Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management

• Process of managing human talent to achieve an organization’s objectives

  • Find right people

  • Train, motivate, appraise

  • Helps employees/employers understand rights and responsibilities

Human Capital

• Intangible - Knowledge, skills, and capabilities of individuals that have economic value to an organization

HRM Strategic Challenges

• Cost-Benefift Analysis— Needs?

  • Recruit and Hire the best people

  • Downsizing: Planned elimination of jobs

HRM Strategic Challenges to Business

• Manage changing labor force

  • Five generations

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion

  • Enhancing benefit programs

  • Embrace technology

  • Consider “new” ways of scheduling workers

    • Flex time

  • Lack of progress

    • People resist change as it involves modifying or abandoning familiar ways of working

• Soaring Costs (esp. healthcare)

  • High healthcare costs and compliance with new health reforms

    • SUGGESTION: Provide employees a set amount to purchase health insurance on their own

• Demographics may play a role

  • Consider the following

    • Ethnic and racial differences

    • Age distribution

  • Forecast trends to support organization strategies (ie. wealth factors)

• Labor Participation Rate

  • Labor force participation rate - number of people employed or actively looking for work

  • Environmental Scanning is the process of gathering information about events and their relationships with an organization’s internal and external environments.

• Cultural and Societal Changes

  • Influences reactions to Work Assignments, Leadership Styles, and Reward Systems

  • Employee Engagement - The extent to which employees are enthused about their work and committed to it

  • Work-Life Balance proves important to moral

• Technology

  • Knowledge Workers: Workers whose responsibilities extend beyond the physical execution of work to include planning, decision-making, and problem-solving

  • Empower the knowledge workers of Gen Y and Gen Z

5 Most Common Leadership Styles

• Visionary - Best type, Come with me, your employees trust where you are taking them

• Coaching - “try this” type

• Democratic - What do you think style, be careful “what do you think” can be disguised as putting work off on employees

• Commanding - self-explanatory

• Affiliative - people come first, customer service esque can lead to leadership downfall, risky business

Corporate Social Responsibility

• Firms act in the best interests of the people and communities affected by its activities

  • Improves the company’s earnings and helps avoid lawsuits

  • HR helps to develop a culture of corporate citizenship

• Be a responsible corporate citizen

  • Sustainability - Ability to produce a good or service without damaging the environment or depleting a resource

    • Companies are making strides to reduce their carbon footprints

    • Philanthropic initiatives > environmental initiatives > Community projects > Fair trade investments

  • HR policies should be fluid in consideration of ongoing change

• Adapt or Die

  • Consistent Message - Brand message must be consistent as the audience is always changing (remember your audience)

  • Social Contract Broken - People naturally break into affinity—no employer loyalty

HRM Strategic Challenges to Business

• Changes MUST be managed and to do so:

  • Envision the Future

  • Communicate your Vision

  • Set expectations for performance

  • Reorganize people/ and Reallocate assets

  • Invest

Strategic Planning

• Strategic Planning - Procedures for making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies

• Human Resource Planning (HRP) - Process of anticipating and providing for the movement of people into, within, and out of an organization

• Mission - Basic Purpose of the organization and its scope of operations

• Strategic Vision - Clarifies the long-term direction of the company and its strategic intent

• Core Values - Strong and during beliefs and principles that the company uses as a foundation for its decisions

HR’s Role in Mission, Vision, and Values

• Translate Mission, vision, and values into:

  • Specific on-the-job behaviors

  • Job descriptions

  • Basis of employee rewards

• Communicate Frequently Formally ( Employee Handbook) and Informally (Corporate Culture)

  • Culture - The shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes that shape the work environment and guide the actions of individuals within an organization

• HR’s role in building a culture

  • Recruit and hire employees whose values are consistent with the organization

  • Value-based Hiring - Outlining behaviors that exemplify a firm’s corporate culture and hiring people who are a fit for them

  • Environmental Scanning

    • SWOT analysis - Comparison of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for strategy formation purposes

• External Analysis of the Environment

  • Business - Factors that a firm cannot control but can affect its strategy

  • Competitive - Consists of a firm’s specific industry

  • Remote - Economy and ecological, technological, social, demographic, and legal and regulatory changes

• The definitive way to analyze your Competition is Porter’s Five Forces

• Internal Analysis

  • Core Capabilities: Integrated knowledge sets within an organization

    • Distinguish the organization from its competitors and deliver value to customers

    • Value creation - what the firm adds to a product or service by virtue of making it

      • Value = Benefits - Costs

  • Need for Competitive Advantage

  • Resources (people, processes, or systems) that provide

    • Valuable, Rare, Difficult to imitate, and organized

  • Cultural Audits - Asses the quality of work life in an organization by asking employees about nature of work and seeks input on how it should be done

