The Best Approach to Human Resources

When it comes to the craft and practice of human resources, one of the unmistakable trends that is emerging and changing the face and shape of the work field is the use of a "shared services" framework. Something that is common and inherent to these shared services frameworks is a passionate mission and vision behind the department and how precisely their iteration of human resources will be used to assist and empower the organization via the effective utilization of human resources practices and procedures. This may come off as navel-gazing and self-aggrandizing corporate speak to many people. However, there are so many connections between the people and the company that they work for. These connections include making a living, benefits, the corporate culture of the company, the facilitating of a work/life balance and beyond. This report shall manifest with a hypothetical organization and how precisely their strategic plan and shared services framework could and should manifest.

The hypothetical company that shall be used for this report is Acme Financial Services. To fill in some context as to what this hypothetical company does, a few questions need to answered. To put it concisely, the company has to define who they are, what they do, for whom they do their job and how Acme knows the job is getting done. In terms of "what" the firm does, that would be check cashing and sending of money from one party to another. The latter would be a Western Union-type place where money can be sent either within the United States or from one country to another, with some limitations and costs. The target market and customer base would obviously be people, in general, that need to send money from one party to another or that needs their checks cashed, if not both. As such, just a few of the core groups that would commonly be serviced by Acme Financial Services would be people with family in foreign countries (e.g. Mexico, Canada, etc.), students here on visas from other countries (for much the same reason), people that do not have banks (for whatever reason) and so forth. Acme could absolutely branch out and do pay cards (for those that cannot get banked and/or do not want to be part of a bank) and so forth, although there are drawbacks to those cards (Bell, 2013).

As for whether the job is being done well, this would boil down to customer satisfaction in most cases. Indeed, this would be in large part driven by how quickly money gets from person to person when it is sent, how much is charged for that money sending service and how much is spent on check cashing. So long as the costs are reasonable (especially compared to the wider market) and so long as money being sent reaches its destination quickly, customer satisfaction would tend to be high. If either of those is out of phase with what customers are expecting, customer satisfaction will tend to dip. Whether that leads to a revolt and customers being lost will depend a lot on what other competitors exist for the relative service and what their price structures happen to be. With all of that said, the purpose statement of the firm would come down to the following few sentences:

"Acme Financial Services understands that people want a low-cost way to receive and send money. As such, we offer competitively priced services that are intended to facilitate people sending money to other people or receiving money from those that are sending it to them. We also allow people to cash their work or government checks at a rate that is reasonable for everyone involved."

Acme Financial Services is one of a number of firms within the money movement sphere. While the exact nature of each company's involvement and presence in the financial sphere is different, there are several niches that these firms exist within and Acme exists within two of them. Indeed, Acme helps people cash their checks if they are unable or unwilling to get a bank account. Of course, they collect a nominal and flat fee for this services. Concurrent to that, they also facilitate the sending and receiving money along the same lines of what Western Union does for clients every day. In doing so, they work to fill the void that is desired to be filled by a lot of people with financial needs and Acme does this without finding a way to bilk, nickel and dime people that are in need of the same. In spite of the fact that there are payday loan and other companies that make a mint off of overcharging and otherwise taking advantage of the disadvantaged and impoverished (or even people that are having a rough month), Acme will not lower themselves to that level and will not take advantage of the pain and dire need of those that need Acme's services. Acme is more interested in business in bulk and creating trust with customers while only procuring a nominal profit when it comes to the percentage and proportion of fees that are levied (White, 2012).

With the general summary and parameters out of the way, what follows next is the heart of the strategic plan that Acme Financial Services can and should use. What shall follow in this section, and in this order, will be strategic contributions, personal credibility, human resources delivery metrics, key performance metrics (KPM), an action plan for each functional area of the business, the human resources mission statement and the human resources vision statement. The last of those would include the associated objectives that go along with the vision statement.

When it comes to the strategic contribution that is in place at a firm like Acme, it has to be recognized that while there absolutely has to be a power figure (or figures) in play, the contributions and feedback of all people within the firm matters greatly. A strictly top/down approach is not going to work as well as when all people are involved in the feedback chain and all reasonable suggestions are considered honestly and completely irrespective of who issues the piece of advice or in what manner they give the advice. Even with that, there have to be the people that are decision-makers and at least one person from each major and functional group of the organization should contribute to that. For example, there needs to be a seat of power for human resources, accounting, customer service, information technology and any other department that plays a major role in the firm (IBM, 2016).

