Public human resource management challenges and organizational roles

Public Human Resources Management

Challenges facing human resource management

Human Resource Management is the element of the organization that deals with the human aspect of the organization. The business world today, is very competitive. Every organization must align its resources to the organizational goals and objectives. According to Gill (2009), the employees of an organization are part of its assets just as capital and technology. Proper utilization of human resource can account for the success of an organization. This study will examine the challenges that the human resources management is facing in its commitment towards contributing to organizations' prosperity. It will further, explore how human resource management can overcome the challenges to remain relevant.

The role of human resource management

Human Resource Management performs an imperative role in the organization. Its role involves giving job descriptions, assigning of salaries, establishing policies that govern the personnel and capacity building of the employees within an organization. Berry (2011) asserts that the functions of the human resource management enable the organization to achieve its strategic goals. The leaders who have the human resource management knowledge help in making decisions concerning the organizations' workforce. They are able to assess the current labor demand of the organization and project the future demand.

The business environment is competitive. Human resource managers are important in the determination of employees' compensation. Accurate and realistic figure enables the organization to compete in the labor market for employees with the skills they desire (Jing, 2005). The organization can fit its compensation to align with its financial status and the income expectation of the future. The company reduces the rate of labor turnover. It benefits as it cuts costs that result from hiring of new employees.

The capacity building programs that the human resource offers to employees are critical to the safety of employees. The management can to provide a safe working environment for the employees. Safety at workplace helps to reduce the case of injuries and accidents (Riccucci & Irene, 2011). The organization benefits as it reduces the cost of hospitalization and injury compensations. Having human resource management in place within the organization gives the organization constructive advice on how to treat employees. The company avoids allegations of mistreating its employees.

It is the role of human resource to induct new employees to the daily operations of the business. According to Jing (2005), the orientation of the employees is fundamental to forming a relationship between the employee and the employer. The process provides an employee with the knowledge they require to integrate in the organization. It clarifies the expectations that the employer has towards the employee, and gives the employee an opportunity to learn about the organization. Additionally, human resource engages the employees on short courses that improve on the skills they have. Thus, the productivity levels of employees improve.

The human resource managers are in charge of the recruitment process. They advertise for vacant positions within the organization. They go through resumes and select those that meet the criteria of the job vacancy. They then determine the interview method that would be effective at getting a candidate who will fit in the organization culture. The human resource managers work together with line managers in the interview process and hiring of new employees. This cooperation ensures that the organization makes good decisions in the hiring process.

Challenges facing human resource management

The business landscape is very dynamic. The labor market is evolving rapidly. The changes bring challenges in the human resource management (Arthur, 2011). Human resource functions to increase productivity of the business. The changes demand an understanding of business strategies. It also calls for participation in making of policies that run the organization together with important decisions. The human resource management must evolve in its managing of human capital. The challenges facing human resource have to be understood in order to find lasting solutions

Management of change is a major challenge to human resource management. The management of change is a challenge as it is not central in human resource professionals. The human resource has a task to provide relevant taskforce to organizations. The human resource has to come up with ideas and strategies that will effect change (Jing, 2005). The ideas have to influence the skills of an employee toward easy adoption of change. The current trends of change are technological. Implementation of these changes requires a re-education of the workforce.

Human resource management effectiveness: To get the specific input that the human resource makes to the business is challenging. The value of human resource has traditionally been poorly determined. The numbers of trainings done by the human resource and the number of people the human resource recruits were the measure of effectiveness. According to Arthur (2011), these measures have no direct link to productivity of the company. Additionally, the analysis of this data to give meaning is not done in most organization. The implication was that the contribution of human resource in an organization was not material. Thus, evaluation of human resource success level becomes a challenge.

Technological advancement is posing a challenge to human resource management (Riccucci & Irene, 2008). The human resource managers have to adapt new technologies. The adoption of new technologies is in line with a business strategic management. The human resource has to evaluate the business operation and decide what needs automation. It is a challenge to human resource, as the digitalization process has to be done to increase the gains of the organization. The process of technology adoption sometime involves rendering of some employees obsolete.

Technological advancement has led organization to receiving of vast amount of data. The human resource has to sift the data and get useful information. The vast amount of data is a challenge to human resource management. It is critical for the human resource to learn how to manage the information they receive, and communicate effectively to all levels if the organization. Mishandling of information or passing the wrong information can bring a crisis in an organization.

