Human Resource Management includes knowledge management

Human Resource Management (HRM) is a function in an organization that focuses on recruitment and management, providing direction for the people who work in the organization. HRM can be performed by line managers as well.

HRM is a function that deals with issues within the organization related with its workers such as hiring; matching available human resources to jobs, appraisal; performance management, rewards; the reward system is one of the most under-utilized and mishandled managerial tools for driving organizational performance, organization development; developing high quality employees, employee issues; compensation, safety, benefits, wellness, employee motivation, training, communication and administration.

The overall purpose of human resource management is to ensure that the organization is able to increase its success through its employees. As Ulrich and Lake (1990) say: ‘HRM systems can be the source of organizational capabilities that allow firms to learn and capitalize on new opportunities.’ HRM is expected to bring more efficiency in some areas which is shown in below.

Organizational effectiveness: ‘Distinctive human resource practices shape the core competencies that determine how firms compete’ Capelli and Crocker-Hefter (1996). This drastic research has shown that such practices can make a significant impact on company performance. HRM strategies aim to supports the practices in the company for improving effectiveness by developing methods in such areas as knowledge management, talent management and generally creating a perfect place for workers.

Human capital management: The human capital of an organization consists on the people who work in that company and on whom the company depends. Bontis et al (1999) defined human capital management as; ‘human capital represents the human factor in the organization; the combined intelligence, skills and expertise that give the organization its distinctive character. The human elements of the organization are those that are capable of learning, changing, innovating and proving the creative thrust which if properly motivated can ensure the long-term survival of the organization.’

Knowledge Management: ‘Knowledge management is any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, whenever it resides to enhance learning and performance in organizations’ (Scarborough et al, 1999). HRM enables supporting the developments of an organization specifically the knowledge and skills which are the practices of organizational processes.

Reward Management: HRM aims to enhance the motivation, job engagement and commitment by introducing the employees that they are valued and rewarded for their work performances and achievements also the levels of their skills and competences that they reach.

Employee Relations: The aim is in employee interactions to create a great work climate which increases the productivity and harmonious within the organization. HRM also supports enhancing through partnerships between management and employees and their trade unions.

A common substance within the HRM literature in recent years has been designed to achieve high levels of employee flexibility, commitment and performance. Human resource practices are located in a much more direct relationship with organizational policy making and performance issues than traditional approaches to personnel management (Bach and Sisson, 2000). More and more, the management of change is seen like permanent function of businesses to improve the effectiveness and maintain organizations adaptable to the competitive market. Many organizations strategically employ the change to improve the effectiveness of organization. But to bring the successful change of the condition of competition of today requires pensive planning, the effective communication and the acceptance of the employees.

In this context there has been discussion about the alleged strategic contribution of HRM to the actual processes of change. This is dominated by the accounts of positivist which treat the organization while a concrete entity and practices as regards HRM as being relatively easily definable and measurable (Delaney and Huselid, 1996). Changes are occurring today that are requiring human resource managers to play an increasingly central role in managing companies. These changes or trends include globalization, changes in the nature of work, and technology. This research allows for a wider understanding of the role of HRM in change processes.

A great number of questions were identified as having the negative impact on effective change management. Some of the principal topics are identified below, which cover the questions of organization and individual resistance to the change.

Various initiatives of change are not always undertaken as an element of a broader logical change plan, for example by considering linkages between the strategy, the structure and the questions of systems. Consequently a change which considers a new structure but does not establish the fact that they must present new systems to support such a structure is less to succeed. The lack of effective disciplines and project management of programs can lead to ice-skating in synchronizations, in the achievement of the wished results, by making sure that the projects deliver as envisaged. The insufficient and relevant training, for example in the project management, change management qualifications, leadership qualifications can all carry out negatively on the effectiveness of any initiative of change. The poor communication was related to the questions surrounding the effectiveness in carrying out the effective change in various ways. For example, the imposed change can lead to a greater resistance of the employees. In conclusion, the lack of effective leadership was identified like effective inhibitor of change.

The resistance to change can be defined as an individual or groups beginning in the acts to block or disturb an attempt to present the change. Resistance itself can take many forms different from the mining subtle of the change initiatives, refusal of information to active resistance (via strikes).

The resistance to change can be considered along various dimensions: Passive versus active, direct versus indirect, individual versus collective, behavioural versus verbal or attitudinal, minor versus major.

