Contemporary HR issues Blog #6 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Talent management strategy

Talent management has the ability to influence the organizing of employees, using of technology & allocation of resources. (Richard et al., 2011)

According to CIPD (2017) there are several important facts that an organization should be concern when implementing a talent management strategy.

Alignment to corporate strategy – Talent management strategy of the organization should be supportive to the corporate strategy.  When preparing the talent management strategy corporate strategy should be prioritized.

Inclusive approach vs exclusive approach – Inclusive approach focused on entire employee force of the organization & it engage every employee to develop their talents. Exclusive approach is focused only to a specialized segmentation of employees like key employees or highly potential employees.

When preparing talent management strategy the organization should decide whether they are going to focus on whole workforce or several employees. Though the organization have the option to use either approach the talent management process should be fair for all the employees.

Involving the right people – There are two parties involved in talent management strategy as participants & managers. Participants refer to the segment of employees that have been selected for talent management process. Once the talent development program is completed for the selected employees it is necessary to provide proper feedback. Otherwise the participant might feel dissatisfied & unsure about the career development opportunities available with the talent management process.

Managers refer to managerial level employees including directors of the company who conduct talent management activities. Respective line managers will be responsible for the developing of talent in their team.

Role of HR division – HR division have a major role in preparing talent management strategy. Responsibility of choosing the most suitable talent management approach based on the organizational requirement is lying with HR division.

Every organization use unique talent management strategy based on their organizational requirements. It is necessary to provide proper recognition for the knowledge, skills & capabilities of the employees since it is an important fact to get competitive advantage. (Colling & Mellahi, 2009).

 References

Collings, D. and K. Mellahi, 2009. Strategic talent management: a review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 19: 304-313.

CIPD, (2017). Talent management: Understand the changing context and business case for talent management, and the key features of a talent management strategy.

Available at https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/resourcing/talent-factsheet

(Accessed: 30^th May 2018 at 11.45PM)

Richard, S W., Audrey, B. S., & Scott E., (2006). Nine best practices for effective talent management. Development Dimensions International Inc.

Available at https://www.ddiworld.com/DDI/media/white-papers/ninebestpracticetalentmanagement_wp_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf

(Accessed: 27^th May 2018 at 12.30AM)

Contemporary HR issues Blog #5 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Introduction to Talent Management

It is compulsory for every organization to have sufficient amount of skilled employees in order to achieve their desired goals. (Baqutayan, 2014) Every employee has different talents which is required for the organization to perform various tasks. Hence talent can be found anywhere within the organization. (Baqutayan, 2014) But companies should be very mindful & practical when dealing with the employee talents in order to achieve their business objectives. (Morgan and Jardin, 2010)

It is necessary to place employees at the right position in order to get the maximum use of their talents. (Richerd et al., 2006) Talent is the special skills or competencies that individual have & a company might face difficult situation if they lose those talents. Those individuals with talents have the ability to influence the overall performance of the company in both short & long term. (CIPD, 2017) Since proper management of talented employees is important for the success of the company, they put more effort to attract, develop & retain such talented employees. (Baqutayan, 2014)

There are many broad definitions for talent management. According to Lewis & Heckman (2006) Talent management is a part of Human resources management accent on attracting, developing & retaining of talents. Talent Management can be described as the developed version of traditional HRM, which is more focused on strategic management of talents. Though the talent management uses the same instruments as HRM, it is more susceptible towards using of talents of employees at right time. (Iles et al., 2010) and (Capelli, 2008) Talent management can be described as a systematic process used to attract, recognize, develop, engage, retain & deploy highly potential valuable employees. (CIPD, 2017) Proper talent management system can support the organization to “align right people with the right jobs at the right time based on business priorities” (Paquet & Rogers, 2008)

To get the maximum potential of the employee it is necessary to acquire & retain right people in the right place at the right time.  (Baqutayan, 2014)

An organization should know how to manage their employee talents & by adopting proper talent management strategies companies will be able to get many benefits.

