Human resources?
Surprisingly, among other subjects that would allow me to obtain the best from my employees, it offered solutions to solve problems as “workers abuse in requesting many permissions” or to end “the abuse of Internet and the email in my company (employees waste hours and hours using the computer for particular aims)”.
So, thank you very much for the information, but with this industrial economy approach, where people were not so important and really treated as "human resources", neither I will obtain the best from my employees and collaborators nor, surely, I will succeed as an entrepreneur in the knowledge economy.
People Management!
If the entrepreneur's job must be to control if her collaborators surf or not the Internet for personal purposes, or if they stay one hour more or less in the office (not working, that it's not the same), that means she is not doing what she should: establishing a vision, defining concrete objectives for each one of her collaborators, giving them tools and motivating and implying them in the achievement of those goals.
And if after achieving the objectives they can solve some particular subject surfing the Internet or take some morning off, well, better for them. They will be happier in our company and more motivated. People are not human resources anymore, at least for companies that want to succeed in the global knowledge economy, where success depends on creative thinking, innovation and new ways of doing things.
Innovation is not only to invent a new technology or a new product. Innovation must be in every single part of our company. And obviously organization and people management is a crucial one.

Human Resource Planning Software
Oriador staff scheduling software takes the pain out of HR scheduling, shift planning and staff rotations. With Oriador you can prepare and distribute the staff schedule easier and faster, saving time and money for your business and reducing stress for you.
Simple scheduling, no more spreadsheets:
Unlike traditional spreadsheet style staff scheduling software, Oriador has been developed from the ground up to provide an attractive, easy to use graphical interface for defining and maintaining schedules and work plans.

Oriador: simple, graphical staff scheduling
Flexible, powerful, easy to use:

change staff shifts quickly with toolbars
Oriador staff scheduling software (Oriador Rota) takes care of your staff schedules and rosters quickly and easily, leaving you with more time and energy for other, more important tasks. We know that producing rosters and dealing with scheduling conflicts is the kind of work that often gets taken home, and we really want to help you leave it at the office.
The finished schedule can be exported to the web or a company intranet, while payroll or timesheet data can be exported to Microsoft Excel for further analysis.












OBJECTIVES OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (HRM)
Objectives are pre-determined goals to which individual or group activity in an organization is directed. Objectives of personnel management are influenced by organizational objectives and individual and social goals. Institutions are instituted to attain certain specific objectives. The objectives of the economic institutions are mostly to earn profits, and of the educational institutions are mostly to impart education and / or conduct research so on and so forth. However, the fundamental objective of any organization is survival. Organizations are not just satisfied with this goal. Further the goal of most of the organizations is growth and / or profits.
Institutions procure and manage various resources including human to attain the specified objectives. Thus, human resources are managed to divert and utilize their resources towards and for the accomplishment of organizational objectives. Therefore, basically the objectives of HRM are drawn from and to contribute to the accomplishment of the organizational objectives. The other objectives of HRM are to meet the needs, aspirations, values and dignity of individual employees and having due concern for the socio-economic problems of the community and the country.
The objectives of HRM may be as follows:
1.To create and utilize an able and motivated workforce, to accomplish the basic organizational goals.
2.To establish and maintain sound organizational structure and desirable working relationships among all the members of the organization.
3.To secure the integration of individual or groups within the organization by co-ordination of the individual and group goals with those of the organization.
4.To create facilities and opportunities for individual or group development so as to match it with the growth of the organization.
5.To attain an effective utilization of human resources in the achievement of organizational goals.
6.To identify and satisfy individual and group needs by providing adequate and equitable wages, incentives, employee benefits and social security and measures for challenging work, prestige, recognition, security, status.
7.To maintain high employees morale and sound human relations by sustaining and improving the various conditions and facilities.
8.To strengthen and appreciate the human assets continuously by providing training and development programs.
9.To consider and contribute to the minimization of socio-economic evils such as unemployment, under-employment, inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth and to improve the welfare of the society by providing employment opportunities to women and disadvantaged sections of the society.
10.To provide an opportunity for expression and voice management.
11.To provide fair, acceptable and efficient leadership.
12.To provide facilities and conditions of work and creation of favorable atmosphere for maintaining stability of employment.
Management has to create conductive environment and provide necessary prerequisites for the attainment of the personnel management objectives after formulating them.
Objectives……
FACTORS INFLUENCING TRENDS [Previous] [Next]