Similarly two broad types of resistance can be considered: Resistance to the introduction of a particular reward system and to the content of change (for example to a specific change in technology)

Resistance to the process of the change: This relates to the manner that a change is presented rather than the object of the change intrinsically. For example, management restructure work, without pre-consultation of the affected employees. Management need to be aware of these various criteria to ensure they respond suitably.

Stated reasons for resistance are: Shock of new, loss of control, inconvenience, uncertainty, competence fears, and threat to status. It is important to try to diagnose the cause of the resistance of the employees which this will help to determine the centre of the effort in trying to remove/reduce the issue.

In practice, the management of diversity comprises forced and voluntary actions. For example, there are many legally forced measurements that the employers must take to the minimum to reduce discrimination at the time of recruitment. But while such forced actions can reduce the more obvious barriers of diversity, by mixing a various labour in a closely bound community and productive also require other stages. Such a control program of diversity usually means to begin from top, as follows.

Provide Strong Leadership: The companies with exemplary reputations in the diversity of management typically have CEOs who support the advantages of diversity. For example, they take the strong positions on recommending the need for and the advantages of a diverse workforce, and act as models of role for the behaviour of pro-diversity of exemplification, as by promoting even-handedly employees.

Assess the Situation: The control program of diversity itself starts typically with the company evaluating the progress achieved running with regard to diversity. In particular, how much various we are, and are there diversity-related questions which we must address? The common tools here include the equal and metric use of hiring and conservation, investigations of attitude of the employees, evaluations of management and employees, and focus groups (Patricia Digh, 1999).

Provide Diversity Training and Education: To assume the evaluation indicates questions the needs for company to address, a certain type of program of change is in rule. This frequently implies a certain type of the staff training and program of education, for example by having employees discuss with the expert trainers the values of diversity and the types of the behaviours and damages which can undermine it (Robert Grossman, 2000). The formation of diversity often aims sensitizing all the employees with the need for evaluating differences and for creating the self-esteem, and at building generally more without jolt an operation and a hospital environment for the various labour of the company

Change Culture and Management Systems: To reinforce the formation, the needs for management also to reinforce the words of the formation with contracts. In the best of the cases, combine the training schemes with other concrete stages aimed by changing the values of the organization, the culture, and the systems of management. For example, change the plan of allowance to motivate directors’ points for the attitude’s investigation of the employees’ conflict in intergroup to improve their attitude survey scores.

Evaluate the Diversity Management Program: For example, do the surveys of employee attitude now show any improvements in employees’ manners to the diversity?

By creating control programs of diversity, do not be unaware of the obvious questions. For example, the immigrants being exerted in their mother languages can facilitate to learn and ensure conformity the subjects such as rules of safety and policies of harassing, and thus relieve their entry in your labour (Carol Hastings, 2002). The resistance of supervisor is another issue. One of the large British retailer found in their study that typical diversity prescriptions like “recognize and respond to individual differences” conflicted with the supervisor’s tendency to treat people even-handedly in the organization (Foster and Harris, 2005).

Does it pay to invest the time and the resources of the employer by widening the diversity, and setting its employees to work together more harmoniously? The blatant answer would be ‘yes’.

IBM created several minority task forces focusing on group such as woman and Native Americans. In ensuring a decade or more, the task forces have expended IBM’s multicultural markets. For example, somebody decided to focus on expanding IBM’s market amongst multicultural and woman-owned business. As a result of that, this market has grown from $10 million to more than $300 million in revenue in just 3 years (David Thomas, 2004). Longo Toyota in El Monte, California, built its competitive strategy on diversity (Richard Orlando 1995). In regard to 60-person sales- force that can speak more than 20 languages, Longo’s employees provide a great rivalry advantage for serving a progressively diverse customer base. The human resources department of Longo accordingly has much to do with strategic success of Longo (J. T. Childs Jr., 2005). A survey of 113 MBA job seekers showed that women and ethnic minorities have seen diversity management to be important when accepting job offers (Eddy Ng and Burke, 2005). Furthermore, a recent study showed that “few positive or negative direct effects of diversity on performance,” so presenting an effective diversity program seems to be key point (Thomas Kochen et al 2003).

