Strategic Human Resource Management: University of West England - Case Study Example

Strategic Human Resource Management: University of West England Case Name Institution Course Date Strategic Human Resource Management: University of West England Case Introduction Strategic human resource is important for the success of a company (Dhar 2008, p. 2). Today’s companies operate in complex and dynamic business environments. Therefore, to succeed, a company must be able to effective manage its people building a high performing workforce. Strategic human resource management plays a role in this regard by ensuring that the right people with the right skills, knowledge and competence are hired and that they are properly compensated and motivated to give their all to an organization. Thompson (2002, p. 3) argues that employees are a valuable resource that a company can use as a source of competitive advantage. This implies that failure to effectively manage employees is a recipe for organizational failure. The University of West England is one of the renowned and reputed universities not only in the UK, but the world over. The University has produced some of the best brains in the world in different professions. However, the university faces certain HR issues that it needs to address to maintain good performance. Some of the HR problems that it needs to improve on strategic diversity and reward. This paper analyzes these HR issues facing the company and suggests ways of improving on these areas to ensure improved performance of the university. Strategic Diversity Globalization and immigration have changed in the composition of the society and this is reflected in the workplaces that are increasingly becoming diversity. For this reason, any company that hopes to succeed in the 21st century business environment must be able to create and strategically manage diversity. Human resource experts argue that effective strategic manager recognizes that the creation of a diverse workforce contributes to a company’s ability to achieve its principal goals in a cost effective manner. Thomas (2011, p. 9) defines strategic diversity management as a process involving recognizing, acknowledging, respecting and promoting the developing of a diverse workforce comprising of people from different backgrounds and cultures. Unfortunately, University of Western England (UWE) faces serious diversity issues as its workforce composition does not reflect diversity as it should. The university currently has over 28,000 students and 3,538 employees, which makes it one of the largest institutions of higher learning in the UK. Unfortunately, out of the 3,538 members of staff, the majority are Briton whites with just a few from other races (UWE Bristol 2017). Besides, only a few of these employees are female as the majority of the staff, especially at higher level being males and this suggests gender discrimination at the university. Additionally, there is a generational problem in the workforce composition as the university has few senior employees save for a few professors, which might suggest age discrimination. The failure to effectively manage diversity is making the university lose out on the benefits that come with effective strategic diversity management. Chun and Evans (2013, p. 11) indicate that workplace diversity is beneficial for organizations as it helps bring people from different backgrounds and cultures together with different views, perspectives and opinions, which in turn increase the possibility of producing creative and innovative solutions to a problem. IBM is an example of a company that enjoys a competitive advantage in the industry, where it operates due to effective strategic diversity management. IBM has created a diverse workforce comprising of whites, Africans, Asians, Lesbians, gays, women all of which work together as a team and this results in the production of innovative and creative ideas due to the diversity of opinions that comes with diverse workforce (Thomas 2004). Therefore, IBM attributes its innovativeness partly to the fact that it has a diverse workforce, where people are allowed to come up with ideas that can be of help to the company. Effective strategic diversity management is also important for the success of an organization, such as UWE because it minimizes an employer’s risk of discrimination, harassments or lawsuits. Companies that do not embrace diversity, or where there is a lack of effective strategic diversity management runs the risk of allowing discrimination and harassment of employees to happen in the organization. Such behaviours are not good for a company for various reasons. First, a company runs the risk of being sued by an employee who has been discriminated against or harassed in line with the Equality Act of 2010 and such lawsuits are not only costly to an organization, but also damage the reputation of a company. Second, discrimination and harassment based on an employee’s culture or background makes a company less attractive to talented employees besides creating a climate for high turnover (Chun & Evans 2013, p. 19). Additionally, harassment and discrimination based on a worker’s background or culture demoralizes hard working employees and this affects their commitment and productively. It is for these reasons that strategic diversity management is critical in modern organizations, such as UWE. Moreover, effective strategic diversity management is beneficial to a company because it helps build a team that is able to work cohesively as a team. Thomas (2011, p. 24) states that, when an employer develops a culture of respect, fairness and trust, employees of different ethnic, race, gender and age groups work as a team more effectively and this results in positive outcome. Recommendations for Improvements Williams (2013, p. 43) notes that strategic diversity management can be of great benefit to UWE as it can use it as a tool to enhance its competitive position in the higher learning industry. Therefore, going forward, UWE needs to enhance its position as far as diversity is concerned to be able to take benefits that come with effective diversity management. The first suggestion is that UWE needs to make diversity part of its organizational culture. In this respect, the university needs to make everyone in the company aware of its values about diversity