References

Baqutayan, S M S. (2014) Is Talent Management Important? An Overview of Talent  Management and the Way to Optimize Employee Performance, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Vol 5 No 23.

CIPD, (2018). Talent management: Understand the changing context and business case for talent management, and the key features of a talent management strategy.
Available at https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/resourcing/talent-factsheet
(Accessed: 26^th May 2018 at 11.45PM).

Morgan, H. and D. Jardin, 2010. HR+OD= Integrated talent management as a management. In: NETWORK, R. D. (ed). OD Practioner, 42.

Paquet, S. & Rogers, K. (2008). A talent management framework that will raise your organization’s game to the next level. Perspective Magazine.

Richard, S W., Audrey, B. S., & Scott E., (2006). Nine best practices for effective talent management. Development Dimensions International Inc.
Available at https://www.ddiworld.com/DDI/media/white-papers/ninebestpracticetalentmanagement_wp_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
(Accessed: 27^th May 2018 at 12.30AM).

Contemporary HR issues Blog #4 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Factor affecting employee retention

Employee retention is a process used to keep the loyalty of existing employees & methods used to avoid them to work for another company. (Ivanovic, 2007)

It is necessary to focus on factors that affect employee retention for the growth & success of the company. (Agrela et al., 2008)

Although offering good salaries are important for employee retention, modern researchers have found that retention strategies should go beyond typical salary & benefit package. Different authors have highlighted different factors which affect employee retention.

Career development – Career development contains assessing, exploring, setting goals & acting. (Ginzberg et al., 2005) Career development opportunities will have direct impact on employee decision on retention & resignation. (Francis, 2014)

Learning & working climate – Learning & development is a very important fact to retain highly talented employees. (Hytter, 2007) The concept of “Learning & working climate” refers to work environment where employees do both learn & work. Researchers have found that learning & working climate concept has a positive effect on employee retention. (Abrams et al., 2008)

Job flexibility – Job flexibility includes ability to choose individual work times, work load, responsibilities & location. Employees those who has job flexibility will have higher level of commitment, concentration, satisfaction, productivity, loyalty & mental capacity. (Prenda & Stahl, 2001)

Training – Training can be described as one of the key retention strategies & providing training programs may increase employee retention up to 70% (Eisen, 2005)

Superior – Subordinate Relationship – Employee development can’t be done without having a supportive culture. Hence the Management of the organization should be very supportive to subordinates & also they should act positively as role models. (Zenger, Ulrich,

Smallwood, 2000)

Compensation – It is important to make employees to feel that their pay rise significantly. Many companies raise base pay based on performance but some companies adopt team environment, but still they reward people for their individual achievements as well. (Feldman, 2000)

Other than above mentioned factors there are several other factors which affect employee retention positively & negatively; such as HRM practices, Performance appraisal system (Francis, 2014)

References 

Abrams, J., Castermans, S., Cools, H., Michielsen, M., Moeyaert, B., Van Meeuwen, N. and VanNooten, L. (2008), “Learning and talent management: factors which influence the retention of (talented) employees”, unpublished research report, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven, Leuven.

Agrela, R., Carr, R., Veyra, v., Dunn, c., Ellis, D., Gandolfi, A., Gresham, B., King, L. , Sims, A., & Troutman. (2008). Retention issues and solutions: Tools to ensure University of California becomes an employer of choice, CUCSA Staff Retention Committee.

Eisen, P., Jasinowski, J., Kleineli, R. (2005). 2005 Skills gap report - A survey of the American manufacturing workforce. Available at http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/~/media/738F5D310119448DBB03DF30045084EF/2005_Skills_Gap_Report.pdf (Accessed: 17^th May 2018 at 10.30PM).

Feldman, D. (2000). The Dilbert syndrome: How employee cynicism about ineffective management is changing the nature of careers in organizations. American Behavioral Scientist.