The objectives of managements, the ways in which enterprises are managed to achieve these objectives and the human resource management (hereinafter referred to as "HRM") and industrial relations (hereinafter referred to as "IR") initiatives in this regard, are affected by pressures, many of which are exerted by globalization. Changes in IR practices (rather than in institutions and systems) such as increased collective bargaining at enterprise level, flexibility in relation to forms of employment as well as in relation to working time and job functions have occurred as a result of such factors as heightened competition, rapid changes in products and processes and the increasing importance of skills, quality and productivity. These factors have also had an impact on HRM policies and practices. In managing change, the key elements include employee involvement in effecting change, greater customer orientation, and ensuring that the skills of employees are appropriate to the production of goods and the provision of services acceptable to the global market. As such, managing people in a way so as to motivate them to be productive is one important objective of HRM. The implications and consequences of globalization include the following:
1. Countries are more economically interdependent than before, particularly in view of foreign direct investment interlocking economies, as well as increased free trade. The inability of economies to be 'self-sufficient' or 'self-reliant' or 'self-contained' has been accompanied by a breakdown of investment and trade barriers.
2. Governments are increasingly less able to control the flow of capital, information and technology across borders.
3. There has been de-regulation of financial and other markets, and the integration of markets for goods, services and capital such as the European Community.
4. It has led to the de-nationalization of enterprises and the creation of global companies and global webs.
5. Production of goods and services acceptable to the global market, and the convergence, to a great extent, of customer tastes across borders determined by quality.
6. The need to achieve competitiveness and to remain competitive in respect of attracting investment, goods and services. This means, inter alia, the necessity for high quality skills at all levels to attract high value-added activities, as distinct from cheap labour low value-added ones, and improvements in productivity.
Enterprises driven by market pressures need to include in their goals improved quality and productivity, greater flexibility, continuous innovation, and the ability to change to respond rapidly to market needs and demands. Effective HRM is vital for the attainment of these goals. Improved quality and productivity linked to motivation can be achieved through training, employee involvement and extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. The growing interest in pay systems geared to performance and skills reflects one aspect of the increasing significance of HRM in realizing management goals and a gradual shift from collectivism to the individualisation of pay. In such pay systems a critical attraction is the possibility of achieving these goals without increasing labour costs but at the same time increasing earnings. Realizing management goals and managing change need employee involvement, commitment and training, employee participation, cooperation and team-work - all important HRM initiatives and activities. The dominant position towards which HRM is moving points to a
"change in power relations and highlights the supremacy of management. The management prerogative is rediscovered but in place of command and control the emphasis is on commitment and control as quality, flexibility and competence replaces quantity, task and dumb obedience. To put it another way: the managerial agenda is increasingly focused on innovation, quality and cost reduction. Human resource management makes more demands on employees, work is intensified .... there is less room for managerial slack and for indulgency patterns."1
From a purely HRM perspective, one writer2 has identified the following six factors as accounting for the increasing interest in and resort to HRM practices:
a. Improving the management of people or utilizing human resources better as a means of achieving competitive advantage.
b. The numerous examples of excellence in HRM have created an interest in such models.
c. The traditional role of personnel managers has failed to exploit the potential benefits of effective management of people; neither did personnel management form a central part of management activity.
d. In some countries the decline of trade union influence has opened the way for managements to focus on more individual issues rather than on collectivist ones.
e. The emergence of better educated workforces with higher individual expectations, changes in technology and the need for more flexible jobs have, in turn, created the need to incorporate HRM into central management policy.
f. Many important aspects of HRM such as commitment and motivation emanate from the area of organizational behaviour, and place emphasis on management strategy. This has provided an opportunity to link HRM with organizational behaviour and management strategy.

