be defined as 'a concerted attempt by employers to find participative ways in which to manage their staff. Its aims are those which support the achievement of management's goals, either directly in relation to performance improvements or indirectly through higher levels of employee commitment, satisfaction and identification with their employer' (Marchington, 2001). For example, an EI programme was designed in Delta Airlines providing pilots with a non-voting seat on the Board of Director trading for contract concessions (Kaufman, 2003). However, evidences suggested that EI cannot always work since there might be a lack of top management commitment & resourcing. Also there is little evidence of a positive impact on attitudes of employees because they do not trust the motivation and ability of managers (Storey, 2001). Moreover, managers are unable to avoid unions in some sectors, which would make matters more difficult. 'Social Partnerships', which characterises the new cooperative relationship between employers and unions, although has caught managers' interests, its real existence and effectiveness are being doubted by experts (Kelly, 2004).
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