Q2 – Human resources management (Vocabulary Flashcards)
Management
Management is achieving organizational goals effectively and efficiently through planning, organizing, leading, and monitoring resources.
It involves respecting the reciprocal relationship between individuals and the organization.
What is HRM?
HRM involves defining why people are organizational resources.
Shareholders invest money in firms with the expectation of success.
Money is used for various resources, including personnel.
Wages are a significant cost, so ensuring people work well is crucial.
Firms invest shareholders' money, so success is necessary.
Human Machines
Analogy: Humans are like machines that can't be pushed to the breaking point.
Overexertion can lead to burnout, sickness, and absenteeism, lowering profit levels.
The goal is to find the optimal balance for pushing people while maintaining their well-being.
Like machines requiring updates, humans need retraining and coaching for continued effectiveness.
Behavior prediction: This comparison suggests that human behavior can be predicted and optimized like machines, understanding what motivates them will lead to optimal ROI.
Maintain (train) when necessary, just as with machines.
Key actions once people are hired:
Planning: Determine what to produce and the type of personnel needed.
Staffing differs based on the organization (e.g., clothing store vs. computer company).
Organizing: Structure the work floor.
Example: Tesla's plan to mass-produce electric trucks requires factory organization and document approval.
Leading: Motivate workers.
Motivated workers perform better.
Monitoring: Assess performance.
Monitoring aims to improve worker efficiency.
Managing Humans as a Team Effort
HR work is often done by supervisors, not just HR personnel.
Supervisors need skills to lead teams effectively.
Direct Impact of HR
Team-building events: HR organizes activities to teach employees specific skills and gathers insights from these interactions.
Company culture & employer brand: HR communicates the organization's values to attract suitable employees.
Surveys: HR uses questionnaires to gauge employee job satisfaction.
Social law: Supervisors must understand social law to avoid legal issues.
Example: An employee's actions outside of work may have legal implications for their employment.
Supervisors should consult HR to ensure legal compliance.
Role of the Manager
Supervisors have direct impact on employees, and HR provides support and education to managers.
Operational HR is primarily managed by supervisors.
HR's capability to control managers is restricted; its primary function involves restoring harmony and preventing harm.
HR educates managers on leadership and HR skills to avoid mistakes.
Examples of supervisor responsibilities include job interviews, performance monitoring, motivation, and evaluation interviews.
HR Tasks Applied by the Employees Themselves
Employees can perform HR tasks.
Example: Helping a sad colleague can restore their productivity, which is an HR function.
Everyone is involved in HR practices.
What Constitutes a Good HR?
Effective and efficient HR is essential.
Effective
HR must deliver on its promises to build trust with managers.
Success leads to increased trust and larger projects.
Efficient
HR needs to stay within budget.
Avoid asking for too much or too little money.
The budget should be clear from the start to maintain trust.
Calculated
HR must present a business case with a return on investment (ROI), similar to other departments.
Engagement programs should demonstrate measurable benefits.
Using science and economics, HR leaders can calculate return on investment.
Increased engagement can reduce staff turnover, leading to cost savings.
Economists can help explain the plan to management.
Importance of Organisational Goals
The attainment of organizational goals is the core of HR.
Shareholders expect a return on their investment.
Investors take risks and expect profits exceeding bank interest rates.
Managing Humans Can Be Hard
HR involves difficult decisions and may not always feel good.
Restructuring and firing employees can have a personal and emotional impact.
It may imply: Financial instability, loss of respect, loss of faith, psychological impact, depression, and loss of esteem.
HR/supervisors must execute hard decisions as softly as possible by using strategies, such as: Show warmth, give them outplacement, and help them find a new job.
The aim is to ease the process, not change the outcome.
Empathy vs. Misplaced Empathy
Empathy is important, but misplaced empathy can lead to burnout.
HR professionals must maintain boundaries to do their job effectively.
Optimize soft skills and train strategic (hard) skills.
Handle difficult conversations and create added value through communication.
HR is Not a Charity
HR is not about making people happy but about job satisfaction and fulfilment derived from growth.
HR is a means to an end; focusing on people and working toward the satisfaction of shareholders contributes to the happiness of the business.
The priority is the business, but employee happiness leads to better work.