[Top] [Contents]
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TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND MANAGEMENT OBJECTIVES [Previous] [Next]

When identifying some of the trends in HRM and when subsequently analysing how they could contribute to achieving management objectives, it is necessary to voice a note of caution. The fact that one elaborates on an ideal model of HRM does not mean that such models have been widely adopted in the real corporate world.3 As Thomas A Kochan and Lee Dyer point out, "even today we find that the human resource function within many American corporations remains weak and relatively low in influence relative to other managerial functions such as finance, marketing, and manufacturing ... despite the outpouring of academic writing on 'strategic human resource management' little progress has been made in developing systematic theory or empirical evidence on the conditions under which human resources are elevated to a position where the firm sees and treats these issues as a source of competitive advantage."4 The 'best practice' models are really the exceptions, but their value is that they, in a sense, prove the rule, so to speak. Absence of widespread practice is no argument against such a model, but is rather a reason to advocate it, in the same way that the absence of a harmonious IR system in a given situation or country is no argument against advocating it. However, it is possible that the various pressures on enterprises in the 1990s will result in increased resort to effective HRM policies and practices. In the ultimate analysis, HRM and IR are about how people are treated, and their relevance increases where an enterprise takes a long-term view, rather than a short-term one, of what it wants to achieve. Two writers, after examining some of the successful companies such as IBM, GE, Hewlett Packard and Matsushita, observe that
"there are a series of things concerned with corporate objectives and culture that seem to matter. Agreement on basic directions for the long-term development of the business, and on how to treat people within the firm, are perhaps the most essential common features of these companies."5
The increasingly significant role of HRM in achieving management objectives is reflected in the transformation of the personnel management function. Over the last two decades this function was often marginalized in terms of its importance in management activities and hierarchy. It has evolved from a concentration on employee welfare to one of managing people in a way so as to obtain the best and highest productivity possible from the employee, through methods that provide the employee with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.6 Therefore today
"far from being marginalised, the human resource management function becomes recognized as a central business concern; its performance and delivery are integrated into line management; the aims shift from merely securing compliance to the more ambitious one of winning commitment. The employee resource, therefore, becomes worth investing in, and training and development thus assume a higher profile. These initiatives are associated with, and maybe are even predicated upon, a tendency to shift from a collective orientation to the management of the workforce to an individualistic one. Accordingly management looks for 'flexibility' and seeks to reward differential performance in a differential way. Communication of managerial objectives and aspirations takes on a whole new importance."7
What separates or distinguishes HRM from the traditional personnel function is the integration of HRM into strategic management and the pre-occupation of HRM with utilizing the human resource to achieve strategic management objectives. HRM "seeks to eliminate the mediation role and adopts a generally unitarist perspective. It emphasizes strategy and planning rather than problem-solving and mediation, so that employee cooperation is delivered by programmes of corporate culture, remuneration packaging, team building and management development for core employees, while peripheral employees are kept at arms"length."8
HRM strategies may be influenced by the decisions taken on strategy (the nature of the business currently and in the future) and by the structure of the enterprise (the manner in which the enterprise is structured or organized to meet its objectives)9. In an enterprise with effective HRM policies and practices, the decisions on HRM are also strategic decisions influenced by strategy and structure, and by external factors such as trade unions, the labour market situation and the legal system. In reality most firms do not have such a well thought-out sequential model. But what we are considering here is effective HRM, and thus a model where HRM decisions are as strategic as the decisions on the type of business and structure.
At a conceptual level the interpretations of HRM indicate different emphases which lead to concentration on different contents of the discipline. The various distinctions or interpretations indicate that HRM
"can be used in a restricted sense so reserving it as a label only for that approach to labour management which treats labour as a valued asset rather than a variable cost and which accordingly counsels investment in the labour resource through training and development and through measures designed to attract and retain a committed workforce. Alternatively, it is sometimes used in an extended way so as to refer to a whole array of recent managerial initiatives including measures to increase the flexible utilization of the labour resource and other measures which are largely directed at the individual employee. But another distinction can also be drawn. This directs attention to the 'hard' and 'soft' versions of HRM. The 'hard' one emphasizes the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing the headcounts resource in as 'rational' a way as for any other economic factor. By contrast, the 'soft' version traces its roots to the human-relations school; it emphasizes communication, motivation, and leadership."10
There are several ways in which HRM has changed earlier attitudes and assumptions of personnel management about managing people.11 The new model of HRM includes many elements vital to the basic management goal of achieving and maintaining competitiveness.