Employees should feel empowered and enabled to offer their feedback and advice but those same employees should understand that they need to comply with the decisions made and the processes that are put in place. The other side of that coin is that management should not allow any sort of power vacuum to be created or subsist. They need to make it clear what is expected, why things are done the way they are and what will happen if there is any lack of compliance. Of course, there will always be situations and scenarios that are outliers. Using zero-tolerance rules or any sort of process that has no exception is less than wise but exceptions should be kept to a minimum and there need to be precise and specific reasons why a normal process is disregarded for any reason. One department in particular that needs to avoid exceptions and differences in practiced procedure whenever possible is the Human Resources Shared Services department and paradigm mentioned in this report. Like people in like situations should be treated the same way, and without fail, unless the situation does not allow for or call for it (Lavoie, 2016).

The topic just covered at the end of the prior section, that being consistency and treating similar situations the same way, blends nicely into what is about to be covered. Credibility and integrity needs to be at the heart of any business and its operations and this is especially true of the human resources function and the people that enforce and underpin that function. The reasons for that being the case are not hard to decipher. First, being honest, ethical and of sound judgement is part of good business. This is true of human resources and all other functions within a business. Of course, there are instances where being an information sieve can be illegal or at least a liability to a firm. However, absent some legal or ethical reason to not divulge something, being honest and complete with information that is mundane to a person or situation should be the norm. So long as a job is done properly, by the book and with the utmost attention to customer satisfaction and other related considerations, the idea of honesty being awkward or otherwise problematic is unlikely, although it is possible.

Second, there is the credibility when it comes to the company with the customer. The employees and leaders of Acme should do what they are asked to do by customers (within the constraints of procedure and the law, of course), the customer should get immediately feedback and confirmation of what all has been done and so forth. If a customer emotes and states that there is a problem, the nature, depth and breadth of that problem should be identified and the problem should be remedied to the fullest extent possible. If the customer is mistaken about something, it should be revealed in a diplomatic way what happened and what can be done to alleviate the situation. If a person with Acme made a mistake, then the employee who becomes aware of the situation should make the situation right. If managerial blessing of that solution is needed, so be it. However, the employees and managers should work "above board" and assure the customer that what happened will be fixed.

The other major part of the importance of being honest and open relates to the human resources function in particular. Indeed, if there is even the appearance that the human resources department or anyone involved with the same (e.g. a hiring manager) are being bigoted, unfair or otherwise unethical, it can have dire consequences. These consequences can range from a tarnished public image to a full-on lawsuit. As an example, if one person is chosen over another for a promotion, there had better be legal and established reasons why that choice was made. If the indications given for that choice smell funny and/or are not immediately obvious, the rumor mill and any associated blowback will tend to be pretty bad. Indeed, if there is an informational void and there is the appearance of impropriety, people will fill in the missing information with their own answers, no matter how wrong they may be. That being said, the human resources department is certainly one that cannot be an information sieve either. Information about who is hired, who is not, who is promoted, who is not, disciplinary records, addresses and Social Security numbers, just to name a few things, should be closely guarded. Even so, the human resources department needs to make sure of a few things so as to maintain their credibility and protect themselves from situations where lawsuits or other legal actions arise:

• Any records relating to who is hired/not hired or promoted/not promoted need to be created and retained in the event of a lawsuit. Further, it should be reviewed by qualified legal counsel or someone else that is qualified to ensure that hiring and promotional decisions are being done (or not done) for reasons that are legal. For example, a woman being passed over for a promotion because she has a child to raise and take care of is a huge thing to never do. Similarly, referring to someone in classist or racist terms would be another very bad idea (SHRM, 2016).

• Human resources-related information is strictly on a need-to-know basis. Generally speaking, only authorized people and the people in question should be talking about that information. For example, if someone needs to update their Social Security number, that discussion and update should involve only the employee and the authorized person making the update (SHRM, 2016).