by expressively communicating its commitment to diversity through its mission and value statement. This is important as it would make every member of the institution not just staff, but also the students aware that the university is about inclusivity as this would result in the development of a culture of respect, trust and fairness for individuals of different ethnic, gender, racial and age groups (Chun & Evans 2013, p. 33). Second, UWE needs to promote diversity in the company by reviewing its recruitment policy. Although the policy of the company implies that the company value diversity, the composition of the workforce tells otherwise. Therefore, the HR of the university needs to create a policy that requires that employees are hired purely based on merit regardless of race, gender, age, ethnic, disability or religion among other cultural aspects. This would ensure that every candidate that applies for a job in the university is given equal chance not matter where their backgrounds, argues Thomas (2011, p. 202). The same policy should be applied in promotion in which case UWE should ensure that employees deserving promotion are awarded with promotion without considering their culture or backgrounds. Lastly, the HR department of UWE can improve its performance by addressing diversity issues through diversity training. According to Williams (2013, p. 51), most organizations experience diversity problems, such as discrimination, harassments, stereotyping and conflicts because of lack of understanding of individual uniqueness and its importance in organizational success. As such, it would be necessary for the university to promote training programs that encourage members of the staff, including line managers to value diversity in the institution as this would benefit the university by reducing employee dissatisfaction, enhance their morale, which in turn results in increased productivity. Strategic Reward Developing a reward system that aligns with the strategy, culture and human resource practices of an organization is critical to the success of a company. Fisher (2015, p. 31) argues that human resource managers have a responsibility to develop an effective reward because of its impact on employee performance. Reward has a direct effect on the performance of an organization through its effect on employee satisfaction and motivation. For a company to achieve good performance from its workforce, the managers must ensure that the employees are satisfied in their jobs and that they are highly motivated to increase their efforts (Armstrong 2007, p. 12). Armstrong et al. (2007, p. 77) suggests the use of a good reward system as one of the ways that managers can motivate employees to increase their efforts and commitment to the organizational goals. The importance of a good reward system is highlighted by Abraham Maslow’s 1943 hierarchy of needs theory that help in understanding human behaviour. According to the theory, people often seek to fulfil their immediate/lower level needs after which they seek to fulfilment of upper level needs (McGuire 2012, p. 4). This is to mean that lack of fulfilment of lower needs inhibits an individual from moving to the next ladder. Maslow ranks the needs from the lowest to the highest in the form of a ladder, which includes physiological, security, belonging, esteem and self-actualization needs. According to the theory, a person would normally seek the fulfilment of physiological needs first before starting to seek the fulfilment of security needs in that order (McGuire 2012, p. 6). The physiological needs, according to Maslow are met by rewarding employees with basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter. Security needs are fulfilled by providing employees with safe and secure working environment, as well as offering job security. Belonging needs that employees seek include love, intimacy, friendship and family while esteem needs include confidence, respect, achievement and self-esteem. Finally, self-actualization needs include creativity, morality and problem solving (Mello 2014, p. 166). Accordingly, Maslow’s theory recognizes that reward is an important tool that organizations can use to motivate employees to increase their commitments and performance. The motivational effect created by the adoption of an effective strategic reward system is important for organizational performance and success in many ways. According to Fisher (2015, p. 49), an effective reward system increased employee retention, which is important for the success of an organization. When employees are motivated in their work by the rewards they get, this increases their commitments to an organization, which results in low turnover. Akhtar et al. (2010, p. 252) study found that a good reward management makes a company attractive to new employees. Most workers are motivated to work for employers that offer attractive reward package. Therefore, the provision of an attractive reward package makes a company be considered an “employer of choice” for talented employees (Dhar 2008, p. 21). Other benefits of effective strategic reward include helping develop loyalty and honesty, strengthen organizational reputation, encourage positive behaviours and attitude and builds a healthy work environment, which promotes organizational success. Despite the important of adopting an effective reward system that motivates employees, UWE’s reward management strategy is not as effective as it should. Although the company states that it provides a good reward and recognition for its workforce, this is not reflected in the company considering that the satisfaction and motivational level of its workforce is low and the turnover rate is not good (UWE Bristol 2014). The low level of staff satisfaction and motivation has also been demonstrated by numerous incidences of industrial actions by lecturers and other staffs of the university since it was founded. In 2013, the staff of the university went on strike because demanding pay increase (Womack 2013) and the same has been seen lately in 2016 when lecturers of the university and staff went on strike over the same issue and these are indications of reward problems at UWE. Recommendations for Improvements The many incidences of industrial actions that have been witnessed at UWE are largely attributed to the fact that the university