The Dynamics of Human Resources
A Journey into the Noble Practice of Managing Human CapitalBy Yasser Al SalmaniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Yasser Al Salman
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-5451-5Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................v1. The Discipline Known as Human Resources.....................................................................1What Does the HR Department Consist of?........................................................................1Where Is HR Needed?............................................................................................42. The Human Capital Expert....................................................................................7How to Hire the Best Candidates and Retain the Best Employees..................................................73. A Noble Pedestal............................................................................................13Community Service in the Corporate World.......................................................................13The Qualities that Enable a Successful HR Leader to Foster the Maximum Impact..................................184. Building Trust..............................................................................................27The Prime Trust-Builder between Management and Employees.......................................................275. HR-Where Credibility Rules..................................................................................33Delivering Beyond Expectations.................................................................................336. HR Manager: The Expert Socializer...........................................................................51Training and Instructing Employees without Bruising Their Egos.................................................51Gathering First-Hand Information...............................................................................677. HR Manager: the Great Recruiter.............................................................................71Distinguishing the Great Employee from the Good Employee.......................................................71Interview Guidelines...........................................................................................788. Building the Company Image..................................................................................81Establishing and Protecting the Values of the Organization.....................................................819. How to Be a Lovable HR......................................................................................89Instill Your Belief in Employees and Function according to the Ethics of the HR Profession.....................89The Policy Manual..............................................................................................9610. HR and the CEO: Always a Happy Couple......................................................................99Avoid Clashes between Policy-Makers and Policy Enforcers.......................................................99Conclusion.....................................................................................................107
Chapter One
The Discipline Known as Human Resources
What Does the HR Department Consist of?
William R. Tracey, in The Human Resources Glossary, defines human resources as, "The people that staff and operate an organization ... as contrasted with the financial and material resources of an organization. The organizational function that deals with the people...." HR, simply put, is "resources for humans" inside the work area. Its prime intent is to fulfill the executive requirements, while also representing the interests and desires of the people employed by the company. In other words, it is the nucleus that links between both concerned parties: the executive team and the employees.
The size of the company determines the sort of HR department it possesses. Smaller companies may call it a personnel department, which is handled by a personnel manager. In more complex organizations with many functions, HR is an entire department with its own executives and subfunctions.
The demarcation of who is responsible for what is very important. It is also enormously important for the smooth operation of the business. This is why HR is indispensable. Apart from providing consultation to the company's management team, HR identifies the company's core culture plans and designs the infrastructure to sustain or change the culture.
Human resource development is a product of organizational development that aims to improve organizational effectiveness by looking at the soft side-a focus on the behavioral side of the business: systems, business strategy, logistics, key performance indicators, marketing, and everything about employee activity. The method employed to achieve this is known as human resource management (HRM), which functions within an organization to recruit employees and manage and develop policies and procedures for the people working in the company. HR deals with issues correlated to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organizational development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee incentives, internal communication, supervision, training, and guidance.
HR is a component of the organization's functional machinery. The organization's functional machinery can as well be considered a part of the HR Department. The situation quite similar to the age-old question, `Which came first, the chicken or the egg.'
Organizations differentiate between human resources management (HRM) and human resources development (HRD). HRM is a major management function, and HRD is a profession composed of a broad array of activities-includes career development, training, and development conforming to the organizational regulations-to build personnel structure within organizations.
The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone remarkable transformation during the past twenty to thirty years all over the world, and the Middle East is no different. Initially, large organizations depended on the personnel department to manage the paperwork involved in hiring and paying people. But now the HR department performs a major role in staffing, training, and managing people-including the people in the HR department-to perform to their utmost potential.
HR is all about strategic excellence. It is about showing a different angle of the proverbial table and is more business-oriented than the old personnel department. It also becomes necessary for the HR community to invest in educating, certifying, and mentoring junior HR professionals to ensure the function's future success.