How one can it indicate if the diversity initiatives are effective? There are some questions of good direction to ask: Are there women and minorities reporting directly to the senior executive? Do the women and the minorities have a fair equal opportunity to access for the international tasks? Do the women and the minorities have an equitable part of the tasks of work which are their traditional stepping-stones to the successful careers within the company? Does the employer take measurements (including evaluations of execution directed by development and to provide developmental occasions) which ensure the female and of the minority candidates will be in the drain of the professional life development in the company? Are the rates of sales turnover for directors for female and minority same or they are lower than those for the white male directors (Bill Leonard, 2002)?

Even for a company with several hundreds of employees, to maintain such metric is expensive. The director of HR therefore may want to count on various automated solutions. One of those packages “Measuring Diversity Results” provides to directors of HR several diversity-related options of software aimed amplifying the exactitude of information at the disposal of the director, and reducing the costs to gather it and compile. In the other packages in suppliers’ diversity management which let the director more easily calculate: the cost by hiring of diversity; an index of profile of labour; numerical impact of the voluntary sales turnover among the various groups of the employees; effectiveness of the initiatives of diversity of the supplier of the company [employment]; current measurements of diversity; and the things such as direct as a replacement cost direct per hiring.

The concept of the reengineering again traces its origins with the developed theories of management for the purpose of reengineering is to “maximising all the processes to best-in-class.” Frederick Taylor suggested in the 1880’s, managers use such reengineering methods for discovering the best processes to carry out work, and these processes are reengineered to optimize the productivity. BPR shows the classical thought that the tasks were conducted with only one way. In Taylor’s time, technology was not enough high for big companies to create processes in a cross-functional or cross-departmental attitude. Specialization was the method of the last cry to improve the effectiveness given technology of time. (Lloyd, Tom, 1994)

In the 1900’s, Henri Fayol inspired the concept of reengineering: To lead the company towards its objectives while seeking to derive the optimum advantage from all the resources available. Although the technological resources of our age changed, the concept is always held. Meanwhile, the other business engineer, Lyndall Urwick stated “It is not enough to hold people accountable for certain activities, it is also essential to delegate to them the necessary authority to discharge that responsibility.” (Lloyd, Tom, Giant, Clay, 1994) This remonstrance announces the idea of the enabling of workman who is central with the reengineering.

Nowadays, some of the successful business corporations around the world seem to be hit upon a great solution: Business Process Reengineering. However, it may be highly likely to fail in reengineering process unless the demonstration of how to reengineer the human resource in conjunction with reengineering processes is made clearly. In order to collision these tendencies, the top management must provide a perpetual information flow throughout the organization according to reengineering successes and expectations, and revised the job evaluation system to impress on the new values of team work and co-operation.

When speaking about processes’ importance as most of the companies have their charts, they must also be dealing with what is called process road map for a picture to show how the work will be going through the company. This picture will provide some tools and methodologies to identify the company’s actual business process and also which can be used to be a road map when implementing a reengineering process of products and business enterprise service functions. It can be a critical link that reengineering team of the companies can apply for a better understanding and sharply develop the companies’ business processes and bottom-line efficiency. The processes that they are taken mapped and identified, deciding on what needs to be reengineered, and in what operation million pounds will be invested important questions. Companies are not willing to take up disagreeable task of reengineering all the processes at the same time. Usually company decisions based on three criteria: Feasibility: what are the processes that have the highest possibility to be successful in reengineering process? Importance: what are the most accurate and efficient terms based on customer satisfaction? Dysfunction: what processes are not functioning as it is expected (Hammer,M., Champy.J, 1993)?

