Human Resource Management - appunti competi

Strategic human resource challenges: present and emerging

Introduction

Learning objectives

• To provide a deep understanding, based on theoretical frameworks, of issues regarding managing people in organizations.
• To develop the competences and knowledge about HRM policies and tools.
• Focusing on how to foster people motivation and productivity.
• Go through the method for motivating and make possible that people grow the productivity.
• To develop critical thinking and analytical reasoning.
• Understand how to have a critical thinking about a company organization.

What is human resource management?

• Group of activities and responsibilities that make possible the roll out of the strategy to the operation through people, values, processes, behaviors and culture.
• Resolving disputes, providing benefits and incentives, orienting and training [yellow words list].
• Understanding the context: fundamental.

From where do we start?

• Strategy organization model.
• In order to manage we need a Business Plan: done from the board, sales, operation, Research & Development, marketing, key client etc.
• It defines a path useful for shareholder and the people working there.
• From the business plan we build the Human Resources management.
• Interest in the Corporate governance, influences a lot the People Search, the staffing process, People Competences, training & development, Organization model, IT & digital structure.

HR gives an important contribution to the organization design.

• Organization Perspective, Organization Culture, Human Resource Choices.
• Organization design is a general definition, could intend all the organization.
• Ethics: Organization effectiveness and shareholders.
• Platforms: International organization and strategies.
• Agility: Designing Organizational structure, type of organization approaches, way of solving problems, working, bureaucratic or agile.
• Digital transition: Organization culture and change, ex. acquisition and changes in the company.
• Smart working and Open innovation: Organization creativity and innovation.

The organization culture: key elements

• Observed behavioral regularities.
• Norms.
• Dominant values.
• Philosophy.
• Rules of the game.
• Feeling of climate.
• Organizational Network within the company.

Human resource management: the challenges

• Managers: people who are in charge of others and are responsible for the timely and correct execution of actions that promote their unit’s performance.
• Employee can be differentiated as:
• Line employees: directly involved in producing the company’s goods or delivering services.
• Staff employees: support line function, HR department.

1 - 3 {chapter 1}

How to implement a strategy

• How to implement a strategy: approach different paths.
• Consider three key elements: environment, organization and individual HR challenges may be categorized according to their primary focus: environmental, organization or the individual.
• Individual: each one of us have a different culture, story, professional and personal, each one is part of an organization.
• Organization: which has a story, situation, business big or small, bureaucratic or not, the firm is part of an environment.
• Environment: challenges are the forces external to the firm, they influence organizational performance but are largely beyond management’s control, managers need to monitor the external environment constantly for opportunities and threat.

Selecting human resource strategies to increase firm performance

• To increase firm performance.
• Human Resource strategies should fit with other organizational aspects.

HR fit with:

• Organizational strategies.
• Work Flows, Staffing, Employee Separations, Performance Appraisal, Training and Career Development, Compensation, Employee Rights, Employee and Labor Relations, International Management.

2 - 3 {chapter 1}

• Environment: Degree of Uncertainty, Magnitude of Change, Volatility, Complexity.
• Organizational Characteristics: Production Process, Firm’s Market Posture, Firm’s Overall Managerial Philosophy, Firm’s Organizational Structure, Firm’s Organizational Culture.
• Organizational Capabilities: Distinctive Competencies.
• Competitive edge.

HR Strategies should:

• Help firm exploit its competencies.
• Assist the firm to help use its HR skills.

Summary and conclusions

• HR Challenges Facing Managers:
• Environmental Challenges.
• Organizational Challenges.
• Individual Challenges.
• Planning and Implementing Strategic HR Policies.
• Policies and procedures should be congruent.
• Selecting HR Strategies to Increase Firm Performance.
• The Important Partnership of HR and Managers.

3 - 3 {chapter 1}

Managing workflows and concocting job analysis

Agenda

• To understand the relationship between the main drivers of organization design and human resource management practices.
• To understand and use the right tools for the organization context.
• To analyze and describe a job: methods, techniques, use of job analysis.
• To identify different types of flexible work.

Interpreting the organization

The first key point of the Human Resource Management.

• Which is my aim, target, main as an HR? Attract, integrate retain people; create and maintain and end employment relationships; achieve a performance in line with the company strategy; create value for the company.
• After understanding it I will be able to attract, integrate and retain people.
• Finding the best people that fit this company, create, maintain and develop an employment relationship.