To obtain the best mentoring, one should begin at the student level. The best HR person understands the company's business, so to meet the demands of the HR profession, a finance course, for example, could be introduced to all bachelor programs. Passionate instructors with extensive practitioner experience should work toward making HR a more exciting and engaging career choice. HR courses need to be overhauled to overcome the bad reputation HR professionals have garnered as being mere party planners or policy enforcers. HR needs to be viewed as a serious profession to prevent being outsourced. Likewise, the HR masters program should be redesigned to make HR professionals closer to business specialists than mere HR specialists. Advanced academic programs ought to focus less on traditional HR topics and more on developing human capital, HR resource planning, strategy, business statistics, and finance. Creating HR professionals who will be better equipped to have a deep strategic impact when they assume leadership positions.
HR programs need to take note of what its business leaders want from their creative and passionate advisors and develop professional certifications to meet those requirements. Certifications in change management, organizational development, process design, training and development, performance management, and career development are places to start. These certifications would evolve an HR practitioner's skill set and enable her to add more value to the organization.
The HR Department Functions on the Following Grounds:
Employee Management
Once you have employees, learn how to manage them. Effective employee management is the most significant aspect of business administration and one of the easiest strategies for achieving operational excellence.
Management Tips
Successful management involves good leadership skills. HR should help any manager become the kind people love to follow.
Leadership Development
Develop your leadership skills. Management professionals have the opportunity to demonstrate the positive impact of their leadership skills on the organization's bottom line.
Business Ethics
Be well versed in business ethics. An HR professional is more likely to face ethics challenges in her day-to-day functioning and can assist the organization's leaders with the ethical management of people and ethical business practices.
How to Deal with a Bad Manager
You, too, are an employee in the organization, so the least you could do is confront and change an ineffective manager. HR needs to deal with leaders who fail to trust and respect their employees or who even intimidate them.
Interpersonal Work Relationships and Communication
Improve your interpersonal relationships with your supervisor, manager, coworkers, and customers to add value to your career and your organization. An HR professional should make her communication encouraging, compassionate, lucid, and empowering.
Employee Performance Management
This critical function deals with employee performance improvement, development, training, cross-training for challenging assignments as well as personal and career growth, 360-degree feedback, and ongoing performance feedback. Performance appraisals or annual reviews are also necessary.
Daily Performance Management
This involves helping managers and employees set goals, make their expectations clear, and provide effective and valuable feedback-all of which contributes to an effective performance management system.
Performance Goal-Setting
Identifying the right goals and the right metrics for measuring employee achievement is the foundation for business success since it enables the organization to achieve its resolutions and forward progress according to an individual employee's development plan and the organization's strategic objectives.
Where Is HR Needed?
Whenever executive management wants or needs to systematize and enforce policies, it turns to HR. With organizations becoming more adaptable, resilient, and customer-centered, HR has gained a strategic position as an employee sponsor and mentor in identifying and executing desirable changes in organizational culture. HR fulfills these responsibilities:
recruiting;
hiring;
training;
coaching;
performance management;
organizational development;
leadership development;
internal communication;
employee relations;
policy recommendation;
compensation, including salary, benefits, and incentives;
team-building; and
social activities.
The ability of HR managers to contribute has resulted in HR's position as a strategic partner of the organization. They are required to play a part in the accomplishment of the organization's objectives.
Companies expect HR managers to hold a pivotal role as a strategic employee sponsor and advocate. Their expertise lies in creating a workforce that is competent, concerned, and committed to the company's objectives. The HR professional must establish an organizational culture that promotes effective methods of goal-setting, communication, and empowerment.
HR professionals should foster positive and productive changes consistently and repeatedly. The HR leader who is knowledgeable about the company culture and is able to execute winning tactics according to the needs of the company is highly valued.
A successful HR leader forms a meaningful connection between employees and management, encouraging employee satisfaction (diminishing employee discontent) and fostering needed change (decreasing resistance to change). This is how the HR professional becomes invaluable and indispensable for the organization, which continuously assesses the effectiveness of the HR function.
Chapter Two
The Human Capital Expert
How to Hire the Best Candidates and Retain the Best Employees
The vast majority of HR activities deal with the development of an organization's human capital through routine recruitment of high-quality candidates to fill vacancies and things like interviews, reference checks, hiring, compensation, and appointment letters.
A worthy HR professional is expected to adopt a talent management strategy that understands the actual requirements of each particular job along with the education, experience, and wisdom of applicants who may fill those jobs. These are necessities to better develop and manage human capital in the organization. HR needs to take a strategic approach to cultivate this most valuable asset. This approach, in turn, will open gateways to improved performance and future development of the organization. A targeted employee performance coaching plan should be established to get a substantial and constant return on the organization's training investments. The plan will identify the developmental requirements and goals of the team members and hold them accountable for their performance.
