Chapter Two: Trends in Human Resource Management

Internal labor force

organization’s workers includes it employees and people who have contracts to work at the organization

External labor market

individuals who are actively seeking employment

Changes in Labor Force

diversity, age, skill deficiencies

HRM Practices that DEI

corporate strategies, recruitment & selection/hiring, compensation & benefits, employee relations, development, & communication

High-performance work systems

organizations that have the best fit between social & technical system

Knowledge workers

HPWS; main contribution to a company is specialized knowledge such as in customers, process, or a profession

Employee empowerment

HPWS; giving employees responsibility and authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service

Teamwork

HPWS; assignment of work to groups of employees with various skills who interact to assemble a product or provide a service

Scientific management

industrial revolution; drive out variance in human behavior; analyze workers’ movement

Human Relations Movement

Hawthorne studies; representative studies on the effects of paying attention to workers’ needs

Workplace regulations

civil rights movement, workforce changes, & government actions

Workplace regulation impact on managers

ensure legal compliance when developing HR systems & decision-making process

Focus on Strategy

HRM must support company’s strategy by aligning policies and practices with goals & supporting company decisions

Total quality management

companywide effort to continuously improve the ways people, machines, and systems accomplish work; focus on strategy

Cost controls

focus on strategy; organizations having a low-cost, low-price strategy

Reengineering

focus on strategy; complete review of company’s critical work processes to make them more efficient and able to deliver higher quality

Outsourcing

focus on strategy; contracting with another organization to provide services

HR Information Systems

computer system used to acquire, store, manipulate, analyze, retrieve, and distribute information related to an organization’s human resources

Cloud computing

practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data

People analytics

use of computers to analyze large amounts of data and offer information to guide decisions

Psychological contract

description of what an employee expects to contribute in an employment relationship and what the employer will provide the employee in exchange for those contributions; change in the employment relationship

Gig economy

workers are typically independent contractors who control when and where they work and often are assigned work through a website or mobile app

Trends in HR

changes in labor force, increased interests in HPWS, aligning activities with organization’s strategy, importance of technology, & changes in employment relationship