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail (http://www.ecademy.com). Both processes Planning and Preparation are essential factors for any implementation to success it as well as reengineering process requires these factors. Before starting for reengineering, the question must be asked if BPR is necessary. When there is a significant need for the reengineering process, the confirmation of this need indicates the starting of the Preparation activity. This activity starts with the improvement of the executive consensus on the importance of the reengineering and the bond between the business goals and the projects of reengineering. A mandate for the change is produced and a cross-functional calculus team is established with a plan for the process of the reengineering. While training the cross-functional calculus team, measurements should be taken to make sure that the company continues to function in the absence of several principal players. Because the typical projects of BPR comprise the co-operation cross-functional calculus and the crucial changes with the status quo, it is difficult to lead planning for the changes of organization without strategic direction starting from the top. The impact of the environmental changes which are used the impulse for the effort as reengineering must also be considered by establishing directives for the project of reengineering. Another factor that is important to consider while establishing the strategic goals for the effort of reengineering process is to include/understand the hopes of your customers and where your existing process is missing to answer these requirements. Having an identification of the objectives led by customer, the mission or the report/ratio of vision is formulated. The vision which company believes and wants to carry out when made a well defined vision will support the resolution of a company by the effort of the process of reengineering. The company believes in a vision and wants to achieve its success in the future and in additional the company can resolve the stress through operations of sustaining the reengineering process. Training programs for the workers must be included within the preparation phase in order to clarify the job clearance to let workers to understand their duty to harmonize with the reengineering process of the company. Performance review is also a vital part to be monitored of the company whilst implementing a reengineering process. There are two important things which have to be monitored; first is the action progress and the results. The action progress is measured while seeing how much more people’s feeling informed, how much more engagement the management shows and at which point the teams of change are accepted from the broader point of view for the organization. This can be carried out by leading investigations of survey attitude. As monitoring the results, the monitoring should include measurements such as attitudes of the employees, perceptions of customer, answer of supplier etc. The communication is reinforced in all the organization, the measurement continuous is launched, reviewing team’s execution against the well defined targets is made and a loop of feedback which placed to the top of 5 where the process re-analysed that re-organized and re-mapped. Therefore the improvement of this efficiency is made sure by a system of execution track and an application of the qualifications of the problems’ resolution.

“The human resources function can help the organization develop the capability to weather the changes that will continue to be part of the organizational landscape. It can help with the ongoing learning processes required to assess the impact of change and enable the organization to make corrections and enhancements to the change. It can help the organization develop a new psychological contract and ways to give employees a stake in the changes that are occurring and in the performance of the organization (Mohrman and Lawler 1998).”

Human resource activities that are involved when implementing reengineering process as follows:

The formation is ineffective if the trainee misses of capacity or motivation to draw benefit from it. In terms of capacity, the trainee needs inter alia qualifications required for reading, writing and mathematics and needed the base of knowledge and intelligence, level of education. The effective selection of the employees is obviously important here. Some employers use miniature work training to introduce it for the new potential trainees. Sample tasks from training program of the firm involved by it to support ensure who will or not will carry on the training program (Wexley, Latham, 2002).

The employer can have several measurements to increase the motivation of the trainee to learn. The municipalities functioning undertaking programs of education know that there is often more efficiently to obtain the attention of a student only by presenting in form graphs a filmed automatic accident. In other words, start the formation by making the material meaningful. For example, show why it is important, provide an overall picture of the material, and employ the familiar examples to illustrate the key points. Presenting opportunities to practice, and letting the trainee make errors also improve the motivation and the study (Wexley, Latham, 2002). Feedback including/understanding periodic evaluations of execution and criticisms verbal more frequent is also important.

Performance management means taking an integrated, goal oriented approach to assigning, training, assessing and rewarding employees’ performance. Taking a performance management approach to training means that the training effort must make sense in terms of what the company wants each employee to contribute to achieving the company’s goals.

These emphases on strategic, performance management oriented training help explain why training is booming. Companies spent about $826 per employee for training in one recent year and offered each about 28 hours of training (American Salesman, Jan 2004). Training has a fairly impressive record of influencing organizational effectiveness, scoring higher than appraisal and feedback and feedback and just below goal setting in its effect on productivity (Bulletinto, 2002). One survey found that ‘establishing a linkage between learning and organizational performance’ was the number one pressing issue facing training professionals (DeViney, Sugrue, 2004). Training experts today increasingly use the phrase ‘work place learning and performance’ in lieu of training to underscore training’s dual aims dual aims of employee learning and organizational performance (Brenda Sugrue, 2005).

Since several studies on a large scale showed that HRM is a critical conductive in the financial execution of an organization, it is imperative so that the HR and other chiefs include/understand critical nature and the greatest importance of arrangement the effectiveness of all the activities of HR by creating the value for the organization. It is only by the measurement of HRM that one can really articulate the advantages of the strategies of HR by carrying out the marketing strategy of the organization and in the process increase the credibility of the profession of HR.

The profession of HR is at the joint where the measurement of HR’s efforts is not simply a nice thing to make, but should be an integral part of the HR department’s efforts. There will be people who would resist naturally this important aspect of HR, but by giving particular lessons, while forming, and the practice, the expertise will be developed and by finally improving their execution and the effectiveness of the function of HR. It is only by such efforts that HR can validate that is a strategic associate and a department with value added in the organization.