  • Forecasting demand and supply for labor

    • Labor Shortage - Need to hire

      • Develop and invest in current employees

      • Recall Employees

      • Overtime

      • Outsource

    • Labor Surplus - Need to Downsize

      • Hiring Freeze

      • Reducing Work Hours

      • Consider Layoffs

      • “Forced” Retirement

  • Human Capital Readiness - Evaluating the availability of critical talent in a company and comparing it to the firms supply

    • The difference between the quantity and quality of employees required and available represents the gap that needs to be remedied

Formulating Strategy

• Corporate Strategic Options

  • Growth and Diversification

  • Mergers vs Aquisition

    • Merger - two businesses of similar size and scale combine to one

    • Acquisition - One Business buys another, often smaller businesses

  • Strategic Alliance vs Joint Ventures

    • Strategic alliance - arrangement between two or more parties while each retains its independence

    • Joint Venture - Arrangement between two or more parties while they share the risks associated with the objective’s development

  • Divest - rid oneself of something that one no longer wants or requires, such as a business interest or investment

• Business Strategy

  • Low Cost Strategies

    • Focuses on efficiency, cost containment, and minimizing waste in systems and processes

    • HR Goals: Productivity and Supply chain logistics

  • Differentiation Strategy

    • Based on delivering high-quality products, innovative features, speed to market, and/or superior service

    • HR Goals: Exceed expectations with service and quality

• Evaluation

  • Benchmarking - Looking at an organization’s practices and performances in an area and comparing them with those of other companies

  • Ballance Score Card - Measures a firm’s alignment; helping to translate strategic goals into operational objectives in consideration of stakeholders

Equal Employment Opportunity and Human Resource Management

• Equal Employment Opportunity

  • Treatment of individuals in all aspects of employment— Hiring, promotion, and training in a fair and non-biased manner

• Common Discrimination Practices

  • Harassment - against a protected class

  • Retaliation - against one who filed a claim

  • Employment decisions based on a stereotype of a protected class

  • Denying employment opportunities based on association or marriage to another

• Need to follow EEO

  • Risk of costly and time consuming litigation

  • Negative public attention

  • Low sales and employee morale

• Who is the protected class?

  • Group of people who are are provided special protection under a specific law, policy, or regulation

  • The impetus for major federal laws

• Fair Employment Practices (FEPS)

  • State and local laws governing equal employment opportunity are more comprehensive than federal laws and apply to small employers

  • Fair employment practice agencies (FEPAs) - State and local agencies that enforce anti-discrimination laws

• Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964

  • Prohibits discrimination in virtually every employment circumstance for named classes

  • Jurisdiction

    • All private employers in interstate commerce who employ 15+ employees for 20 or more weeks per year

    • State and Local governments and private and public employment agencies

  • Bona Fide Occupation Qualification

    • Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ)

      • Suitable defense against a discrimination charge only when age, religion, sex, or national origin is an actual qualification for performing the job

        • The bonafide occupational qualification defense requires employers to show that a particular skill is necessary for the performance of a particular job

        • The BFOQ defense is used in cases of disparate treatment discrimination

• EEO Issues - Sexual Harassment

  • Unwelcome advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature in the working environment

  • There are 4 types of sexual Harassment

    • Verbal/Written

    • Physical

    • Non-Verbal

    • Visual

  • Quid Pro quo harassment

    • Favor for a favor

    • Occurs when submission to or rejection of sexual conduct is used as a basis for employment decisions

    • Involves a tangible or economic consequence such as demotion or loss of pay

  • Hostile Environment

    • occurs when unwelcome sexual conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with job performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment

• EEO Issues - Immigration Reform and Control Act

  • IRCA

    • Prohibits employers from knowingly hiring or retaining unauthorized aliens on the job

    • Employers with 4 or more employees are prohibited from discriminating in hiring or termination decisions based on nationality of citizenship

    • E-Verification System - Provides an automated link to federal databases to help employers determine legal eligibility of workers and validity of their social security numbers

  • Employer compliance with IRCA

    • Form i-9

    • Check documents establishing an employee’s identity and eligibility to work

    • Retain Form I-9 for at least 3 years

• Emerging Employment Discrimination Issues

  • Weight Discrimination

  • Caregivers and Discrimination

  • Attractiveness and Discrimination

• Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures

  • A procedural document published in the Federal Register to help employers comply with federal regulations against discriminatory actions

  • Applies to employee selection procedures in HR activities

• Validity Requirements

  • Employers must prove that selection instrument used to choose individuals for employment, bears a direct relationship to job success

