Human Resource Management Issues in Modern Business World

Recent redundancies had lowered the motivation of the existing staff members. This includes increase in work load of the existing employees with no formal training provided. Further all salary related decisions for the human resource are decided without considering economic environmental variables.  Other reasons for staff demotivation are(Beardwell, 2010),

•        High qualified and experienced staff is leaving. This is effecting the existing staff’s expectations with regards to guidance from their higher ranked colleagues.

•        Difference in salaries and benefits at same position.

•        Short duration contracts makes staff looks for new jobs even when they have not settled in their current position.

•        Communication between researchers is not at an appropriate level.

•        Limited or absence of research support at organization culture.

Based on the staff opinion and best practices in the sector, decisions should be taken and implemented by the management for improving the staff morale. Business organizations should encourage and materially support staff development of staff in line with general policies, and in particular, especially by following up on training opportunities identified in the annual staff evaluation process. In addition to that staff planning process is discussed under modern human resource management strategies (Beardwell, 2010). It discusses that develop an operation based staff management plan integrated with the present future project requirements that is adjusted periodically to reflect the priorities. The staff management plan will be an input to the overall plan prepared by the business entity and develop an acquisition strategy to obtain the required resources which includes guidelines on how a particular resource will be acquired.

In addition to that business organizations have no formal reporting system to ensure that all vacation taken by employees is properly accounted for in the Company’s records.  Instead, we understand that employees track their own vacation during the year and at the end of the year the Human Resources Director obtains such information from each employee. In order to ensure the accuracy of the Company’s recorded vacation liability, modern human resource management strategies suggest that the Company develop and implement a formal reporting system to ensure that all vacation taken by employees is properly accounted for in the Company’s records(Barney, 1991). Further authorization matrix should delegate authority to employee designations and not individuals. The authorization matrix should ensure proper segregating duties and must define responsibilities to prevent any individual from exercising overall control. Once authorization matrix has been formalized, this shall be communicated amongst the personnel within the unit. This matrix shall be regularly reviewed by the unit head to ensure appropriate authorities are designated accordingly and updated. Human resource management department should continue to work with all stakeholders involved in the payroll process in identifying, documenting and monitoring payroll related risks, as part of the organizational risk management process. Management should draft and implement a standardized risk assessment procedure that specifies risks identified for each unit involved in the payroll process(Armstrong, 2006). Further less than satisfactory human resource record keeping poses risks of loss/misplacement of crucial records and inability to access them when necessary, raises transparency issues which in turn may affect staff motivation, ex-employee relationships and organizational reputation. It is essential to streamline record keeping practices to ensure that all files are stored systematically and properly indexed, and all staff-related records are filed promptly and in a readily accessible manner (Beardwell, 2010).

References

Armstrong. M (2006).Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (10th ed.). London: Kogan Page.

Barney, J. (1991). Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of

ManagementI¸17 (1), pp. 99-120.

Beardwell J., Claydon T. (2010) Human Resource Management, A Contemporary Approach, 6th ed., London: Financial Times Prentice Hall, Pearson.

Boxall, P., Purcell, J. (2008) Strategy and Human Resource Management, 2nd ed., Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan

Caldwell, R. (2003) The changing roles of personnel managers. Journal of management studies, 40(4).

Chavan, M. (2009),The balanced scorecard: a new challenge, Journal of Management Development, 28(5), pp. 393 - 406