HR Management: Trends, Laws, and Workplace Flexibility

Introduction

There are several major trends in the modern working environment that continue to have considerable impacts on organizations. Human Resource professionals play an important role in assisting organizations in responding to emerging trends, managing flexibility in the workplace, and complying with federal and state regulations. Therefore, HR professionals need to demonstrate an understanding of the ever-changing global environment in order to effectively help organizations address these aspects. Generally, Human Resource Management has various functional areas with different roles in promoting the overall performance of an organization. Workplace flexibility has emerged as an important aspect of addressing emerging workplace trends and promoting overall organizational success.

Human Resource Management basically involves planning, developing, and administering policies that have considerable impacts on workers' behaviors, attitudes, and performance. This process requires the involvement of people and managerial structures toward the overall well-being of the organization (Emanoil & Nicoleta, 2013, p. 1526). The involvement of people and managerial structures in the organization is driven by the fact that decisions made in the human resources segment affect an organization's key stakeholders. In order to achieve this objective, Human Resource Management has several major functional areas that contribute to enhancing an organization's overall performance.

Functional Areas of Human Resource Management

The first functional area of HRM is staffing, which entails ensuring that an organization has an appropriate number of highly talented employees with suitable skills for their respective roles. Staffing contributes to overall organizational performance by promoting the implementation of organizational strategies and effective operations throughout the organization. In this functional area, HRM conducts several activities including job evaluation, human resource planning, recruitment, and selection.

The second functional area is Human Resource Development (HRD), which contributes to overall organizational performance by enhancing employees' knowledge and skills as well as their contribution to organizational processes and activities. HRM activities in HRD include career training and development, career planning, and performance appraisal.

The third major functional area is compensation and benefits, which encompasses all incentives and rewards employees receive in recognition of their contributions to the organization. This function impacts overall organizational performance by influencing employee morale and satisfaction, which in turn affects productivity. HRM activities in this area include providing both financial and non-financial rewards based on employees' input.

The fourth key functional area is safety and health. A healthy and safe work environment enhances the likelihood of better organizational productivity. HRM develops safety standards and policies that govern employees' activities during work.

Federal Equal Employment Laws

The regulation of Human Resource Management has involved the enactment of several laws aimed at ensuring workplace safety and health and promoting equal employment opportunity. Equal employment opportunity has emerged as an important element of the modern working environment because of the need to safeguard employees from discriminatory practices in employment. This concept seeks to ensure that all employees — regardless of gender, age, religion, or nationality — have equal opportunities for employment and will not be discriminated against during the recruitment process.

The first federal equal employment law is the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which was enacted to help ensure that men and women performing similar and equal work receive equal pay. The main objective of the law is to ensure that workers are not paid different wages for equal work on the basis of gender (Berger, 1971, p. 326). This law influenced employment practices in the organization I worked for by resulting in the development of compensation and benefits policies based on employees' input rather than their gender.

The second federal equal employment opportunity law is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, national origin, color, gender, or race. This law influences employment practices by ensuring that adopted policies and activities do not discriminate against individuals on account of these factors. In the organization I worked for, it contributed to the development of policies that prevent discrimination across all job responsibilities and levels.

Third, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a federal equal employment opportunity law enacted to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. The regulation requires organizations not to discriminate against individuals with disabilities as long as they are capable of performing essential job functions. The organization I worked for ensured compliance with this law by providing reasonable accommodations to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform their respective job functions without undue hardship.

The fourth equal employment opportunity law is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), which forbids discrimination on the basis of genetic information with regard to employment and health insurance. Employment practices in the organization I worked for were influenced by this law through the establishment of policies in which genetic information was not a consideration when making employment decisions.

Conclusion

Today's business environment is increasingly influenced and characterized by several factors largely attributable to changes in modern society. Organizations continue to face the need for enhanced and effective Human Resource Management policies and practices in order to respond to these factors. Moreover, organizational policies and strategies also need to take into consideration current workforce trends in order to improve productivity.