During pandemic: HR management needed to manage people in order to maintain the company’s day-by-day production.

Where does an HR act?

• People: Programming the workforce, recruitment, selection, entering, exit.
• How many people, how do I select people?
• Recruitment: search people ≠ Selection: decide who is the right one.
• If I choose the right person, but not introduce it to the environment: problem.
• Need also to manage their exiting from the firm.
• Relations: Contracting, commitment, contractual relationships and psychological contract.
• Contracting people: salary, benefits, job development, it is important to create a good relation.
• Performance: Organization, training, development.
• Is the main target.
• How to organize the company, structure, policy, how I train people.
• Value: Evaluation and remuneration.

Managing work: three different perspectives

The organizational perspective

1. Takes into account the entire organization: how it is structured.

We have 3 levels of approaching organization.

• Business strategy: as a set of medium-long term goals based on:
• Analysis of environmental opportunities and threats.
• Appraisal of the business can deploy its assets to complete most effectively.
• Organizational structure: Structure refers to the formal or informal relationships between people in organizations such as CEO, marketing, operating collocation, sales organization, what type of company.
• Management selects HR strategies to fit and support its business strategies and organizational structure.

The entire organization:

1.

• Designing organization structure: specialization 3 types, or more also 5 or 7.
• It is not so defined that a company can have only one type, can be mixed, according to the type of tasks.

Bureaucracy organization

• Specialization: Centralization, many levels with specialized jobs and jobs descriptions, hierarchical career, career growth: passing to different levels.
• Levels: board | CEO | general manager | marketing, sales, R&D | area manager | salesperson ....
• Coordination and control: Hierarchy and standardization.

1 - 10 {chapter 2}

• Does bureaucratic organization mean boring organization? Not true.
• McDonald’s is a bureaucratic organization: work on service, high service level.
• Pyramid shaped structure, highly centralized, top-down or “command-and-control” approach to management, functional division of labor, specialization: narrowly specified job descriptions, works best in a predictable and stable environment.

Flat organization

• Specialization: Decentralized management approach, of responsibility, few levels, one or two, horizontal career paths that cross functions, changes through the company, broadly defined job, general description: describe responsibility and not the single activities, decision made in a teamwork way, emphasis on teams, broad range of skills, flexible boundaries between jobs and units, focus on customer.
• Coordination and control: team - across functions.
• Boundary-less organizations: flat organization open to customer, companies, suppliers, there are network there an organization: used nowadays.
• Retail: Zara flat = problems: you do not perform so well → Head of research department: may be flat or work with other companies.

Boundary less organization

• Specialization: Boundary-less has a structure similar to flat enables relationships with external partners, customers, suppliers, competitors.
• Coordination and control: Team - across companies, employees representing partners of a joint venture.
• Form relationships with customers, suppliers, and/or competitors, by joint ventures, consortium.
• High employee involvements in business decisions.
• People that are there are upper work together.
• Start up incubator: gives the start upper a place where to start with their job, such offices.
• Share many of the characteristics of flat organization.
• Boundary-less organizations: flat organization open to customer, companies, suppliers, there are network there an organization: used nowadays.
• Entrepreneurial culture.
• Operates in a volatile environment.

The work-flow analysis of the boundary less

Workflow: people need to know their responsibilities.

• Managers need to do work-flow analysis to examine how work creates or adds value to the ongoing business processes.
• Some steps or jobs can be eliminated, combined or simplified.
• Work moves from the customer through the organization and then as a product or service.
• Can be used to tighten the alignment between employees’ work and customers’ needs.

Workflow and BPR

• Business Process Reengineering, BPR.
• BPR is not a quick fix, but rather a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, service and speed.
• You rethink in a radical way the organization: dramatic improvements; go very in depth: speak with all the people and try to understand the little mistakes that block the productivity.
• Reengineering examines the way a company conducts its business by closely analyzing the core processes involved in producing its product or delivering its service to the customer.
• Operation core processes understanding the core processes.
• By taking advantage of computer technology and different ways of organizing human resources, the company may be able to reinvent itself.

2 - 10 {chapter 2}

The team

2. ≠ Group Team.

• Group = people work together with a coordinator that gives guidelines and manages the relationships, decides the level of premium.
• Team = a small number of people with complementary skills who work toward common goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable; everyone puts their competences, part of work, decides how to make profit; company needs to make a good team, understand which are the pros and cons of each person.
• HR makes team that will work for the company: It is important that people work well together.
• Decisions made by joint problem solving and feedback; Members mutually accountable of common goals.

