Learning summary: Human Resource management (Essay Sample)

Learning summary: Human Resource management
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In an ever changing world, managing Human Resources is now playing an important role more than ever before. For HR managers, communication is vital as this make a difference about an organization’s performance. Essentially, cultural competency ensures that human resource managers can communicate effectively to achieve an organization’s goals, even when the company does business across the world. In any case, HR managers should also take advantage of technological advancements, as organizations are increasingly relying on HRIS (Perkins & Shortland, 2006). Overall, the HR function should ensure that there is effective human resource planning, talent management, knowledge management, reward management, there is also a need to maintain safety and statutory, while also ensuring that the organization is flexible, with all employees upholding ethical practice.
The human resource personnel can be faced with ethical challenges, and there is a need to properly deal with ethical dilemmas to avoid damaging the company’s reputation and at times financial worth. Organizations that have comprehensive ethics programs make it easier for employees to understand the legal considerations of their actions. Promoting ethical behavior is vital to protecting an organization’s reputation and ensuing that the employees have trust in the human resource management (Perkins & Shortland, 2006). Even though, organizations typically adopt ethical policies, it is the personnel who make decisions on ethical choices in the workplace. Hence, it is crucial for the HR staff to behave with dignity and respect all other employees from different departments.
There are various schools of management thought, and the approaches have evolved over time to explain management practices in different eras. The role and function of human resource has also changed over time, but managing personnel and identifying the most optimal organizations strategy has gained more prominence. There is a need to hire competent personnel and manage talent, as there is increased competition because globalization has facilitated international trade. In any case, organizations face huge training costs when they do not adequately manage their personnel, underlying the significance of training and development. Besides the staffing function, human resource practitioners also complement the management functions of planning, control, organizing and coordinating.
There is also increased diversity in the workplace more than ever before, and equal treatment of employees ensures that there is no discrimination. There have been various landmark legislations to eliminate discrimination including the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Employment discrimination has been outlawed, and HR resource practitioners are expected to treat all employees and recruits fairly without discriminating against them (Snell & Bohlander, 2012). The judicial system has been instrumental in encouraging adoption of anti discrimination policies, showing that the regulatory authorities are potentially beneficial to the human resource practice. Essentially, the legal requirements have been crucial for minorities to get more recognition in the workplace by breaking the glass ceiling.
Employee dismissal is a touchy subject and the common reasons for involuntary termination include policy violation, absenteeism, poor job performance and incompetence. Nonetheless, dismissal should be a last resort, as human resource practitioners typically mediate and assess the reasons as to why employees should be let go. Since organizations have their own disciplinary mechanisms, there is a need to document every infraction. At the same time, there is a need to take into account the legal liability since the human resource department should ensure that there is proper management and coordination of organization’s policy (Truss et al., 2012). Overall, human resource practitioner ought to be objective mediators when critically assessing employee termination, while also deciding on a severance package.
In an increasingly difficult environment, the role of the social media on workers’ productivity has become a cause of concern because it can lead to reduced productivity. At the same time, organizations seek to engage customers, clients and employees through the social media, but the circumstances can present problems. Organizational leaders can also use the social media to share strategic goals of the organization, while employee commitment is essential to improve an organization competitive edge (Truss et al., 2012). The implication of social media on organizations is that there is a need to utilize soc...