First, HRM earlier reacted piece-meal to problems as they arose. Effective HRM now increasingly seeks to link HRM issues to the overall strategy of the organization. Organizations with the most effective HRM policies and practices seek to integrate such policies in corporate strategies and to reinforce or change an organization's culture. Integration is needed in two senses -integrating HRM issues into an organization's strategic plans and securing the acceptance and inclusion of a HRM view in the decisions of line managers. The HRM policies in respect of the various functions (e.g. recruitment, training, etc.) should be internally consistent. They must also be consistent with the business strategies and should reflect the organization's core values12. The problem of integrating HRM with business strategy13 arises, for example, in a diversified enterprise with different products and markets. In such cases there is the difficulty of matching HRM policies with strategies which could vary among different business activities, each of which may call for different HRM policies. For instance, in particular cases "the 'hard' version of human resource management appears more relevant than the 'soft' version of human resource management. In other words, matching HRM policies to business strategy calls for minimizing labour costs, rather than treating employees as a resource whose value may be enhanced .... by increasing their commitment, functional flexibility, and quality."14 This contradiction is sometimes sought to be resolved through the claim that developing people is possible only where the business is successful. Therefore if reducing the labour force or dispensing with poor performers is dictated by business conditions, resorting to such measures and treating people as a resource are not antithetic. Another reconciliation of this contradiction is sought through management initiatives to change business strategy (e.g. in sectors where reducing costs is a common practice such as in mass production and supermarket retailing) through greater employee involvement, commitment and training.
Second, building strong cultures is a way of promoting particular organizational goals, in that "a 'strong culture' is aimed at uniting employees through a shared set of managerially sanctioned values ('quality', 'service', 'innovation', etc.) that assume an identification of employee and employer interests."15 However, there can be tension between a strong organizational culture and the need to adapt to changed circumstances and to be flexible, particularly in the highly competitive and rapidly changing environment in which employers have to operate today. Rapid change demanded by the market is sometimes difficult in an organization with a strong culture. IBM has been cited as a case in point. Its firmly-held beliefs about products and services made it difficult to effect change in time, i.e. when the market required a radical change in product and service (from mainframe, customised systems, salesmen as management consultants to customer-as-end user, seeking quality of product and service) to personal computers (standardized product, cost competition, dealer as customer).16 Nevertheless in the long term a strong organizational culture is preferable to a weak one:
"Hence it could be said that the relationship between 'strong' cultures, employee commitment, and adaptability contains a series of paradoxes. Strong cultures allow for a rapid response to familiar conditions, but inhibit immediate flexibility in response to the unfamiliar, because of the commitment generated to a (now) inappropriate ideology. 'Weak' cultures, in contrast, when equated with ambiguous ideologies, allow flexibility in response to the unfamiliar, but cannot generate commitment to action. Yet strong cultures, through disconfirmation and eventual ideological shift may prove ultimately more adaptive to change, assuming the emergence of a new strong yet appropriate culture. This may be at the cost of a transitional period when ability to generate commitment to any course of action -new or old - is minimal."17
Third, the attitude that people are a variable cost is, in effective HRM, replaced by the view that people are a resource and that as social capital can be developed and can contribute to competitive advantage. Increasingly, it is accepted that competitive advantage is gained through well-educated and trained, motivated and committed employees at all levels. This recognition is now almost universal, and accounts for the plausible argument that training and development are, or will be, the central pillar of HRM. By the end of the 1980s leading companies in Germany, Japan and the USA were spending up to 3% of turnover on training and development, but in the UK such expenditure amounted to only about 0.15%.18 The economic performance of some of the East Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and of some of the South East Asian countries (Singapore and Malaysia) are intimately connected with their high level of investment in education and training. Other countries are now placing human resource development at the centre of their national strategic plans - Indonesia being a recent example. Thus
"The existence of policies and practices designed to realize the latent potential of the workforce at all levels becomes the litmus test of an organization's orientation."19
Fourth, the view that the interests of employees and management or shareholders are divergent and conflictual - though substantially true in the past - is giving way to the view that this need not necessarily be so. HRM seeks to identify and promote a commonality of interests. Significant examples are training which enhances employment security and higher earning capacity for employees and which at the same time increases the employee's value to the enterprise's goals of better productivity and performance; pay systems which increase earnings without significant labour cost increases, and which at the same time promote higher performance levels; goal-setting through two-way communication which establishes unified goals and objectives and which provides intrinsic rewards to the employee through a participatory process.
Fifth, top-down communication coupled with controlled information flow to keep power within the control of management categories is gradually giving way to a sharing of information and knowledge. This change facilitates the creation of trust and commitment and makes knowledge more productive. Control from the top is being replaced by increasing employee participation and policies which foster commitment and flexibility which help organizations to change when necessary. The ways in which the larger Japanese enterprises have installed participatory schemes and introduced information-sharing and two-way communication systems are instructive in this regard.
In enterprises which tend to have corporate philosophies or missions, and where there are underlying values which shape their corporate culture, HRM becomes a part of the strategy to achieve their objectives. For example, in Matsushita Electric Company "finance, personnel and training are all fully centralised .... Personnel and training exist to create 'harmony' In other words the central role of these functions is to help build and maintain the Matsushita culture ....people are seen as the critical resource."20 In some types of enterprises such as ones in which continuous technological change takes
place, the goal of successfully managing change at short intervals often requires employee cooperation through emphasis on communication and involvement. As this type of unit grows,
"If there is strategic thinking in human resource management these units are likely to wish to develop employee-relations policies based on high individualism paying above market rates to recruit and retain the best labour, careful selection and recruitment systems to ensure high quality and skill potential, emphasis on internal training schemes to develop potential for further growth, payment system designed to reward individual performance and cooperation, performance and appraisal reviews, and strong emphasis on team work and communication ... In short, technical and capital investment is matched by human resource investments, at times reaching near the ideals of human resource management."21


