Contemporary HR issues Blog #10 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Learning & development strategy

CIPD (2018) define Learning & development strategy (L & D) as the methods used by an employer to help their HR assets to learn new skills in order to motivate them & to reach higher productivity level.

L & D is a broad subject & it can include many activities related to skill development such as mentoring, coaching & training. L & D is focused on supporting, developing & accelerating learning to build prompt & responsive work force to execute the organizational strategy.

L & D strategy should be aligning with corporate strategy & other strategies of the organization. It should be prepared based on the business & employee skill development requirements of the organization. Some organizations might restrict learning opportunities only to some key employees & some might offer learning opportunities to every employee considering that everyone as a talent employee. An organization can earn several benefits by having effective L & D strategy which supports the corporate strategy. Some of those benefits are providing vision that helps the management of change, increase employee engagement & it will also support the organization reach higher performance level in long term. Since it is important to have L & D strategy align with other strategies “RAM approach” is used to align the L & D strategy. “RAM approach” can be described as below.

R – Relevance: How strategy will meet business opportunities & challenges.

A – Alignment: How strategy is going to align with other strategies.

M – Measurement: How the evaluate the effectiveness consistently.

(CIPD, 2017)

Once the strategy is prepared it is important to implement the strategy effectively. Some key factors that should be concern in implementing L & D strategy are given below.

• Should identify L & D needs & have to decide who is going to set the priorities for L & D needs.
• Performance appraisal should be used to identify the capabilities & to set learning goals.
• Planning of budget & resources.
• Learning methods should be decided such who is going to be learning consultant, what are the expected methods to carry our learning.
• Should decide how to review & evaluate of L & D activities.
• Since the innovation is a critical fact for the development of the organization L & D strategy should encourage the innovation.
• L & D activities should be fair & equal.

(CIPD, 2018)

In present competitive environment organizations are more concern on productivity, efficiency & profitability. Hence they try to get the maximum potential of employees in order to meet above goals. To have a highly capable workforce L & D activities are essential. Providing new knowledge & skills through L & D can be a competitive advantage for the organization. (Towler & Dipboye, 2009)

References

CIPD, (2017) Learning and development strategy: An introduction. Understand how to create and implement a learning and development strategy to support organizational success.

Available at https://www.cipd.asia/knowledge/factsheets/learning-development-factsheet

(Accessed: 30^th of June 2018 at 3.30AM)

CIPD, (2018) About HR and L&D: Spanning every industry, the HR and L&D profession covers a huge spectrum of jobs, specialisms and careers. Take a closer look to see what path’s right for you.

Available at https://www.cipd.co.uk/new-hr-learning-development/about

(Accessed: 30^th June 2018 at 3.30AM)

Towler, A.J. & Dipboye, R.L. (2009) ‘Effects of Trainer Expressiveness, Organization and Training Orientation on Training Outcomes’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), pp.664-673.

Contemporary HR issues Blog #9 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Merits & negatives of Work-life balance (WLB) concept

CIPD (2017) stated that the concept of flexible working is getting more popular in work-life balance (WLB) policies now days. They define flexible working as giving opportunity for employee to choose the place, time & duration of their work.

As Wasay (2013) stated having proper WLB strategy in organization can be considered as win-win situation for both employee & the employer since it can help employee to effectively handle their personal & professional life & also it can help employer to retain skilled employees. Eventually employees will be more attracted toward the organizations that offer higher attention for employee personal needs. Employees those who have flexible working opportunities are generally more satisfied, has more initiatives & highly engaged to their job that other employees. (Galinsky & Johnson, 1998)

As there are benefits for both parties by having proper work-life balance policies, it can also lead to adverse situation if the organization manages the work-life balance in a poor way. There are several negative effects of poor work-life balance such as; family conflict, work stress, health & mental problems. Further it can also decrease the creativity, moral & the productivity of the employee. (Hitt et al., 2009)

CIPD (2017) recommend several points to consider in order managing proper WLB policies.

• Resources & working style – Home workers should facilitate with required resources to carry out work. To make this concept success employee should be self-motivated, flexible & should be able to work without close supervision.

• Communication with others –Most of the time in work-life balance job environment employee’s job will be task oriented; they will be often invisible & work in non-standard time. Hence the proper communication is essential.

• Trust – Since the employees in WLB job background have lesser interaction with superiors trust is essential.

• Employee rights – Since home workers in WLB concept are not in same environment like office based staff they might lose opportunity to get equal benefits as office based employees. If the organization is having a Trade union, employer required to consult them as well to maintain the equal access to all employees.

• Health & safety – Same as above matters since these employees will work in different locations other that the standard office environment employer has the responsibility to ensure their work health & safety at their work location as well.

If an organization failed to manage WLB effectively it may give negative results to the organization & also it may lead to employees & their productivity.

References

CIPD, (2017). Flexible working practices: Explores the benefits of flexible working, the types of arrangements commonly used and practical tips on implementing flexible working practices.

