Challenges and Choices of HR - Essay Example

Challenges and Choices of HR Today's organizations face a range of people management challenges. Critically examine the challenges and choices HR Managers now face in regard to (Job design and flexibility) Introduction: A successful business is one which is made of stable and well planned teams. It is essential that all businesses have a well designed team with the right educational qualifications as a part of the HR team. This is mainly because the HR team is responsible for recruiting of people for the organization. Another very important aspect of the human resources team is also ‘job design’. This report aims at understanding the various issues that are faced by the human resources teams in regards to the job design and flexibility. The report will firstly deal with understanding the meaning of job design. Following this the report will entail a discussion of the importance of Job design in an organization and the main challenges that are faced by the human resources managers in this regard. Job Design: Job Design plays a very important role in every job. This mainly deals with making work arrangements to ensure that the job dissatisfaction is reduced to the maximum extent. The main aim of a job design is to reduce the dissatisfaction due to repetitive and mechanistic tasks. Organizations use this to raise productivity levels among the employees. This is mainly achieved by offering non monetary rewards like better and higher levels of satisfaction that employees can achieve (Pearson, 2008). Other techniques like enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation and job simplification also form a part of the job design process. Having understood the main aims of job design, let us now focus on the objective of job design. It is clear that there are a number of design options that are available for any job. Thus it is important to understand what the main objectives are for any job design. Firstly, quality plays a very important role and is one of the most important aspects to be considered while designing a job. Quality refers to the ability of the staff to produce high quality products and services and this can be affected majorly by the job design. This also includes avoiding of errors in short term, and also includes the designing of jobs which help encourage staff to improve the job and processes and also make lesser errors. Secondly, speed also plays a very essential role in job design. The speed of response is the dominant objective of job design. It is essential that jobs consider this aspect as well. For instance, in jobs like emergency services, speed plays a very important role. The range of the tasks, the sequence of their activities etc., are all very important aspects of the business. These factors will also determine the ability of sped with which the employees can respond. Dependability is also a very essential factor that needs to be considered. Dependable supply of goods and services is also influenced by job design. For instance, in jobs related to postal services, jobs like the multi skilling, accurate use of sorting equipments, and design of the clothing for the postal staff etc., all these factors can aid to the dependability of the delivery of the letters and parcels (Pearson, 2008). Flexibility is another very essential factor in job designs. The job designs should be such that the operations of the business can change along with the change in nature of its activities. Flexibility in terms of new product, service, mix, volume and delivery etc, all depend on the job design to a great extent. This is clearly seen in the case of staff that has been trained in multi tasking and multi skilling. These employees have an upper hand and find it easier to complete a variety of modules and are also comfortable with the introduction of new products and services. The next essential objective to be considered is the cost. All the elements of the job design that have been discussed generally have an affect on the productivity and the cost of the job. Productivity refers mainly to the outcome and the output of the employees and the labor input. The best example for this element is the number of customers serviced per hour, or the number of products that are made per worker, etc (Pearson, 2008). Health and Safety plays a very essential element in job design. Apart from all the factors, it is essential that the job design considers the health and safety of the employees and the people within the company as well. A lot of focus must be made on the well being of the person who does the job, and also other staff of the entire operations. Also importance of the safety and health of the customers should be kept in mind when the job deign is being made. Finally the next most important aspect that requires to be considered is the quality of work life. Job design should also consider the effects on job security, opportunities for development, stress levels and also the attitude of the people performing the jobs. Challenges: The HR managers face a number of challenges in the process of job design. This is a very important aspect of the business and it is essential that the businesses and the human resources managers utilize this process to ensure better employee performance. In most cases the companies have been found to be neglecting this process as the companies find it difficult to find the right talent and the hiring process is more difficult for the companies. However, job design and job analysis contrary to its behavior has a critical difference between human capital management strategy and mediocre strategy. A good job design also ensures that the jobs main aim itself is also in line with the organizations main long term goals. Thus it is essential that the job design also is designed in a manner keeping in mind the main goals of the company itself. The traditional views of job design considered two main assumptions. One related to the managers and the other related to the employees. As per the traditional view, the management can be very effective if it uses rules and procedures for the tasks that are undertaken in the company. The management is assumed to be very effective than the labor and break work down into simple elements like Simplified and clear training of the workers Employees can be easily changed for another This makes supervision of the employees easier as well as the management can easily find out the when workers work on something that is not a part of the job design. The second assumption relates to the employees (ACCEL, 2008). This mainly concentrates on the fact that human beings are rational economic beings. The main goal is to ensure that the employees gain both monetarily and the consequent reward systems which relate to the pay levels as per the output of the employees. This provides the employees with an incentive to improve the performance and also increases the output of the company as a whole. It is also seen that humans examine the situations and can identify different course of action to improve the output in the interest of earning more. This improvement in the performance is mainly in self interest of receiving better pays (Parker, 1998). This is all mainly required to maximize the output from the organizations perspective. It also requires to hire the right people and this will help to train them properly and will also help construct an appropriate reward system. This however will not be required as much if the processes are changed to use machinery and the workers can develop a natural rhythm and momentum (Pearson, 2008). Managers also face a number of issues in the process of job designing as the possibility of wastage of time and resources is very high if the human resources manager is not aware of the job in detail themselves. This is one of the biggest issues that is faced by the managers and requires to be taken into consideration before working on a job design. Also managers do face disagreements from employees in certain cases and these needs to be considered and taken