THE THEORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT [Previous] [Next]

In considering the relationship between HRM and IR, two central concerns are: in what way does HRM pose a challenge to IR and how can conflicts between the two, if any, be reconciled so that they can complement each other? This section concerns itself with the first of these two issues. In considering the issue, it is necessary to identify the broad goals of each discipline. The goals of HRM have already been identified in the previous section. It remains to consider some of the basic objectives of IR, which could be said to include the following:
1. The efficient production of goods and services and, at the same time, determination of adequate terms and conditions of employment, in the interests of the employer, employees and society as a whole, through a consensus achieved through negotiation.
2. The establishment of mechanisms for communication, consultation and cooperation in order to resolve workplace issues at enterprise and industry level, and to achieve through a tripartite process, consensus on labour policy at national level.
3. Avoidance and settlement of disputes and differences between employers, employees and their representatives, where possible through negotiation and dispute settlement mechanisms.
4. To provide social protection where needed e.g. in the areas of social security, safety and health, child labour, etc.
5. Establishment of stable and harmonious relations between employers and employees and their organizations, and between them and the State.
IR is essentially pluralistic in outlook, in that it covers not only the relations between employer and employee (the individual relations) but also the relations between employers and unions and between them and the State (collective relations). IR theory, practice and institutions traditionally focus more on the collective aspect of relations. This is evident from the central place occupied by labour law, freedom of association, collective bargaining, the right to strike, employee involvement practices which involve unions, trade unionism and so on. HRM deals with the management of human resources, rather than with the management of collective relations. There is of course a certain measure of overlap. Individual grievance handling falls within the ambit of both disciplines, but dispute settlement of collective issues more properly falls within the scope of IR. Policies and practices relating to recruitment, selection, appraisal, training and motivation form a part of HRM. Team-building, communication and cooperation, though primarily HRM initiatives, have a collectivist aspect. Thus joint consultative mechanisms are as much IR initiatives, which may (as in Japan) supplement collective bargaining. But IR has not, in regard to team-building for instance, developed any techniques or theories about how to achieve it; in fact, it is not a focus of attention because it implies a potential loyalty to the enterprise through the team and is seen as conflicting with loyalty to the union. IR has a large component of rules which govern the employment relationship. These rules may be prescribed by the State through laws, by courts or tribunals, or through a bipartite process such as collective bargaining. HRM differs in this respect from industrial relations in the sense that it does not deal with such procedures and rules, but with the best way to use the human resource through, for example, proper selection and recruitment, induction, appraisal, training and development, motivation, leadership and intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Thus "at its most basic HRM represents a set of managerial initiatives."29 Four processes central to a HRM system - selection, appraisal, rewards and development30 - leave only limited room for IR as a central element in the human resource system. "Based on theoretical work in the field of organizational behaviour it is proposed that HRM comprises a set of policies designed to maximise organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. Within this model, collective industrial relations have, at best, only a minor role."31
A discernible trend in management is a greater individualisation of the employer-employee relationship, implying less emphasis on collective, and more emphasis on individual relations. This is reflected, for instance, in monetary and non-monetary reward systems. In IR the central monetary reward is wages and salaries, one of its central themes (given effect to by collective bargaining) being internal equity and distributive justice and, often, standardisation across industry. HRM increasingly places emphasis on monetary rewards linked to performance and skills through the development of performance and skills-based pay systems, some of which seek to individualise monetary rewards (e.g. individual bonuses, stock options, etc.). HRM strategies to secure individual commitment through communication, consultation and participatory schemes underline the individualisation thrust, or at least effect, of HRM strategies. On the other hand, it is also legitimate to argue that HRM does not focus exclusively on the individual and, as such, does not promote only individual employment relations. Though much of HRM is directed at the individual,
"at the same time there is a parallel emphasis on team work, whether in the form of quality circles or functional flexibility, and above all, on the individual's commitment to the organization, represented not just as the sum of the individuals in it, but rather as an organic entity with an interest in survival. The potential conflict between emphasizing the importance of the individual on the one hand, and the desirability of cooperative team work and employee commitment to the organization, on the other, is glossed over through the general assumption of unitarist values ..: HRM stresses the development of a strong corporate culture -not only does it give direction to an organization, but it mediates the tension between individualism and collectivism, as individuals socialised into a strong culture are subject to unobtrusive collective controls on attitudes and behaviour."32
Some of the tensions between IR and HRM arise from the unitarist outlook of HRM (which sees a commonality of interests between managements and employees) and the pluralist outlook of IR (which assumes the potential for conflict in the employment relationship flowing from different interests). "It is often said that HRM is the visual embodiment of the unitarist frame of reference both in the sense of the legitimation of managerial authority and in the imagery of the firm as a team with committed employees working with managers for the benefit of the firm."33 How to balance these conflicting interests and to avoid or to minimize conflicts (e.g. through promotion of negotiation systems such as collective bargaining, joint consultation, dispute settlement mechanisms within the enterprise and at national level in the form of conciliation, arbitration and labour courts) in order to achieve a harmonious IR system is one central task of IR. The individualization of HRM, reflected in its techniques which focus on direct employer-employee links rather than with employee representatives, constitutes one important difference between IR and HRM. It has been observed that:
"The empirical evidence also indicates that the driving force behind the introduction of HRM appears to have little to do with industrial relations; rather it is the pursuit of competitive advantage in the market place through provision of high-quality goods and services, through competitive pricing linked to high productivity and through the capacity swiftly to innovate and manage change in response to changes in the market place or to breakthroughs in research and development ... Its underlying values, reflected in HRM policies and practices, would appear to be essentially unitarist and individualistic in contrast to the more pluralist and collective values of traditional industrial relations."34

