Main Objectives of HR Function

1.Give examples of the main organisational objectives that the HR function is responsible for delivering and briefly explain how these have evolved/are evolving in contemporary organisations. In your answer, provide a brief justification for managing HR in a professional, ethical and just manner.

2.Your CEO has asked for a report on the contribution of the HR function to the business. In preparation for the report, give a brief summary of the criteria and methods available for use in evaluating the HR function’s contribution.

3.In consultation with your tutor, select an article that identifies and evaluates research evidence linking HR practices with positive organisational outcomes.

The role of the HR is crucial to the success of the organisation depends on the fulfilment of the goals and objectives. The proper management of the human resources contributes to the objectives of contemporary organisations. These objectives may be categorised into several heads, performance objectives, change management, and the administration objectives. Some of the examples from those objectives can be survival, building organisational capability through people and performance, employee engagement, career development skills, promoting healthy employee relations, gaining market share, global recognition, and others    (Rebecca, and Patrick, 2013). Building organisational capability is one of the major objectives of HR function that forms the basis of other objectives and organisational sustainability, growth and success. An organisational capability includes human activities that drive businesses results, achieved through focusing on inspiring leadership and innovation in the organisation. Thus, the organisational capability is a part of the intangible assets of the organisation (Creative HRM, 2018).

The other objectives such as ‘Staffing objectives’ means the ‘right person in the right place’, includes the strategies formulated to ensure that the organisation has the competent personnel. HR managers are responsible to evaluate the job market and critically analyse the different structures and recruit the appropriate employees in the organisation who will effectively assist in meeting the set goals and objectives. After ensuring the efficient personnel in the organisation, HR managers must ensure that the employee remains motivated and dedicated to the organisation and enhance their performance in the end (AZ central, 2018). Therefore, Organisations and HR managers also provide training and development sessions to their employees, leading to improving employee performance. As the organisations operate in a dynamic environment, there is a consistent transformation in the role of HR over time. The HR function has evolved and transformed from an operational role to the service centre role in contemporary organisations. The HR departments in the organisations focused on attracting and retaining the quality labour in the organisation. The strategic HRM policies developed and implemented in the organisation to diversify the roles and responsibilities of the human resource managers. Therefore, ethics is another main concern; the kind of HR that business leaders and people trust depends on the sound professional knowledge base, principles, and practices, and the capabilities of the organisation (Inquirer, 2015).  

Evolution of HR Role in Contemporary Organizations

The importance of ethical behaviour raised from the fact that non-professionals lack the methodology to check the quality of the advice given by the professionals. Numerous ethical issues arise in the organisation,  job insecurity, employment and remuneration issues, industrial relations, health, and safety is one of the major concerns. Hence, HR function should be managed in a professional, ethical and just manner (Cleverism, 2014).

HRM is an important asset in any organisation crucial to the success of the organisation. The HR department is the link between the employees and the higher management levels of the organisation. The contribution of the HR measured in terms of devising strategies for the effective hiring practices, deciding the correct salary package for the employees, enhancing their performance level, and managing the organisational policies. Therefore, HR contributes to the organisation in numerous ways leading to an increasing in the potential to grow and achieve success (Cleverism, 2014). There are certain approaches or methods to systematically evaluate the HR function contribution in the organisation, such as using balance scorecard, benchmarking surveys, SLA’s and KPI’s. Balance scorecard helps in evaluating the HRM effectiveness (What is Human resource, 2018). It contains four dimensions the internal business processes, the financial position of the organisation, customer service and the organisational capacity to grow. Scorecard assists the HR managers to align their business units and the resources with the organisational strategies. The evaluation of the HR function is not based on the people dimension of the scorecard; rather stress should be put on the other aspects also equally. The scorecard describes employee commitment is the one criteria for the process of evaluation and the HR managers will be held accountable to the other dimensions as well (Business line, 2018).      

The other approaches include the ‘Benchmarking’ strategy’ which describes setting up a standard, evaluating the firm’s own practices with the competing firms. In addition to the performance evaluation, benchmarking serves the purpose of helping managers to learn from other firms and to adopt new and effective HR strategies (Management, 2018).

The other processes such as KPI’s, ‘Key Performance Indicators’, KPI measures the performance of the particular process or an activity. These tools identify, and monitor the performance over time for the establishment of the organisational goals. SLA’s one of the other methods of evaluating the HR function. It refers to Service level agreement, which means a two-way agreement the development of which will support the strategic implementation of HR policies. These are the methods used to evaluate the HR function contribution (Miyake, 2015).