care of at the earliest to ensure that the job is done smoothly. Flexible Working: Flexible working refers to working practices. This is a mutually agreement between the employee and the employer which covers the working hours, location and patterns of work. These agreements however do comply with the laws of working time, breaks, and also the working week. This concept of flexible working was started in the 20th century when the importance given to family, work and leisure had changed significantly. Since 1970s there have been a number of women who have entered in to the work force for the first time and for most women, part time work helped as it help them manage between both work and home. This has become very successful. With the reducing emphasis of work in people’s lives, there is a lot of time that people get to spend with their families and leisure time is also very high. This provides a work life balance. There are three main types of flexible working, a) skills flexibility, b) time flexibility and c) location flexibility. These types of flexibility in some sense are in sequential order of difficulty. The skills flexibility involves the ability of doing more than one job at a time. This helps in ensuring that the operations become more responsive and also the jobs become more interesting. The achievability of skills flexibility is very low however the people at least have the chance to work in the operation at the same time. The time flexibility however faces a lot of other difficulties because not everyone necessarily is in the same place at the same time. Lastly, the location flexibility, also presents a number of difficulties as it is not necessary that all the members of staff are in the same location. This also causes more issues especially when the staff members hardly meet up. There are a number of advantages of flexible working. It allows the staff to have lesser stress, and also allows for better health of the employees. Also because of the number of advantages that is gained by flexible working, the employee turn over also reduces to a great extent (Prospects, 2008). The flexible working hours also allows for a lot of time for the employees to spend with their families and this shows in the quality of work of the employees. It is a known fact that if an employee has enough rest and is also has enough time to spend with their families, the productivity will also increase. However this also has a number of disadvantages. Flexible working has a high possibility of the employees receiving lower wages. This can at times act as a challenge for the HR managers and can cause the issue for people to be motivated. Also at times this leads to isolation and estrangement from the colleagues (Drago, 2007). This can cause a lack of socializing within the office and also at times can lead to a lot of de - motivation among the employees. In short at times there are a number of difficulties of motivation for the employees. This also causes issues and difficulties for the managers for organizing, and planning of the jobs for the employees. It also causes difficulties for the managers to keep track of the employee’s performance. The drawback of the flexible working also causes the employees to even become a little lazy while working from home and at time it affects the productivity in a negative way at times. It has also been seen that employees find it difficult for adapting to the jobs as well. This also can to a great extent lead to the managers having issues for promotions and performance of the employees (Furaker, et.al, 2007). Also in a few industries that employee promotion is based on the output of the employees, and in the case of flexible working this can become an issue and can cause difficulties for the managers for simple evaluations of employee performance. Conclusion: From the above discussion a clear view of the job design and flexibility working has bee understood. It is also seen that the HR managers face a lot of issues and challenges due to this. As already discussed the disadvantages of the flexibility working it is seen that HR manager face a lot of issues for correctly evaluating employees. This is one of the biggest challenges faced by the human resources managers. The human resources also face issues in finding the right employees for the jobs, based on the job design. This requires to be taken into consideration and requires a lot of care to ensure the design is correctly followed. This is mainly to ensure that the employees work toward one goal, similar to that of the company. This allows for better productivity if both the employee as well as the company on the whole. Bibliography ACCEL, 2008, 'Traditional Views on Job Deisgn', Accessed on 7 January 2009, Retrieved from http://www.accel-team.com/work_design/wd_01.html Drago, R.W., 2007, 'Stricking a Balance: Work, family, Life', 29 January 2007, 1st edition, Dollars and Sense Furaker, B., Hakansson, K., and Karlsson, J., 2007, 'Flexibility and Stability in working Life', 17 April 2007, Palgrave Macmillan Parker, S.K., and Wall, T.D., 1998, 'Job and Work Design: Organizing Work to promote well - Being and Effectiveness', 21 May 1998, 1st edition, Sage Publications Pearson, 2008, 'Chapter 9: Job Design and work', Accessed on 6 January 2009, Retrieved from http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/ema_uk_he_slack_opsman_4/17/4472/1144953.cw/index.html Prospects, 2008, 'Flexible working: What is it?', Accessed on 5 January 2009, Retrieved from http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Flexible_working/What_is_it_/p!eXemkpa Personal Development Plan: Working on this assignment has helped me in a number of different aspects of management. After having researched and understood the fundamentals of Job design and Flexibility, I have been able to get a clearer understanding of how employees can be affected by job design and flexibility. This section of the report aims at highlighting the knowledge that has been gained from the study and how the knowledge and skills will help in my professional life as well. Before starting work on this assignment my knowledge about job design was very limited and I did not have a detailed understanding of the importance of Job design and flexibility. This study has helped me understand how essential it is for the jobs to be correctly designed and all the processes clearly stated out to improve performance and to reduce the non value activities to the maximum. With a clearer understanding of the processes, I am confident that this will help improve my performance in the future and will provide me with a chance to help improve the performance within the organization I would work in. There has been a combination of knowledge and skills that has been gained from this entire study. Due to limited knowledge about the subject, it would have proved to be negative than positive in my professional life. Mainly because the concepts play a very important role in ensure better productivity within the organization. It is a known concept that having half knowledge is more dangerous than having no knowledge at all. This has been proved from the study and has helped me realize that every theory and concept should be correctly and understood in detail. Without which the concept should not be tried to be used in any organization as it could cause a lot of damage to the organization. I have been able to relate to the link that is prevalent between HRM of a company and the job design and flexibility. This study has helped gain a clear idea as to how this can affect the performance of employees and how the business can be affected as well. The study has also provided for an understanding and analysis of the issues and challenges that has been faced by the organizations and the human resources team in reference to employee performance. I have been able to improve my research and how to analyze and have also improved my soft skills. I have been able to correctly use the information that is learnt and correctly in a very practical as well as organized manner. Read More