Francis, A.U. 2014 “Human Resource Management Practices and Employee retention”, International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 5, Issue 2.

Ginzberg. (44442005) Occupational Choice: An    Approach to a General Theory.    Columbia University  Press: New York.

Hytter, A. (2007), “Retention strategies in France and Sweden”, The Irish Journal of Management, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 594-79

Ivanovic, A. 2006. Dictionary of Human Resources and Personnel Management. Huntingdon, Great Britain: A & C Black.

Prenda, K. & Stahl, S. (2001). Peak job performance at any age: The truth about older workers [Electronic version]. Business and Health. 5 (30).

Zenger, J., Ulrich, D., & Smallwood, N. (2000, March). The new leadership development: It’s about results for your company. Training & Development, 54 (3), 22-27.

Contemporary HR issues Blog #3 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Employee Retention

Organizations are mainly depending on its employees & they are the major component of any organization. Although it is important for a company to have good strategies, technology, marketing plan & business location but without having strong & motivated HR assets organization will not achieve any progress or won’t reach their goals. (Taylor, 2002)

It is very important for an organization to ensure their employee retention since the unnecessary staff turnover may increase the recruitment cost of the company. (Taylor, 2002) It takes lot of time to hire or to get a new employee & lot of efforts need to be put to get a new employee. Other than the effort & time, recruitment process would require a huge cost.(Mobley, 1982) Hence it is always profitable for an organization to retain its existing employees.

Employee retention can be described as policies, practices & procedures that make employees to stay with the organization for longer period. Employee retention is not determined by one factor, there are bunch of factors which affect the employee retention of the organization such as, compensation, rewards, job security, training & development, supervisor support, organization culture, work environment & organization justice. (Fitz-enz, 1990) If the companies lose a fully trained employee they have to face a huge loss. (Francis, 2014)

Now days the second biggest problem faced by the organizations is employee retention & 10% of the HR issues in industries are related to Employee retention. (Great Place to Work, 2018)

If the organization failed to retain their employees, other than the losing an employee the organization will also have to face some other problems like re-organizing resources, handling agony of the team, managing work pressure of the other employees, drop in moral of employees & also the organization will fail to achieve expected goals. (Mobley, 1982)

Companies can have several unique strategies to ensure employee retention but in general by letting employees to feel like they are also a part of the organization, employee retention can be ensured. (Mitchell et al., 2001)

References

Fitz-enz, J. (1990). “Getting and keeping good employees” In personnel, Vol:67 No:8.

      Francis, A.U. 2014 “Human Resource Management Practices and Employee retention”, International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 5, Issue 2.

Great Place to Work (2018) What are the current HR challenges. Available at http://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/publications-and-events/insights/1025-what-are-the-current-hr-challenges (Accessed: 17^th June 2018 at 12.01am).

Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C. and Lee, T. W.    (2001) “How to Keep Your Best Employees: Developing an Effective Retention Policy”, Academy of Management Executive.

 Mobley, W. H. (1982) “Intermediate Linkages in the Relationships between Job satisfaction and Employee Turnover”, Journal of Applied Psychology.

Taylor, C. R. (2002) Focus on Talent, Training and Development.

Contemporary HR issues Blog #2 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Employee Recruitment

In previous blog I discussed about the importance of the HRM for an organization & also about the problems that the organizations will have to face if they do not have proper HRM practices.

Although even if your organization has the best HRM practices still you have to face very challenging environment when handling human resources now days.

There are so many HRM challenges that organizations face now days & those challenges are briefed in below chart.

(Figure 1)

(Great Place to Work, 2018)

According to the researches done in year 2016 recruitment is considered as one of the top HR challenges now days. About quarter of organizations which were identified as Best workplaces in year 2015/2016 are facing a huge shortage of qualified candidates for their vacancies. (Great Place to Work, 2018)

Recruitment is a very crucial & important process for the success of an organization. Proper recruitment can increase the both efficiency & the effectiveness of the organization. (Barbara, 1998)

Success of an organization is depending on the performance of its employees. Hence the recruitment process is very important for an organization to hire the most suitable candidate & also since the recruitment should be done according to the vision of the organization it becomes even more challenging.