HR's responsibility is primarily to the organization, not just the staff.
Unions prioritize workers, while HR considers the business side.
The 4 Roles of HR (Dave Ulrich Model)
Dave Ulrich's HR model is based on two axes: processes (administration) to people (motivation) and strategic focus (long-term) to operational focus (daily tasks).
HR as a Strategic Partner (Planning)
Strategic HRM involves planning where the organization wants to go.
It includes determining necessary positions, competences, and structures, aligning with competitive position, continuity, and strategy.
HR influences management choices with crucial information not always visible on paper.
These include identifying who is working there and who is bringing ideas with a gigantic influence on your choice.
Mergers and company cultures: Cultural conflicts can hinder financial success if workers don't collaborate.
Mithra case: Strategic decisions, like stopping PeriNesta development to focus on Donesta, impact the work floor with major impact as it meant firing a lot of people.
Strategic decisions affect the stock market and daily life for employees.
Deciding on a Strategic Plan
Positioning approach (Outside-in): Base strategy on the external market.
Example: Identifying a gap in the shoe market and producing rainbow shoes.
Resource-based approach (Inside-out): Base strategy on internal resources and competences.
Compelling advantage of employees: The strategy is determined by the staff.
Work from home VS company day care – example of the Covid era
Example: A company day-care may be more beneficial than work-from-home if employees gain significant time savings, considering factors like commuting and childcare.
Concersn: What about older kids? The area of living of the people is very limited which may influence people's behaviour.
and this may influence people's behaviour; It affects team behaviour because I can't actually prevent you to see your child, but it will change team dynamics.
UCB case: UCB's decision to develop bimekizumab despite Novartis' existing drug was based on internal resources. Bimekizumab achieved better results, demonstrating the value of the resource-based approach.
HR as a Change Agent (Organizing)
HR organizes the business to execute the strategic plan by becoming a change agent.
This involves rebuilding the organization, planning hiring/dismissal phases, redesigning jobs/procedures, and focusing on professional/individual impact.
Examples
Mobile television: HR can help build the industry in countries with lower labor costs.
Organisations look at where they locate : is it benificial to be in Brussels or Antwerp taking in function different rules on how businesses should treat staff and pay the taxes.
Galapagos case: HR can act as a change agent by reshuffling top management to signal a new start and shift focus (cancer treatment).
HR as a Champion of Employees (Leading)
This class focuses on leading, motivating, and communicating goals to ensure people work well.
Making a Skills Inventory
Supervisors should know their staff well and review their skills inventory which includes: Data, hobbies, diplomas, department, future career path, current job title, employees’ experience, skills, training, diplomas/certificates, technical knowledge and demographic variables, licences and publications and self-stated career goals. This allows for the best way possible.
Internal mobility: Increased commitment, effective commitment and an opportunity to serve our staff in the best way.
Smart Management
Internal transfers: Create opportunities for growth.
Well-adapted HR policies: Tailor policies to the staff's demographics.
80% of personnel is between 55-60 years old can ask for flexible planning (retention and knowledge transfer).
80% of personnel is between 30-35 years old can ask for day-care and work life balance.
Knowing your own strengths: Proactively working on weaknesses and opportunities.
HR 2.0
Trying to make it better with the same kind of money
Teambuilding: Team builders do some tests that are personalised on their problems, we go somewhere and come back to our organization and apply what they've learned on the business context, which is really important.
Ice cream
HR as an Administrative Partner (Monitoring)
This is an important but often boring role for HR, involving operations, processes, rules, and procedures.
Evaluation interviews are connected to pay and bonuses: if you make an error, people will not be happy so you need to rely on the documents given by HR.
List of training options, pay for the staff and leave arrangements (ex: maternity, paternity leave).
Is it Really a Core Activity of HR?
This part involves finance, legal, outsourcing (social secretariats and workers). The employees make it themselves (eHRM-systems).
Downside: Feels less personal, the information is one-dimensional (we are doing this to free time for HR to be active agents and employees champions.
HR and the Inflow-Flow-Outflow Model
Inflow: Recruitment and selection.
Throughflow: Promotion and lateral career moves.
Outflow: Resignation, retirement, dismissal, and redundancy.