As with all important business functions, it is important to ensure that the proper metrics are captured and assessed so as to make sure that the human resources service is delivered in the proper way. Indeed, the human resources department has customers it needs to satisfy and those would be the applicants to the company and the employees that work there. To a lesser extent, there are the former employees who need job history verifications, old W-2's and so forth. Even if the human resources function is not "customer-facing" in the sense that the customer service representatives that work for Acme are customer-facing, the people involved are still customers nonetheless and the quality and adeptness with which they do their job is important. As such, it should be reviewed and assessed how well human resources does its job. While there are some functions and decisions that will not be popular, there are some more basic things that need to be verified for quality and accuracy. Just a few examples would be benefit enrollment, benefit re-enrollment, orientation/onboarding with the company and the handling of complaints and any sort of investigation.

Indeed, the latter of what was mentioned in the last paragraph is important because human resources might serve as a necessary and needed third party if there is a problem within a functional department. Regardless, there need to be checks and balances on how human resources does their job, how well they do that job and whether they are at times acting in ways that are not ethical, expedient or helpful. There are obviously situations where tact and restraint are called for. Just because a particular thing is demanded of the human resources department does not make that demand valid. Quite often, the opposite is the case. Just because a person is denied a job does not mean the wrong decision was made. Just because one person is chosen over another for a promotion does not mean a wrong decision was made. The true measure of a human resources department does not necessarily center on whether everyone is happy about what they do, at least in the eyes of the affected. In many situations, it comes down to whether a non-biased third party reviews the situation and comes to the conclusion that the right decision was made.

The end of the section about human resources delivery metrics segues nicely into what is being discussed next, and that would be key performance metrics. The term is often shortened to KPM or might be called a key performance indicator (CPS, 2016). Regardless of what it is called, it is the extension of what was mentioned when it came to human resources metrics and the same overall goal applies. Indeed, every functional department needs to have a proverbial yardstick defined and used so as to track how good people are doing when it comes to their job. Obviously, the form and function of the yardstick will vary based on the parties served by a function or department. Indeed, human resources will deal with applicants, internal employees and prior employees almost exclusively. The accounting department will deal almost exclusively with people internal to the accounting department or people from elsewhere in the company that relate to the same. On the other hand, customer service representatives will have "customers" both within the company and outside of it. They have people outside of the company that they answer to and they also have people within the company that they report to and serve. As such, the key performance metrics for each functional area will obviously and necessarily vary depending on the primary function of the person involved. An accounting person will be expected to deliver the necessary reporting and transaction tracking that the company needs. A customer sales representative will be tracked based on the sales they make, how well their customers perceive them and so forth. Human resources representatives will be tracked based on how efficiently and accurately they do their job independent of the biased opinions of internal or external people that might disagree with a decision they made or why they made it.

Accounting, Admin & Executives

When it comes to the internal and non-client facing part of the business, it will be all about efficiency, serving internal customers well and otherwise running the business in the proper way. The tracking of revenues, department performance (in terms of finances and other benchmarks) will be the hallmark of what these departments do.

As noted earlier in this report, the human resources department really has three different audiences and none of them are the customers that Acme typically serves. Indeed, the Acme Human Resources department does three major things:

• Accepts applications and guide applicants that wish to work for the company

• They onboard employees and support them, initially and ongoing, in terms of tasks like benefit enrollment, direct deposit, training and beyond.

• They supply employment verifications and W-2 (or other document) retrieval for both existing and ex-employees.

Something else that was noted before is that human resources also has to deal with the worst of how employees act including accusations from one to another (and those accusations are not always true), sexual harassment, promotions, interviews, pay raises and so forth. Measuring and tracking all of this is important as is ensuring that procedures are followed to the letter each and every time. Executives need to keep tabs on what is going right and what is not going right as it relates to this department because not doing so can lead to a definite and definitive domino effect that will roll to other departments and then some. The department itself needs to stick to its own plan and ensure that unsuitable applicants are screened out early, that good and strong candidates are put before the hiring managers and so forth. A good action plan relating to human resources could include the following:

• Human resources quality is more about following the law and following procedure than it is about making people happy

• Human resources should absolutely have a seat of power when it comes to the leadership of a company

• The human resources department needs to be the model of consistency. If there is a break from procedure, there needs to be an acceptable and definite reason why

• Human resource professionals need to follow "need to know" to the letter and those that cannot or will not abide by that should not be in the department