Importance of Managing HR Ethically

The underlying rational behind the existence of a business organization is to earn sizable business revenues and profits to reach the ultimate goal of business sustainability. Human resource team has an important role to play in achieving the desired goals of the organization.  The first and the foremost thing is creation of organization goals and objectives which has to be achieved by the employees of the organization. On the basis of the goals created for the organization, individual’s goals are created for the employees which are further translated into their Key Performance Indicator. KPI’s or Key Performance indicator helps in providing a clear path for the employees, on the basis of which their performance in the organization gets assessed. After creating goals and KPI’s for the employees, they are provided with feedback on a continual basis, which helps them in improving their performance while working on the feedback given by their peers and the managers. This 360 degree Performance management system helps in improving the performance of the employees while contributing towards the achievement of the organizational goals.

Another important aspect here is the creation of a talent pool to find and train the employees who are a fit to the organization and have the capabilities of achieving the goals of the organization. Within the purview of the research article here it has been mentioned that there exists a direct relationship between the informal High-performance work practices and job satisfaction. The article states the fact that, greater the engagement of the employees with the HPWP, greater is their job satisfaction and vice versa. Job satisfaction may seem to be a little difficult to achieve by indulging in HPWP in informal organization, but it is openness in communication by the managers, which ensures job satisfaction amongst the employees.

There are no two doubts on the fact that High performance work practices in the organization definitely push the ecosystem of job satisfaction amongst the employees, as it takes away all the hygiene factors in the organization and infuses them with the best or the motivation factors in the workplace. Practices such as continuous monitoring and leadership development strategy, reward and recognition program, in house problem solving, competency or performance based pay, flexible job descriptions or specification are some of the practices consisting of High performing work practices in the organization.

In order to summarize the major findings from the assignment, the following points are worth mentioning:

• Unused HPWP create a negative association with the concept of Job satisfaction.
• Employees with lesser job satisfaction engage significantly lower in comparison to the employees with higher job satisfaction.

Thus, it can be said that the engagement of the employees with the High performing work practices in the organization is a harbinger in the direction of enhanced productivity, which ultimately leads to achievement of the organizational goals and objectives.

References

Business line (2018) How to measure HR’s contribution. [online] Available from: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/specials/new-manager/how-to-measure-hrs-contribution/article23029509.ece [Accessed 12/07/18].

Clark, W. (2017) HR Evaluation Methods. [online] Available from: https://bizfluent.com/list-6742834-hr-evaluation-methods.html [Accessed 12/07/18].

Cleverism (2014) How HR strategy can help you gain Competitive Advantage. [online] Available from: https://www.cleverism.com/hr-strategy-competitive-advantage/ [Accessed 12/07/18].
AZ central (2018) Objectives of Staffing. [online] Available from: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/objectives-staffing-8337.html [Accessed 12/07/18].

Creative HRM (2018) Long-term HR Goals and Objectives in the Organisation. [online] Available from: https://www.creativehrm.com/hr-goals-objectives.html [Accessed 12/07/18].

Giauque, D., Anderfuhren-Biget, S. and Varone, F. (2013) HRM practices, intrinsic motivators, and organizational performance in the public sector. Public Personnel Management, 42(2), pp. 123-150.

Inquirer (2015) Strategic HRM: Building organisational capabilities. [online] Available from: https://business.inquirer.net/202970/strategic-hrm-building-organizational-capabilities [Accessed 12/07/18].

Management (2018) Approaches to HR Evaluation. [online] Available from: https://www.managementstudyhq.com/hrm-evaluation-approaches.html [Accessed 12/07/18].

Miyake, D. (2015) 48 Human Capital KPIs & Scorecard measures. [online] Available from: https://www.clearpointstrategy.com/human-capital-kpis-scorecard-measures/ [Accessed 12/07/18].

Rebecca R. K., and Patrick M. W. (2013) The Impact of High-Performance Human Resource Practices on Employees’ Attitudes and Behaviours. Journal of management, 39(2), pp. 366-391.

Strategic Human resource (2018) Bring Turnover and Absenteeism under Control. [online] Available from: https://www.strategic-human-resource.com/turnover-and-absenteeism.html [Accessed 12/07/18].

Tech Target (2018) Service level agreement. [online] Available from: https://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/service-level-agreement [Accessed 12/07/18].

What is a Human resource (2018) Benchmarking? [online] Available from: https://www.whatishumanresource.com/Human-Resource-benchmarking [Accessed 12/07/18].

Yanadori, Y. and Van Jaarsveld, D.D (2014) The relationships of informal high performance work practices to job satisfaction and workplace profitability. Industrial Relations, 53(3), pp. 501-534.