Teamwork types

• Scrum: team working for application designs; It is based on the fact that when you have to start and deliver a product first you release a demo then you prepare the key point of the software: first release version one, then two ... fast way to develop a product.
• Self-management teams: implemented by companies in order to improve quality and productivity, to reduce operating costs; are responsible for producing an entire product, component, or service.
• Members are mostly cross-trained on the different tasks assigned to the team; have many managerial duties, work scheduling, selecting work methods, ordering materials, evaluating performance, and disciplining team members.
• Problem solving teams: A team consisting of volunteers from a unit or department who meet one or two hours per week to discuss quality improvement, cost reduction, or improvement in the work environment; volunteers for a limited period.
• Examples: hacker in a company can distract the company, can ask to another hacker to solve the problem.
• Special purpose teams or Task force: A team or task force consisting of workers who span functional or organizational boundaries and whose purpose is to examine complex issues; span functional /organizational boundaries for complex issues.
• Example: when preparing a business plan, not only prepared by the board, store manager, country manager of strategic maker is a special purpose team.
• Virtual team: uses interactive computer technologies to work together despite being separated by physical distance or link customers, suppliers, and business partners in collaborative tasks; are similar to problem-solving teams because they do not require full-time commitment from team members.
• Nowadays all managers are using video call, some companies are studying hologram application, virtual conferences.

Individual employees

3.

• Why is motivation important?
• Motivation can be defined as that which energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior, can be measured with tools.
• In HRM, the term refers to a person’s desire to do the best possible job or to exert the maximum effort to perform assigned tasks. An important feature of motivation is that it is behavior directed toward a goal ... motivation is a combination of a person’s choice to do some task, desire to expend effort at doing it, and drive to persist with that effort ...

Motivation and behaviour

• Which behavior does person choose to perform in an organization?
• If I am motivated I choose to do something “I want to do that job”.
• Choice → You ask to take a particular job, it is better than having someone telling you what to do.
• How hard does a person work to perform a chosen behavior?
• Level of effort: If I have chosen, I will put all my effort, whereas if you ask me to do it and I do not like it I won’t be good at it.
• When faced with obstacles, roadblocks and stone walls, how hard does a person keep trying to perform a chosen behavior?
• Not only I put more effort, but if I make mistakes, I insist in doing what you are asking me to do.
• Level of persistence: I like to do the salesman; a customer tells me he does not want to buy: I insist.
• If you do not like your job, I am not motivated, I do not insist.

3 - 10 {chapter 2}

• Motivation individual + organization point of view. How do you motivate? Typical thing → Speak to people and understand the mood, how do they feel?
• Patagonia in the 90s said when there are the wave you can stop working and start surfing and then start working again.
• Motivated + work with colleague = best.
• The effort is very important: person main.
• I continue to use my competences at my best if I am motivated.

Two different approaches

Three theories

How can the employee be motivated?

• There are causes of satisfaction and motivation and of dissatisfaction.

Herzberg: Two-Factor theory.

• Is salary motivating? Quotes.
• If I give you a salary now = happy now, but then same level of motivation you had, short type of happiness.
• It’s a kind of lottery price winner.

Goal setting

• Employees’ goals help explain their level of motivation and implications performance.
• Understand which type of goal and have a clear process.
• Trust is needed for motivation and participation.
• Employees will be more motivated to perform when they have clear and specific goals.

Motivating job characteristics

Job characteristics theory: employees will be more motivated to work and more satisfied with their jobs to the extent that jobs contain certain core characteristics.

• By knowing which skills do I need, which activities to perform, I will be more motivated and improve myself.

Example: merging of a company

Example: Merging of a company: [big company, 7 billions, that bought a smaller company, 1 billion] how to use the skills just analyzed.

• When you think to buy a company you need to participate to a due diligence that has the target to understand whether the company is a good investment or not, need to do an offer and then if you buy it you start the reorganization and merging.
• You can keep it as it is or change it.
• Due diligence: there is a team, special project team, that goes in the company and spends a week with the people of the acquired firm, and then does a report on how they worked there [HR is the one that organizes it].
• After the due diligence: buy the company, from day zero try to understand each department, understand the problems.