FREE ESSAY ON IT'S THE PEOPLE

IT'S THE PEOPLE

With today's workforce becoming increasingly diverse and organizations doing more to
maximize the benefits of the differences in employees, Human Resource managers are
evolving from the old school sideline player to the front-line fighters. Organizations
are relying on managers to get the people who get the job done, and of course, make the
company money. People have always been central to organizations, but their strategic
importance is growing in today's knowledge-based business world like never before. An
organization's success increasingly depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of
its employees, particularly as they help establish a set of core competencies which
distinguish one organization from its competitors. 
When employees' talents are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and organize, an
organization can achieve a sustained competitive advantage. In order to compete through
people, an organization has to be able to do a good job of managing their human capital:
the knowledge, skills, and capabilities that add value to the organizations. Managers
must develop strategies for identifying, recruiting, and hiring the best talent
available. Develop these individuals in ways that are specific to the needs of their
individual firms, encourage them to generate new ideas while familiarizing them with the
company strategies, invite information sharing, and rewarding collaboration and team
work. The basis on which compensation payments are determined, and the way they are
administered, can significantly affect employee productivity and the achievement of
organizational goals. Establishing compensation programs require both large and small
organizations to consider specific goals. Employee retention, compensation distribution
and adherence to the budget must be carefully weighted against the overall organizational
goals and expectations. Compensation must reward employees for past performance while
serving as a motivation tool for future performances. Internal and external equity of the
pay program will affect employees' concepts of fairness. Organizations must balance each
of the concerns while still remaining competitive. 
For internal equity an organization can use one of the basic job evaluation techniques to
determine relative worth of job. The most common are the ranking and classification
methods. The job ranking system arranges jobs in numerical order on the basis of the
importance of the job's duties and responsibilities to the organization. Job
classification slots jobs into preestablished grades with higher rated grades requiring
more responsibilities, working conditions, and job duties. External equity can be
determined by a wage survey. Data obtained from the surveys will facilitate establishing
the organization's wage policy while ensuring that the employer does not pay more, or
less, than needed for jobs in the relevant labor market. Base salary is only one aspect
of a retention plan for important employees. Benefits and incentive plans are valuable
perks in recruiting and retaining essential employees. Benefits are an established and
integral part of the total compensation package. In order to have a sound benefits
package there are certain basic considerations. It is essential that a program be based
on specific objectives that are compatible with the organizational philosophy and
policies as well as affordable to the company. By utilizing a flexible benefits package,
employees are able to choose those benefits that are best suited to their individual
needs. Incentive pay plans can be advantageous to both the employer as well as the
employee. The success of an incentive pay plan depends on the organizational climate in
which it must operate, employee confidence in it, and its suitability to employee and
organizational needs. Importantly, employees must view the incentive plan to be equitable
and related to their performance. 
Performance measures should be quantifiable, easily understood, and bear a demonstrated
relationship to organizational performance. Performance appraisal programs serve many
purposes, but in general those purposes can be clustered into two categories:
administrative and developmental. The administrative purposes include decisions about who
will be promoted, transferred, or laid-off. They can also include compensation decisions
and the like. Developmental decisions include those related to improving and enhancing an
individual's capabilities. These include identifying a person's strength and weaknesses,
eliminating external performance obstacles, and establishing training needs. Within many
organizations, performance appraisals are seen as a necessary evil. Managers frequently
avoid conducting appraisals because they dislike playing the role of judge. As a result
appraisals are conduct annually, for good or evil, and forgot about. Largely the success
of an organization depends on the performance of its human resources. To determine the
contributions of each individual, it is necessary to have a formal appraisal program with
clearly stated objectives. Carefully designed performance standards that are reliable,
strategically relevant, and free from either criterion deficiencies or contamination are
essential foundations for evaluation. The use of multiple raters is frequently a good
idea because different individuals see different facets of an employee's performance. The
supervisor, for example, has legitimate authority over an employee and is in a good
position to discern whether he or she is contributing to the goals of the organization.
Peers and team members, on the other hand, often have an unfiltered view of an employee's
work activity, particularly related to cooperation and dependability. 
By offering enticing compensation packages, equitable pay, flexible benefits and known
incentives an organization allows itself the luxury of identifying and selecting those
which meet the needs of the organization. This selection process should provide as much
reliable and valid information as possible about applicants so that their qualifications
can be clearly matched with job specifications. The information gathered from
applications and interviews must be reliable and valid, clearly job-related or predictive
of success on the job and free from potential discrimination. The interview is an
important source of information about the job applicant. It can be unstructured, wherein
the interviewer is free to pursue whatever approach and sequence of topics that might
seem appropriate or structured where each applicant receives the same set of questions,
which have preestablished answers. Regardless of the technique chosen, those who conduct
interviews should receive specialized training with interviewing methods. This gives the
Human Resource manager the most relevant information for making a knowledgeable decision
about which applicant will fulfill the needs of the organization. In filling job openings
above the entry level an employer usually finds it advantageous to use transferring and
internal promotions. By recruiting from within, an organization rewards employees for
past performances and sends a signal to other employees that their future efforts will
payoff, while capitalizing on previous investments made in recruiting, selecting,
developing, and training its current employees. 
Today organizational operations cover broad areas and require continuous training for
effective job performance, evolutions in product areas, and corporate growth. In order to
have effective training programs organizations can utilize a systems approach. Key areas
of this approach include needs assessment, program design, and evaluation. Needs
assessment begins with organizational analysis. Managers must establish a context for
training by deciding where training is needed, how it connects with strategic goals, and
how organizational resources can best be used. In designing a training program, managers
must utilize principles of learning in order to create an environment that is conducive
to learning. The evaluation of a training program should focus on several criteria:
participant reactions, learning, behavior changes on the job, and bottom line results.
Human Resource Management's front-line fight is to get the organization in order. As Tom
Peters stated Trust people treat them like adults, enthuse them by lively and imaginative
leadership, develop and demonstrate an obsession for quality, make them feel they own the
business, and your work force will respond with total commitment. Evidence points to a
more active interest in and careful implementation of human resource management.
Management is, by definition, getting things done through people. If managers are to
increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve their organization's competitive
advantage, they must focus on how to properly manage personnel. Creating effective
motivation and leadership, recruiting and retaining the right personnel, rewarding and
treating employees fairly, establishing an environment that supports the people and
benefits the organization, the Resource Manager looks towards a future with exciting
challenges and opportunities for managing an organization's most valuable resource - its
people.
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