This encapsulates a number of sub-processes: inflow (recruitment and selection), throughflow (promotion and lateral career moves), and outflow (resignation, retirement, dismissal, and redundancy).
Evaluation, performance, training, behaviors… and the negative or positive aspects that might lead to that.
Principal-Agent Relationship
A contract where one person (the principal) engages another (the agent) to perform a service on their behalf and delegates decision-making authority.
Car breaks down or cleaning lady/man can be example to show different approaches.
The dilemma of the cleaner and its different approaches
Control Theory
Agencies theory, where there are controllong measure to what we want, or we can be mor subtle.
Trust theory
Stewardship theory, start form trust
It is important what kind of manager you want to be! Because it will signal something to your workers.
Others
Agency and stewardship applied / you manage people.
When something bad happens, we can fix them and not always try to prevent them.
In many businesses, you cannot get good toilet paper, because they think you will steal it! → In order to prevent form stealing, we will do these thing (this is controlling!).
Looking at HRM
Depending on how you look at people, you may have different perspectives and lead in different ways!
The Business Perspective on HRM
From the production vision, since humans are seen as production factors.
Effect and efficiency are key with a cost-effective perspective, while invest on things that have a return on investment (ROI).
Illustration: The French freis factory, where the goal was to maximise workers to function with low standards.
The Socio-Psychological Perspective on HRM
With this perspective, the people matter, and they have a willingness to interact with others.
Focus on interaction = knowledge, where you see that people have friends, they are more likely to share knowledge.Illustration: MORA case (meat stick, where people stand most of time) / case call-centers work side and side because it could slow the calls : unions fights.
The Interest Perspective on HRM
This perspective will see the organization as an arena where people will fight for benefits and costs.
It is a stake perspective; deicing who is a key player in your organization and you’ll serve them better than the others.
Ex: there is competition within board to ask for money.illustration = exam (about psychologists offering service, where they decide to serve best ones first). = pecking order.
The Societal Perspective on HRM
4.1. Co-dependency - We see organization as not independent of anything else and not independent of society: as an organization, you have impact on society and society has an impact on you. The bigger the organization is, the more impact it’ll have.
COMPANIES INFLUENCE SOCIETY AND POLITICIANS!
Governments have power too - On the other hand, companies will also be influenced by society as it sets rule for them.ILLUSTRATION = Feryn (recruiting people but rejecting maroccans), is to be understood in terms of the tension between legal and business perspective.
4.2. Worldview values - Today we take it to another level : organizations are faced with the question “can we go to another place in the word and do it differently over there?”
The Development of HRM
Around 1800: crafts and guilds
Before the industrial revolution – this is the timeframe for the Western world!!! it wouldn’t be the same elsewhere in the world
In that way, there is not much HR going on, as you and your family were owners; you do not need HR techniques as you are alone or with your family.
The only exception where you can find some form of HR is in the army (thousands of people that need to be led, so there were some forms of HR).
The 1830–1940 period: scale increase
HR in the business world started only with the industrial revolution ; suddenly we have machines and technologies
The Industrial Revolution
The birth of factories people get that it would be better to produce factory instead of doing it in small shops, with many people producing products on one spot.
WHO DID THE FACTORIES? The rich families, those who inherited the money over generations, had money to build it, to get the machines etc.
o They had the money to build a machine and lead a factory $
o They thus understood that with factories they’d be able to produce more, faster and at a lower cost
WHAT WE SEE ABOUT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION is often exploitation which is true BUT on the early day of factories, everyone believed that this would be a success and that it was the way to move forward
Times where hard so people believed that by doing this the economy will expend and that in the end all would benefit form it, so everyone would be happy in the beginning to produce in factories
BUT then it took another turn with exploitation, and it was a very unsafe work environment: there were dangerous machines that could not be stopped easily / young children also where often in those industries as they brought more money to family / we see that today in other parts of the world.
The need for paid manager For the first time in history, we have managers: these are people that do nothing in the industry, they don’t produce anything, they only boss people around and they are paid for it because if there a 1000 people in one spot you need people to direct them, to make sure they do what they need to do so yes we have paid managers now leading workers.
