Feature: John Mitchell Business Executive | February 2012 | PAGE 11
because sometimes the organisation can’t do what it wants because there are legal constraints, so you may be accused by management of being obstructive. Dealing with people can be, and often is, tough.
Approaching HRM studies If you are an ABE student, how should you study HRM? The answer is in the question – you do have to study – you can’t just make up HRM in the exam room (although plenty of candidates try)! Most managers will need to make quite complex and significant HR decisions: hiring or firing; conducting a fair disciplinary hearing; designing an effective training programme. Every manager needs to understand some of the basic principles of motivation and employee reward. There is a recognised and growing body of knowledge on these and other HR issues. ABE students must have studied them. Your success in examinations depends on study!
HR professionals need to be able to answer strategic questions and to turn the answers into practical actions
n What was your experience of the recruitment and selection process for your present job?
n Why did they do things the way they did, and how could they have done better?
n How is reward structured? n What is your employer looking to get by paying you in the way that it does?
n What would encourage you to give better service?
n What is your employer’s procedure for handling misconduct or unsatisfactory performance?
n How could appraisal be improved? n What does your organisation do to help you perform better? n At what point does your line manager hand over an HR issue to an HR specialist?
n Are people managed like machines or as human beings with feelings and potential which needs to be drawn out?
Reflect However, you can gain a lot from your experience if you reflect upon it, and draw some conclusions.
The list goes on and on. If you don’t know much about these
things, make the opportunity: find out if your employer has a staff handbook and look at it. Your manager might even be flattered if you showed an interest in their views on people management.
HR and high-performance working practices The relationship between HR practices and organisational success is something that has occupied the minds of thinkers for many decades. If we can work out which people management practices make organisations successful, we can produce a blueprint for how to make every organisation successful. The standard model includes: n Providing secure employment; n Being selective in hiring; n Creating and empowering self managed teams; n Providing high reward linked to organisational performance; n Training; n Harmonisation; and n The sharing of information. This is useful, but how far can we go with each of these? How
secure can employment be in an ever-changing environment; and how much time and money should be spent on training? These are just some examples of the sorts of questions that HR people face all the time. You may be concerned that there are a lot of question marks.
Are there no right and wrong answers in HRM? If you want to quickly learn the ‘10 Key Facts About…’ you are going to be disappointed. HRM is more about understanding key principles and applying them, than about learning only simple facts. Anyone can learn the stages of the recruitment process for example, but so what? We want students to be able to understand the context in which people are managed, rather than thinking they have found the “one right way” to manage all people in every situation. That doesn’t exist! But that is one of the things that makes the study of people in organisations such a fantastic subject.
Contact:
mail@jfmitchell.co.uk
Shutterstock / Marcin Balcerzak
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