Companies spend lot of money & time on finding suitable candidates for their vacancies. Recruitment is a process to find & engage most suitable people to fulfill the requirements of the organization & that process can be very costly. (Armstrong, 2009)

Recruitment is a long process & it contain following steps.

·       Identifying the requirement

·       Attract candidates

·       Sorting application

·       Interview / Test

·       Evaluating candidates

·       Collect references about selected candidates

·       Checking application

·       Employment offer

·       Follow-up

(Armstrong, 2009)

There are so many advertising methods that an organization can follow to attract applicant for recruiting. Those advertisements are published by using newspapers, TV/radio advertisement, company website advertisement, intranet advertisement for internal candidates, job websites & social media advertising. Current job advertising methods are more oriented to digital methods.

However every organization expects to hire the best & most suitable candidates for their vacancies by using various advertising methods. Since there is huge competition job market recruitment has become the one of the biggest HR challenge in today’s world.

Other than recruitment there are many other important contemporary HR issues & those issues will be discussed in coming blogs.

References

Armstrong, M. (2009) Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice, 11^th edition, London.

Barber, A E. (1998) Recruiting Employees: Individual and Organizational Perspectives, Sage, Thousand Oaks, Canada.

Great Place to Work (2018) What are the current HR challenges. Available at http://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/publications-and-events/insights/1025-what-are-the-current-hr-challenges
         (Accessed: 5^th May 2018 at 12.01am).

Contemporary HR issues Blog #1 - Introduction

Human resource management is a process which is related to handling employees of an organization.

This process includes acquiring, training, appraising, compensation, labor relations & health & safety.

It is very important for all executives to have a proper knowledge on HMR & executives should concern about giving equal opportunities to subordinates, health & safety of their subordinates, handling grievances & labor relations.

By having fair knowledge on above HRM tips executives will be able to avoid problems like; hiring a wrong person, higher staff turnover, lower employee performance, useless interviews, discriminatory actions, unsafe practices, unfair labor practices, employee dissatisfaction. (Dessler, 2013)

Every organization has a responsibility towards their stake holders to maintain the performance of the organization at a higher level. Since the Human resources play a major impact on performance of an organization, HRM has a higher importance in any organization. (Armstrong, 2009)

According to Storey et al (2009) HRM practices & policies of an organization have direct impact on employee performance. It can be influence the attitude & the behavior of employees in the organization. Hence it is very important for an organization to have proper HRM policies & practices in order to ensure the employee performance.

As an example, according to the research done by Guest et al., (2000) by analyzing samples from 2,000 work places using data obtained from about 28,000 employees, they identified that there is a strong relationship between HRM & both employee attitude & workplace performance.

If an organization has a better work environment with better HR practices, ultimately the employees of the organization will have better performance & less HR issues. There is a positive relationship between employee performance & HR practices of an organization. (Tessema and Soeters, 2006)

Since HRM is a very important for the performance of an organization it is necessary to have a proper control on HR issues. Now day’s with changing technology & various human needs organizations face so many HR issues.

References

Armstrong, M. (2009) Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice, 11^th edition, London.

Dassler, G. (2013) Human resource management, 13^th edition, United States of America: Pearson Education,Inc.

Guest, D E., Michie, J., Sheehan, M. and Conway, N. (2000) Employee Relations, HRM and Business Performance: An analysis of the 1998 workplace employee relations survey, CIPD, London.

Storey, J., Wright, P M. and Ulrich, D. (2009) The Routledge Companion to Strategic Human Resource Management, Abingdon, Routledge.

Tessema, M., Soeters, J., (2006) Challenges and prospects of HRM in developing countries: testing the HRM-performance link in Eritrean civil service, International Journal of Human Resources Management.