Available at https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/flexible-working/factsheet

(Accessed: 24^th June 2018 at 1.30AM)

Galinsky, E. and Johnson, A.A. 1998. Reframing the Business Case for Work–Life Initiatives. New York: Families and Work Institute.

Hitt, M., Miller, C. and Colella, A. 2009. Organisational Behaviour 2nd edition. New York: Wiley.

Wasay, B. 2013. An investigation of the relationship between work–life balance and employee engagement, Strategic HR Review, 12(4).

Contemporary HR issues Blog #8 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Evolution of work-Life balance

Work-life balance concept comes to platform in 19^th century with the workers’ Union campaign against the long working hours. In early 20^th century workers demanded for various flexibilities such as maximum cap on working hours. After sometimes, in 1980s companies started to promote more family friendly working policies in order to attract employees. Those family friendly work policies had telecommuting & flexible scheduling. Though these working comforts were implemented focusing on women workers initially, companies offered those family friendly work advantages to male workers as well.

During the initial stage of work-life balance concept it contained protect family life in competitive workplace & career focused society. But at present work-life balance concept has broad indicators such as health & safety at work, equality, labor market flexibility & international competitiveness. (Syed, 2015).

There are several definitions for Work-Life balance such as the relationship between the institutional and cultural times and spaces of work and non-work in societies (Felstead et al., 2002). Hill et al., (2001) expand the same concept & define work-life balance as how the individual properly balance the responsibilities & emotions in both work & home.

Thomas (2013) suggested that the biggest problem is work-life balance is time pressure. Time pressure is the difficulty faced by the employee to manage both official work & home work. Thomas named the said issue as Work-family conflict. Most of the time women employees are getting affected by the work-family conflict. Women employees would get frustrated when they failed to manage their time. Hence most of the women choose to do a part time or a seasonal job to have more work flexibility.

According to the UK labor market statics 43% of the female workers are employed in part time jobs where as only 13% male workers are engaged in part time jobs. (ONS, 2012) By looking at the fact we can define that the female workers are more concern about work-life balance.

References

Felstead, A., Jewson, N., Phizacklea, A. and Walters, S. 2002. Opportunities to work at home in the context of work–life balance, Human Resource Management Journal, 12: 54–76.

Hill, E.J., Miller, B.C., Weiner, S.P. and Colihan, J. 1998. Influences of the virtual office on aspects of work and work/life balance. Personnel Psychology, 51(3), 667–83.

ONS (Office for National Statistics) 2012. Gender Working Patterns. Available at: http://www.ons. gov.uk/ons/about-ons/business-transparency/freedom-of-information/what-can-i-request/index.html [Accessed 17^th June 2018 at 1.30AM]

Syed, J. (2015).Work-life balance. Managing Diversity and Inclusion: An International Perspective, pp.291-314. London: Sage.

Thomas, K.C. 2013. Work–Life Balance: A Sociological Study of Women Professionals in Kerala. Kerala: Mahatma Gandhi University.

Contemporary HR issues Blog #7 - What are the most important HR issues facing your organization today?

Employee engagement & motivation

Success of an organization is depending on the behavior of its employees. There are several facts which decide the behavior of an employee. Most common factors affect the behavior of a person is explained in MARS model. According to MARS model there are four factors (Motivation, Ability, Role perception & Situational factors) which influence the behavior of a person.

If any of these factors is low employees will not reach the expected performance level. (McShane & Glinow, 2016)

(Figure 1)

According to MAS model, motivation has a direct impact on behavior of an employee. Motivation can be described as employee enthusiasm to perfectly perform work related activity. (Heathfield, 2017) One of the most common problem organizations face presently is employee engagement & motivation.

Employee engagement & motivation has a close relationship. Both employee engagement & motivation is important for the people management strategy of the organization.

There are three dimensions in employee engagement called as,

• Intellectual engagement - Thinking to perform the job even better.
• Affective engagement - Having a positive feeling about the job.
• Social engagement - Taking the opportunity to discuss work related improvements.

(CIPD, 2017)

There are several things that an organization should be concern on employee engagement & motivation.

·       Organization should support employees to shape their job by making their own decisions.

·       Employees should have a proper way to raise their concerns.

·       Organization should treat employees fairly & equally.

·       Proper communication policy is required to provide information to employees.

·       Vision & purpose should be clearly communicated to employees.

By having a motivated & engaged work force an organization will be able to have happier & healthier work environment, improved performances, higher productivity, customer satisfaction, innovation, staff retention & higher efficiency. (CIPD, 2017)

References

CIPD, (2017). Employee engagement and motivation: Understand the concept of employee engagement and learn how to build an engaged and motivated workforce

Available at https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement/factsheet

(Accessed: 9^th June 2018 at 10.45PM)

Heathfield, S. M. 2017. You Need to Know What Motivation Is – Really.

Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-employee-motivation-1918108

(Accessed: 9^th June 2018 at 10.45PM)

McShane S. & Von Glinow M. 2016. M: Organizational Behavior 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.