  • Validation studies prove the relatedness of the test to the job under study

• Adverse/Disparate Impact vs Disparate Treatment

  • Adverse Impact - Rejection of a significantly higher percentage of a protected class for employment, placement, or promotion when compared with the successful, nonprotected class

    • Based on a particular criterion for hire

  • Adverse rejection rate or the four-fifths rule

    • The selection rate for any protected class is less than four-fifths of the rate of the class with the highest selection rate

• Affirmative Action - Requires organizations to comply with the law and correct any past discriminatory practices by increasing the numbers of minorities and women in specific positions

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives

  • Reverse discrimination - Act of giving preference to members of protected classes to the extent that unprotected individuals believe they are suffering discrimination

Designing a Job

• Most businesses have a servant leadership model

• Empowerment

  • Granting employees power to initiate change and encouraging them to take charge of what they do

    • encourages workers to become innovators and managers of their work

    • Gives control and autonomous decision-making capabilities

    • Flexible work schedules

      • Flex time

        • Gives the option of employees choosing daily start and quit times, provided they work a certain number of hours per day or week

        • Key Advantage - can schedule work hours based on productivity

      • Compressed Workweek

        • Process of shortening days in the workweek by lengthening the hours of work per day

        • Key Advantage - Accommodates employees leisure time activities facilitating personal appointments

      • Job Sharing

        • Arrangement where two part-time employees perform a job which otherwise is held by one full time employee

        • Key Advantage - Limits layoffs in hard economic times

• Job Enrichment

  • Job enrichment is a management concept that involves redesigning jobs so that they are more challenging to the employee and have less repetitive work

  • Fulfills motivational needs of employees

  • Focuses on the intrinsic motivation of employees

  • Techniques to enrich jobs

    • Job enlargement - Process of adding a variety of tasks to a job

    • Job rotation - Process whereby employees rotate in and out of different jobs

    • Job crafting - employees mold their tasks to fit their individual strengths, passions, and motives better

  • Job design

    • Involves specifying the content and methods of the job

      • What will be done

      • who will do the job

      • how the job will be. done

      • where the job will be done

      • Ergonomics - incorporation of human factors in the design of the workplace

    • Title and Description

      • Provide status to the employee

      • Indicates duties of the job and level of the job in the organization

    • Responsibilities

      • Arranged in order of importance in statements covering them

        • Indicating the weight or value of each duty

      • Employers need to show that the job criteria relate to duties of the job in selecting employees

Employee Selection - Cover Letters - Resume

• Selection

  • Process of choosing individuals who have relevant qualifications to fill existing or projected job openings

• Resume

  • Brief document that summarizes your education, employment history and experiences relevant to you qualifications for a particular job

  • Purpose; to get an interview

  • Cue people in to specific skills and abilities by using achievement statements

  • Should be tailored to fit specific needs and expectations for the job/company (do your research)

  • Types of resumes

    • Chronological - organized by date and job titles - most recent position and listed first

      • Same field

      • Growth-logical next step

      • Proud of recent or current position

      • No gaps in work history

    • Functional - employment history highlight skills and accomplishment (aka Skill Set or Hybrid)

      • Changing careers

      • Reentering market

      • Emphasis on particular skills in history

      • Recent position is unimpressive

      • Job titles don’t reflect responsibilities

    • Focus Resume

      • Tailored to specific positions

      • Imaginative - graphic designers, artists

      • CV (Curriculum Vitae) - educators, researchers, fellowship

• Interviews

  • Practical when there are only a small number of applicants

  • Serves other purposes, such as public relations

  • Types of Interviews

    • Nondirective - Maximum amount of freedom is given to the applicant in determining the course of discussion

      • “In what ways do you feel you could contribute to our team”

      • “Why did you decide to seek a position with our funeral home”

    • Structured Interviews

      • Uses a set of standardized question that have an established set of answers

      • Ensures that similar information will be gathered from all candidates making it easier to compare responses and qualifications

        • Suggested Answer - Task/Problem

          • Action - Explain what, how, and why you did.

          • Result - Explain the outcome of YOUR action

    • Situational interviews

      • Applicant is given a hypothetical incident and asked how he/she would respond to it

        • Require the applicants to make a shift in emphasis from finding the “right answers to showing the interviewer the right way to come up with answers

    • Behavioral Interviews

      • Focuses on the past performance in given scenarios. Differs from situational because applicants are asked how they behaved in a similar actual situations in the past

    • Stress Interviews

      • Interviewer takes an aggressive stance to see how well the candidate responds to stressful situations

  • Diversity Management

    • Avoid asking questions related to race, color, age, religion, sex, or national origin

  • Post interview Screening

    • Reference Check

    • Background Checks

• Employee Benefits Required by Law

  • Social Security, Unemployment, Workers comp