Importance
Abstract:
Examines the relationship between how people are managed, and the effectiveness of business to business (B2B) e-commerce implementations. The human resource management practices used to test this relationship are training, employee involvement and participatory culture. A survey instrument was designed for the purpose of testing the research hypotheses based on the themes identified in the review of the literature. This survey was administered within a sample of the membership of EAN Australia. The results indicate that there is a clear link established between effective management of human resources and effective implementation of B2B e-commerce enabling technologies. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that the development of a participative culture coupled with the involvement of employees, will be more effective than solely investing in training programs. This study has been limited to organizations operating in the Australian fast moving consumer goods sector. The results therefore need to be read in this context, and it would be useful if these hypotheses could be tested in other countries and different industry sectors. The overall impression is that the organizations that will derive the greatest benefit from the use of these technologies will be not only those that invest in training for the use of the technology. More important sources of leverage are likely to derive from involving a broad range of employees directly in implementation, while actively encouraging a culture of participation across the organization. There is a clear link established between effective management of human resources and effective implementation of B2B e-commerce enabling technologies. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that the development of a participative culture coupled with the involvement of employees, will be more effective than solely investing in training programs.


Objectives…..You and the Canadian Technology Human Resources Board
The Canadian Technology Human Resources Board (CTHRB) provides membership and partnership opportunities for organizations interested in supporting our activities and utilizing our products and services.
The levels of membership/partnership and their benefits are described here for your convenience. CTHRB encourages your organization to join us in our mission and, if you are interested in negotiating arrangements to exchange products and/or services with CTHRB, please contact us.
Departments, divisions or sections of larger companies may also participate through our Gold or Silver level partnerships.
PRINCIPAL MISSION:
o Promote the Industry:
Promote the common HR interests of the companies that employ technical workers, as well as those contributing to those companies
o Promote the Workers:
Enhance the career prospects, training, and education of the technical community, through skills recognition programs, job matching, and career tracking
o Promote the Stakeholders:
Serve as the single leverage point for coordinated between all the stakeholders concerned with Canada’s technology-related workforce.
Managing The Human Resource Project
By: John T. Mooney
MANAGING THE HUMAN RESOURCE PROJECT
By: John T. Mooney

We obtain strategic results by aligning HR mission, vision and values. The following overview highlights a macro approach to project management. Seeking a stretch assignment, such as ownership of a major corporate HR initiative, we lead our organization by example. Strategic project management affords an exciting and challenging opportunity to direct our futures and show case our talents.

The VP of HR announces to the team that we must transition from a decentralized function to a centralized function within six months placing you in charge. The set timeframe required to realize budget improvement for immediate bottom line results. The cost savings will be unprecedented for the dozens of locations countrywide. Senior management set the expectation, on time – on budget, ensuring precise project implementation.

You take pride in your ability as an accomplished HR generalist to deliver results and get projects done. Success comes, in part, from your tactical / transactional ability to prioritize assignments and communicate the necessary timeline to managers.