And we need a new management prospective these rules of our ancestors were great for small shops but not for factories so it was impossible to apply them in that new context
so there was the need to find a new way of managing people in dangerous environment where many people are in the same spot
AND so you have science with the classical management perspective, scientists looking at how we can manage people in the best way if they are in a factory with thousands of people together.
Management Techniques
Scientific management
It is a hard perspective on people as they have a business perspective (cost-effectiveness)
Time-and-motion studies systematic observation, analysis, and measurement of the separate steps in the performance of a specific job for the purpose of establishing a standard time for each performance, improving procedures, and increasing productivity // but at least worker are now trained for that to protect themselves
From this point, business runs the exploitation of people brings a lot of conflict: employees burned down the factories : the idea of factories was OK but not the exploitation part of them
The way businesses are run – the exploitation of people - brings a lot of conflict : employees burned down the factories so it was clear that it was not working because there were huge riots of workers, etc. and the idea of factories was OK but not the exploitation part of them
The foundations of modern ergonomics
BUT this was not sustainable for long and so there was a stimulation of the urge for unions / Before it was normal to work 15/h a day, with taylor workers can only 12 / + people were allowed to get work breaks
we talk a lot today about sedentary behavior : it id the new smoking / BUT taylor set the things in movement to try to avoid to see people just as money
Classical management perspective: bureaucratic organisations.
weber - he found that the companies are poorly organized because they hired their friends because they could trust them and would do what bosses tell them to do / so these people were only friendly to bosses but hadn’t the real needed competences /// SO THE IDEA IS: to create equality because the more rules there are, the less risk there is for a who-knows-who-goes
The 1930–1960 period: HR with a human face
During this period, there is a new era coming : the era of the humanistic perspective, the era social man, driven by the idea that cost production does not help neither ergonomics
Hawthorn experiment – they try experiment about electricity, but workers did not produce because the light was increasing but because they found it interesting that that we where looking at them: they wanted to win.
The HR at this time had no impact as HR and engineer where separted, so HR had a place on those who though “I’m going to kill myself
-> so we had to do something because we did not listen to or feel people – people are more important than having all machines to just get more products
The 1960s: Attention to self-development
Revisionism: we will keep the best of both world so keep the good of previous theories: The efficiency and We will keep listening to people and dynamicize themselves -> they didn’t know it but it was the beginning
Today there is money for HR project: before they gave 20 € for wage / we won get question on the 70s and 80s / more important to know about what happened in the 90s: it is the beginning of what we are seeing today on the labor market
The 1990s: the impact of globalisation
It was a very difficult time for business as there is globalisation: the work si opening up and we have new products from all over the work – in the end many companies had difficulties to maintain to the competitive level
Therefore, the new technique now is business process engineering where they see how we make money and which part could be saved : the radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in productivity, cycle times, quality, and employee and customer satisfaction /// you must save money : why – people had to find a reason not just doing thing but having justification for saving
But they were also the rise, the new job that they start to find : crisis manager: people are not happy for 42 y/o director but happy that it will become now 50 and stock went + % increase = as soon as the lay off is announced, everything goes crazy
However for you, as student, we know that we have to smart : you must learn main effect : what should I as organization do because when you do that, some think I’m in danger – so side is what will rise for that I’m not expected and have to cope up + so we understand that a crisis Manager cut not only the fat but one’s arm, one’s head or one’s face, so it was called
Corporate anorexia: many of the business that are going in for business crisis engineering failed in the next years because they had been made the body too sin = tendency to decrease = we are to sin because because what we can do because it gets dangerous and that’s very important to that
Renault act Sociale Dialogue This act changed law a lot on how to lay one, and this later became Europe law: now there are lay off in a company; you’ll have to tell it first to union, if it does you will go further, and so on
However, Carlos got rewarded when he got back in France, so was named one of the success restructuration but in 2010 with Nissan he was accused for not the good money and send in prison and stuck in Liban so he got reward and stuck
B) Flatter structures / horizontalization: we move away of how we need an hierarchy to have people getting in contact with the client : we think we need to have quick decision: however the problem do not allow promotion : People work with team – small group- every day – which provide job statistic : after several years that is also very boring , so now there are rotation with the job. /+ you get very to specific and as your specific the culture gets acedimica.
Those is 1990 but comes with constances : they have new concept : horizontal career