Today, organizations are downsizing, rightsizing, terminating, and outsourcing. Executives must be concerned with Risk Management, Marketing, Sales, Strategic Planning, Financial Planning, Operations Management, Merger and Acquisitions, takeovers, and Human Resources Management to name a few tasks.
Demands and practices once carried out by employers a few decades ago are no longer effective or relevant today. With outsourcing, diversity, multiculturalism, sexual harassment, productivity, performance and a myriad of other issues, employers must be constantly vigilant of changes made by government and legislature/laws that can impact their "BOTTOM LINE." Worst, many decisions made by uninformed employers can result in expensive lawsuits and court battles, especially in the United States. Courts are no longer lenient on employers!
The paradigm has shifted in the way we conduct business today.
Once, only practiced by big multinational and global organizations, today's small and medium sized companies can no longer afford to ignore the critical issue of the human resources management (HRM) process. Preparing to meet today’s demands require a workforce with knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), capabilities, and talents. Your human resources capital will bring intellectual capital. This is your competitive advantage!
This begins in the recruiting and selection stage, which requires employers to have savvy human resources personnel who know how to fit the "right" person to the available job. To do so, HRM personnel must be trained in recruiting, interviewing and selection techniques. They must understand policies and procedures and design job specifications and descriptions, which must be set in place.
Organizations are forced to be human resources savvy: to focus on intellectual capital and knowledge-based information, and to be customer-service-centered, while being creative, innovative and technologically driven. They must pay attention to diversity and multicultural issues, and update laws relating to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA). Many are becoming team driven for productivity and performance. A Team allows for brainstorming and exchanging ideas where everyone is responsible, accountable, and aware of corporate or divisional objectives and work toward the bottom line for a competitive advantage. Employers should have a performance appraisal system where objectives and personal goals can be measured at least once a year.
HRM must be willing to meet the training and development needs so that ALL employees are armed with the right and proper tools for success. Choosing the right training program(s) means knowing your mission, objectives, and vision. It also means knowing what you expect of employees once trained (pre and post performance measures). To determine the success of any training program and employee improvement, you must have feedback and allow time for improvement, although some areas may be applied immediately. These should be documented very well as part of ALL employees’ profiles.
The HRM department and divisional managers must have tools such as manuals: policies and procedures, employee handbooks, disaster preparedness, workplace safety, and expected organization behaviors as documentation for employment laws. Today’s challenges in a world of terrorism and identity theft has shifted paradigms once again, demanding that managers be able to project and anticipate changing trends occurring internally and externally, and adapting to those changes. Be it technology, products, services, competition, laws, markets or anything else for that matter. You must keep abreast of the industry.
With the "Bottom Line" being profits, saving time, saving money, and using limited resources, every CEO and manager’s focus should be to maximize shareholder wealth, while maintaining a healthy workforce.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