has not developed an effective reward strategy to motivate its workforce. For this reason, the university needs to relook at its reward strategy and adopts that which will motivate the lecturers and staff to increase their effort and this is achievable by implementing a Total Reward System (Armstrong et al. 2007, p. 122). Total reward system is the most appropriate reward strategy that UWE’s HR management should consider implementing because this reward system incorporate everything that employees consider to be of value resulting from their relationship with the employer. Fisher (2015, p. 88) study indicates that most organizations think that monetary rewards are what employees are interested. However, this is further from the truth as there are other non-financial rewards that employees perceive to be of value in their employment relationship to the extent that if not provided, this result in job dissatisfaction and low morale among employees. Total reward system is, therefore, an appropriate reward strategy that UWE needs to adopt because it has both financial and non-financial rewards that employees look for in an employer. Total reward system encompasses three elements that are considered to be of value by employees, which include compensation, benefits and work experienced. Compensations include rewards such as base pay, incentives, merit pay, pay for promotions and equity-based pay (Thompson 2002, p. 6). Benefits include rewards such as health plans, disability income, retirement plans, life insurance, employee assistance program, and executive benefits. Work life element of total reward system includes work/life balance program, wellness program, performance management, career growth, professional development, and recognition, coaching, and mentorship among others (Dhar 2008, p. 42). In addition to total reward system, the university should consider introducing a reward system based on performance. In this case, the university should ensure that greater effort is rewarded more as a way of recognising the efforts of every individual employee. Rewarding based on performance will increase the performance of the employees because it would force the employees to put more effort in order to get rewarded (Armstrong et al. 2007, p. 142). This is supported by Vroom’s expectancy theory that holds that behaviour people are motivated to behave in a certain manner over the alternatives because of what they expect to achieve (Mello 2014, p. 86). In tandem with this theory, rewarding dedicated and high performing employees highly in commensurate with their effort will motivate others to increase their efforts so as to get more rewards and this ensures greater productivity and organizational success. Conclusion University of Western England is a globally reputed institution of higher learning. Currently, the university has over 28,000 and has a staff of over 3,538 people. However, as described in the paper, the university faces a number of human resource issues key among them diversity management and reward strategy. The university needs to address these HR issues if it is to compete in the global institutions of higher learning. As suggested, the university needs to improve its approach to diversity management by building a culture of inclusivity which should be promoted right from hiring; promotion and offering training program on diversity and inclusivity to enable staff recognize the importance of individual uniqueness in the institution. At the same time, the university needs to introduce total reward system to motivate employees to work hard and commit to the achievement of the institution’s objectives. On the same not, the university should consider rewarding on performance as well to encourage productivity. References Akhtar, S., Aamir, A., Khurshid, M. A. K., Abro, M. M. Q., & Hussain, J 2015, “Total rewards and retention: Case study of higher education institutions in Pakistan,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 210, pp. 251-259 Armstrong, M 2007, A handbook of employee reward management and practice. Kogan Page Publishers, Mason. Armstrong, M., Murlis, H., Hay Group 2007, Reward management: A handbook of remuneration strategy and practice. Kogan Page Publishers, London. Chun, E., & Evans, A 2013, The new talent acquisition frontier: Integrating HR and diversity strategy in the private and public sectors and higher education. Stylus Publishing, LLC., Chicago. Dhar, R. L 2008, Strategic human resource management. Excel Books India, Delhi. Fisher, J. G 2015, Strategic reward and recognition: Improving employee performance through non-monetary incentives. Paperback, New York. McGuire, K. J 2012, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. An introduction. GRIN Verlag, Berlin. Mello, J. A 2014, Strategic human resource management. Cengage Learning, London. Thomas, D. A 2004, Diversity as strategy. Harvard Business Review, viewed 24 March 2017 https://hbr.org/2004/09/diversity-as-strategy Thompson, P 2002, Total reward. CIPD Publishing, Cambridge. Thomas, R. R 2011, World class diversity management: A strategic approach. ReadHowYouWant.com, Thousand Oaks. UWE Bristol 2014, Human resources strategy, viewed 24 March 2017 http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/about/departmentsandservices/professionalservices/humanresources/humanresourcesstrategy.aspx UWE Bristol 2017, Student and staff numbers, viewed 24 March 2017 http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/about/factsandfigures/studentandstaffnumbers.aspx Williams, D. A 2013, Strategic diversity leadership: Activating change and transformation in higher education. Stylus Publishing, LLC., Los Angeles. Womack, A 2013, UWE staff to strike in row over pay, viewed 24 March 2017 http://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/yateandsodburynews/10848733.display/ Appendix University of Western England University of Western England popularly known as UWE is a modern institution of higher learning situated in Bristol, England. The institution was started in 1595 but became a fully-fledged university in 1992 after receiving chatter. Since then, the university has grown faster offering a variety of courses that suits the modern job market needs. Currently, UWE has more than 28,000 students drawn from across the globe and staff of more than 3,538 people. Read More