A human capital expert actually changes the focus from simply managing talent to actually leading and developing talent. Today, the talent management industry strongly emphasizes attracting and recruiting talent with a lesser emphasis on long-term talent development. Leadership-the key to success for long-term talent development-ought to be closely allied to the organization's overall strategic aspirations. HR experts must encourage individuals to meet their true potential. They should also put effective succession planning into practice to develop a pipeline of qualified leaders who will meet the future needs of the organization. All that is required is an innovative approach that will empower individuals to take control.
A human capital expert builds a winning organization to achieve:
a clear vision and a mission that makes sense to everyone on the organization chart.
profit and customer loyalty.
employee satisfaction.
employee and customer loyalty.
retention of its top performers.
leadership in its chosen market or markets.
It is important to standardize the hiring process. Mere dependence on conversational skills to choose between candidates is not enough. At the basic level, the hiring process should consist of criteria-based screening of an adequate number of candidates, background checks, standardized assessments, and structured interviews. The steps for recruiting and selecting qualified employees can be simple.
1. A department head informs the HR manager of an opening in her department.
2. The HR manager formulates a job description for publication, either internally or publicly.
3. HR fields the responses to the job announcement to separate the qualified from the unqualified applicants.
4. After this, the interview process is coordinated with the few whose resumes meet the qualifications and impress HR.
5. The HR manager schedules interviews with the hiring managers and the potential candidates.
All the while, HR oversees skill development of the company's workforce. After the hiring process concludes, the HR department acts as an in-house training center for the new recruits. Depending on the requirements, it conducts training programs either on-site or off-site and with internal resources or vendors with particular expertise.
Hiring Top Talent Is Done by the Human Capital Expert and Consists of:
Recruiting the Right People for the Organization. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about the importance of having the right talent on the organizational bus. Hire individuals who fit your culture and work environment. The applicant's desire to accomplish something in the position dramatically increases the probability of that employee being content with her effort, and therefore, the likelihood that she will remain with the organization for an extended period of time. This can be rephrased as, "Hire individuals who perfectly merge with the demands of the company."
Communicate Continuously. Emphasize workplace communication, but do not make it seem clich. Constant, credible, and meaningful communication is vital to retain employees. Ensure that employees are aware of their responsibilities and accountabilities. Communicate every required company strategy or plan to all employees so everyone is in the loop.
Make an Effort to Include Employees in Decision-Making. Include them in the process, particularly when those decisions will directly affect the individual's department or work area. You can create a culture of employee involvement that may produce new ideas and innovations that would not have been considered by management.
Encourage Employees to Contribute to the Knowledge Pool. When individuals share their information, it retains the maximum information for the organization. Organize conferences and training workshops to let everyone know she is a valuable member of the organization. It will be just as advantageous for the employees as for the managers and leaders.
Enhance the Feedback Loop. Most employees appreciate regular feedback about their performance. Expand that process beyond the annual performance review and make it part of your organization's day-to-day routine. Feedback does not need to be ceremonial. Simply stop by an employee's desk and compliment her work or tell her about a current project. Such continuous communication can tremendously boost her morale and help retention.
Suggest a Competitive and Appropriate Compensation Package. The organization ought to pay fairly for the work of an employee. Research what other organizations pay for a similar job and set your compensation accordingly.
Maintain Equilibrium in Work and Personal Life. Family is of utmost importance for everyone, and money cannot compensate for family strain. Emphasize the significance of a work-life balance. Permit a worker who meets expectations to take an extended lunch or excuse her to watch her son's football game. You are likely to be rewarded with dependability and extended service to the organization.
Plan for Employee Growth and Development. Provide opportunities for employees to attain new skills and expertise that will be useful to them and to the organization. Consider transferring an employee to another department if she seems bored or burnt out in her current placement. Such a transfer will be understood as an act of welcome attention on your part.
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Excerpted from The Dynamics of Human Resourcesby Yasser Al Salman Copyright © 2009 by Yasser Al Salman. Excerpted by permission.
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