The information that the human resource gathers is useful in human resource planning. Further, technological advancement forces the human resource to decide on what services to automate, and the services needing a person to attend. The human resource managers have to deal with multiple channels of communication and networking. According to Berry (2011), human resource adoption of new technologies and using them effectively is beneficial to an organization.

Welfare and health benefit cost of employees is a challenge to human resource management. It is difficult for the human resource to come up with a health program in a changing health sector. The dynamism of the health sector demands a constant revision of the health and welfare program that the organization has (Riccucci & Irene, 2008). It reduces the efficiency of an organization if a program keeps change. The benefits of the program fail to be explicit due to changes. The challenge of welfare and health programs needs a solution that would be final.

Leadership development is a challenge for human resource. The traditional orientation is that human resource concerns with employee recruitment and other issues pertaining employees. The management of an organization is seen as a separate entity. However, in the evolving business world the management and human resource need to work together in order to create a competitive edge. There is a challenge on how to harmonize the executive management strategy to be one with that of human resource management.

Attracting and retaining of high performing employees is a challenge. The current business environment is demanding in terms of the labor input (Ullah, 2010). It is intolerant to poor performance and inefficiency. To survive in the job market, employees are improving their skills to improve productivity. The employees whose performance is high are ever looking for greener pastures. They have high mobility, as their demand is high. Therefore, organizations are put to ensure that they meet compensation requirement of high performing employees.

According to Ullah (2010), the attraction of employees is also becoming a challenge. Every organization is looking for a specific set of skills and ability. The skills that organizations need are those that match with their productivity. The education systems at large are not training students on these skills. The organizations have to roll out graduate programs for training their workforce. The program means an additional investment on the human labor. The budget for labor development increases making the recruitment process costly.

According to Alluh (2010), issues of compensation are a challenge to human resource management. Most businesses operate on a minimum budget. The compensation of the business has to have a limit. Keeping the pay rate of an organization competitive in the market becomes difficult. Compensation is a sensitive issue as it influences recruiting of new staff and retention of the existing staff. The human resource management faces a challenge as they have to balance the compensation package they offer and the revenue an organization makes.

In the process of recruitment a company has to be attractive to employees. According to Gill (2009), salaries that employees get together with benefits are crucial. An organization is able to get the best skills and talent through decent compensation. Further, to keep employees in an organization and reduce the rate of turnovers compensation package has to be competitive. When the compensation of the company is poor it makes the organization lose employees of high job capacity. Poor compensation is a cost to the company in terms of time and resources that go to training of new staff.

Solutions to human resource challenges

The human resource has to expand its functions in coping with changes. Three important steps exist in the practice of ensuring that changes occur in an organization. The first one is projecting of possible changes. The human resource will be able to plan and prepare for the changes. The preparations of changes involve evaluation of the human response that the changes will elicit (Arthur, 2011). The human resource then creates strategies that will engage personnel in achieving of the changes. They do this to allow the human workforce to adapt to the new conditions.

The human resource then moves to implement the changes. According to Berry (2011), change management is a process that takes time to disseminate. It takes effective communication of the need to change. The staff whose line of operation is affected requires training to equip them with basic knowledge to assist in the transformation. The human resource has to work along the organization's management to establish the gaps in skills that need filling. Then, decision has to be made on whether to hire a workforce or retrain the existing workforce.

The profitability of an organization depends on the ability of workforce to solve problems. Technology is a challenge and an opportunity for human resource management. The human resource team needs to be proficient in utilization of technology. According to Riccucci & Irene ( 2008), organization should invest in empowering of human resource team on latest technologies. These will make the human resource manager and his team to make the best out of technology for the benefit of the organization.

The challenge of health and welfare has a solution in customizing of the program. A customized program serves the need even in a changing environment (Riccucci & Irene, 2008). The needs of the client are not rapidly dynamic. The program customization of the program is done in such a manner that it abides to the company's culture and strategies. The program design has to be flexible and easy to communicate to the employees. The program implementation has to be in a way that it does bring positivity to the organization. The program should be customer directed such that it is easy to measure productivity.

Human resource management output is measurable. The output and the contribution that human management makes to an organization are very significant. To be capable of quantifying the outcomes of human resource simply needs the set up of specific goals of performance. Then, effectiveness of human resource management is measurable against these goals. Human resource strategy covers staffing and training of staff, these are usable parameters in the measure of human resource effectiveness.