By the execution of project leadership skills, you will add measurable strategic value to your organization and your own skill-set. A project assignment budgeted in the five, six or seven-figure range will require skills and HR competencies including:
•communications
•documentation
•execution and accountability
•formal controls

Strategic HR leadership necessitates project management skills that require you see the big picture. Your approach may be similar to the strategic creation of your HR mission, vision and values. Likewise, the values of a project assignment become the blueprint upon which you make project planning decisions.
HR Influence
Your scope of influence requires proficient skills in project plan and design. This may include a draft plan to senior management detailing how you will accomplish this task. In addition, you may be required to design assessment tools where they may not exist, or evaluate and communicate risk up line to your organization. Measurements including corporate resources, budget assumptions, timeline and accountability are typically established. These metrics develop into key result areas as they relate to time, cost and objective.

Your span of influence will require you to work effectively across department lines. You may be asked to understand and effectively operate with “politics” and “organizational constraints” from project start to completion. How well you manage these variables will determine your project success.

Your ability to influence and lead the project assignment may grow in stages. The personality type you display, cool and confident or nervous and frazzled, will set the project tone. Your mentoring and motivating team members will determine how this project approaches its potential. Rapport building will lead to trust, ultimately enabling a broad reach and results across department lines as needed.

Your HR project influence then goes beyond mentoring to enable empowerment of team members to accomplish their mission. Corporations without a team-based environment may experience more “forming and storming” before getting the project off the ground. Sponsoring senior management demonstrates its vision by the appropriate modeling of leadership. This then becomes a subset of project delegation. False starts and difficulty meeting preliminary deadlines may indicate early lack of alignment.

While complex, often intimidating and frequently overwhelming in the earliest stages, HR professionals who build a step-by-step plan in collaboration with internal and external resources can demonstrate project management as a tool for internal consulting at the highest level of their organization.

Focused exclusively on EMPLOYEE RELATIONS, HR COMMUNICATIONS and RECRUITMENT PROJECTS.
You can contact John Mooney at (972) 355-7481 or email Jmooney@ConsultiveSource.com or the company website www.ConsultiveSource.com. We utilize extensive hands-on industry competencies to solve your HR challenges. Supporting small, medium or large human resource projects with 20 years of human resource and operating experience, John Mooney has a results-oriented, focused approach to the human resource needs specific to manufacturing, hospitality, financial services / insurance, government, telecommunications and healthcare.
Human Resource Management And Business Objectives And Strategies In Small And Medium Sized Business……….
Abstract

There is growing evidence of the importance of co-operation between managers and workers for improving industrial performance. One manifestation of this is the growing use of human resource management (HRM) strategies to increase the involvement of employees. The survey of small and medium sized businesses revealed that a substantial majority of small and medium sized firms used HRM methods and many more than one. The employment of HRM was positively associated with a commitment to non-price competition, longer term business objectives, the intensity of training, innovation, external collaboration and partnerships and the use and effectiveness of externally provided business services and advice. Whilst no causal relation can be necessarily implied from these statistical associations, it is instructive that a significant larger proportion of firms that used HRM practices, particularly in combination and together with training, innovation and external partnership and collaboration, traded in the more fiercely competitive overseas markets and were growing.