The productivity of an employee is measurable (Riccucci & Irene, 2008). Employees have a clear job description. The descriptions outline the expected productivity of an employee. The meeting of these outcomes means that the human resource strategies are yielding revenues for the organization. The human resource management programs enable workers to be effective. The successes of the program translate to revenues and profits of the company. The low turnover of high performing employees is an indicator of human resource management effectiveness.

Human resource management performance is measurable using balanced scorecard method. In this method, employee satisfaction is an element usable to measure the effectiveness. Employees' engagement to their roles is measurable through interviews with them. The other parameter usable to measure the effectiveness of human resource management is checking employees' compliance at workplace. Strong compliance indicates that the employees are well adjusted to the organizations operation.

Assessment of the current needs of the organization is done based on strategic plans of an organization. The goals and objective of the organization have to be upheld by employees and employers. In the placement of employees, the employer ensures that the capabilities of the workforce match the job they have to do. The succession plan of the human resource involves identification of high performing employees. The employee must show potential ability to perform in the role that one is intended to succeed.

The human resource has to groom employees with skills for performing in executive positions (Gill, 2009). Before a gap is left in management, the human resource manager can build the capacity of employees through delegation of duty. Replacing potential employees ensures they are able to achieve the compulsory skills and knowledge required for eventual succession. Delegation of core duties enables employees to get abroad range of knowledge and experience. The employees' motivation increases, which is paramount aspect for successions.

Motivation of exceptional employees in an organization leads to increase in skills and knowledge. They gain experience necessary to fill the specific gaps in the key positions, in the organization. Advertisements of the vacant position in the firm increases awareness of its operations of the society, it builds a positive public image and attracts partnership-making recruitment easier and very effective.

Hiring workers from the organization with related operations reduces the cost of training new people into the organization's core business, which works effectively in the technical department on any organization. According to Arthur (2011), engaging employees for teamwork creates the preparedness to support the trainee promotion project plans in the organization, which is done through development of a proper plan schedule and well-updated procedure manual for trainees. It also encourages external participation within the organization especially from the volunteers, project staff, and consultants who are either current or have worked for the organization in the past

Looking into emerging needs of employees highly helps in retaining them in the company. It entails keeping them comfortable in their position, appreciated and occupied in furthering their individual goals, in addition to, the organization's goals. Developing employees potential by helping the existing workers develop in their abilities benefits a business capability to perform to its best, and stand the prevailing competition. The satisfaction of the employees goes up. They start to feel that they have an integral part in the organization. The employees align their actions to the organizations strategies ad help in meeting the goals of the organization.

The success of an organization depends on having a compensation package that is sustainable for the organization and attractive to the employee. According to Arthur (2011), proper management of compensation is vital for the growth and expansion of a business. The human resource has to research and make compensation of employees' commensurate with their job input. A good compensation package motivates employees' to perform in their duties. An organization that rewards their employees accordingly is likely to perform well, and experience low levels of employees' misconduct.

Other than monetary compensation, an organization has to look for complementary ways to ensure high motivation among the employee. The organization has to develop a work environment that is conducive and flexible for the employees. Having an employee-oriented work schedule that meets the organizational goals is crucial. According to Berry (2011), this could include work-from -- home, job sharing, and flex time. The organization can overcome the problem of compensation by providing employees opportunity for advancement. Additionally, as Jing (2005), suggests an organization can offer incentives such as bonuses to boost employees' incomes.

Conclusion

The challenges of human resource are resolvable if an organization invests more resources in the system. The discussion above gives an illustration of the challenges. It also gives the possible solutions to the challenges. Application of the solutions is critical to an organization sustaining its performance. Berry (2011) suggests that recruitment and retention of the employee are fundamental to competitiveness of the business. Their implementation ensures that the company does not lose productive employees to competing firms.

According to Ullah (2010), the human resource management field is very crucial in a business organization. The pillars of the organization are capital, technology, and human resource. The human resource has to work with the other two pillars. In a similar way, the other two pillars cannot operate by themselves. Management of human resource helps to integrate these pillars together. Human resource management faces it challenges, but the role it plays in an organization outweigh the difficulties it encounters.

There is high competition in the business environment. The survival of an organization depends on the ability of human resource management in playing of a strategic role. As Kelingner (2008) suggests, human resource has to develop and become strategic partners in the business. They have to take up the roles of organizational advocates and change agents. The human resource practitioner has to have a comprehensive understanding of the organization's functions. The understanding is vital in influencing of major decisions within the organization.