Importance…
Human Resource Employee Risk Profile
By: Philip Lye
HUMAN RESOURCE & INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS RISK CHECKLIST©

Employing workers is a risk but you can do something about ensuring your risks are minimised.

This Checklist should be used as a guide to assess your human resource management and industrial relations risks. It is intended to assist you identify your ‘risk profile’ and ‘potential exposures’ and with identification to take appropriate action to minimise these potential risks and exposures

Please answer the following question honestly by drawing a circle around or shading in the column. If you can only answer part of the question in the affirmative, then you should select ‘No’ eg in Q1 if you have employment contracts for your employees and not for your management team then select ‘No’.

1.I have up to date employment contracts for all employees and managementYesNo

2.I induct all employees into the workplace using a documented processYesNo

3.I have fully documented human resources procedures and policies in placeYesNo

4.These policies and procedures are available to all employees and are regularly referred to, used and maintainedYesNo

5.I conduct a semi-annual performance management process with all employeesYesNo

6.I have documented grievance, discrimination, workplace bullying & sexual harassment policies in placeYesNo

7.I have a written termination procedure and policy in placeYesNo

8.My employees have been trained and understand that we do not accept discrimination, workplace bullying & sexual harassmentYesNo

9.Minor workplace issues are not taking to much of my timeYesNo

10.We have low employee turnover compared to our industry averageYesNo

11.I provide my employees with regular constructive feedback and reward them where appropriateYesNo
Human Resource Management Strategy
Objectives of the HRM Strategy
The objectives of the HRM strategy are to enable this Organisation to meet the many challenges already outlined, in particular, the public demand for more and higher quality public services. As mentioned earlier, these demands have implications for the services which we deliver.
It is also clear that the work of the Organisation is growing in complexity. For example, as the Ombudsman deals with complaints, public bodies are recognising what are now becoming accepted norms of good administration and are making increased efforts to settle complaints before they reach the Ombudsman. But the more complex complaints for which there are as yet no precedents, continue to be dealt with by the Office. Equally, applications for review under the Freedom of Information Act are becoming more complex as public bodies begin to take guidance from those decisions which have already been issued by the Information Commissioner. And it also follows that the range of legislation overseen by the Standards in Public Office Commission, some of which is still relatively new, as guidance and norms emerge, will leave the Commission free to deal with more complex matters. However, this increasing drift toward complexity raises new challenges for the Organisation in terms of ensuring that the skills, competencies and capabilities of staff are equal to the full range of tasks which the Organisation performs. The HRM strategy will play an important role in ensuring a good fit between work complexity and staff capability.
We also have to recognise that we will be faced with constant staff turnover particularly at executive and clerical level. This is because of competition with the private sector and, indeed, other parts of the Civil Service as members of staff leave the Organisation on promotion and new members enter it on promotion. Here again, an effective HRM strategy has a crucial role to play. If it operates effectively it can make the Organisation a more attractive place to work by comparison with other departments and offices. This can have the effect of attracting staff to the Organisation and, perhaps, providing an incentive for others to stay who might otherwise be attracted to a career, particularly in the private sector. To mention just one example, the manner in which the Organisation operates family-friendly policies could give it a competitive advantage from a staff perspective.
Part A: Educational Objectives
1. Module TITLE: Principles of Human Resource Management
2. Module CODE: HRM 770 3. NQF CREDITS: 10
4. Contact time: 1 week 5. NQF LEVEL: 7
6. PURPOSE of this module:
The overall aim of the module in Human Resources Management is enabling Health Care
Professionals and Managers to effectively handle basic human resource management
situations in the health care environment by means of applying the knowledge and
understanding of generic people skills components and processes appropriately in practice.
7. INSTRUCTIONAL GOALS:
Students must have :
• An understanding of the systems approach to human resource management and its role in
the global environment
• An understanding of the basic processes such as human resource planning, recruitment,
selection, compensation and benefits as well as job analysis and evaluation.
• Insight into the current legal framework within which human resource managers should
function.
• Acquired practical skills in issues such as: conflict management, effective communication,
group dynamics, generic people interaction management and labour relations
management in the health care environment.