An organization gains competitive advantage by using its people effectively, drawing on their proficiency and skill to meet clearly defined objectives.
HRM is aimed at recruiting competent, flexible and committed people, managing and rewarding their performance and developing key competencies.
The rise of modern human resource management is more than just a change in terminology from personnel management to human resource management. There have been many changes in HRM which relocate the mindsets of employers to look at their employees as a unique, valued asset and not as an expense to condense.
Modern HRM wants the workforce to be effective by doing the right thing rather than being efficient by doing things right and to work smart rather than work hard.
In contemporary times HRM is concerned with the mental models and mindsets of the people of the company.
Commitment is a central feature of contemporary HRM where modern organisations are moving their management styles from one based on control, to one based on commitment.
Nowadays, human resource management is not just about administering people but also about shaping the culture and traditions of the organisation.
Mutuality in labour relations is focused on current HRM practices based on commitment.
Adversarial labour relations, which was the outcome of traditional HRM is being replaced with mutuality with joint planning and problem solving.
Open communication is also a vital improvement in contemporary HRM. Traditionally employees were expected to ‘do as you’re told’.
Currently the trend for many organisations is open communication, where employees are encouraged to voice out their ideas and opinions.
Flatter organization structures and minimum status differentials have contributed much to this novel communication process.
“According to one WL Gore associate, the lack of titles encourages all employees to think harder about how to contribute to the business. It’s of importance to have the ability to handle a degree of ambiguity as opposed to ‘here’s my job and I only do these tasks’ and someone willing to lift his or her head up from the desk and see what the business’s real needs are” (Financial management, 2008).
A modest change as having a common canteen can contribute to minimizing status gaps which can act as a barrier to better management-worker communication.
Unlike traditional HRM, contemporary human resource management is not left with only the HR manager.
It’s been identified as being too important, that each and every individual is expected to actively play their part in this process with the organisation goals in mind. At the present era of HRM, employees are encouraged strongly to operate as part of a team and be team players rather than performing and building themselves as individual idols.
Today, many performance management systems are focused on the activities of teams rather than simply on the individual.
“When used in conjunction with team-building and worker involvement and empowerment programs, it does appear to lead to higher quality as well as low absenteeism rates” (Dessler, 2005).
Thus, the modern collaborative nature of teams in organisations is built rather than implementing individually based performance management schemes.
Modern HRM planning is flexible, taking a greater interest of external factors, having more refined monitoring and control mechanisms and planning in shorter time frames.
Flexi hours and flexi time have also been introduced with the employees’ interests in mind. Work life balance is also much talked about in today’s business world. Techniques such as employee leasing, dual career groups and collaborative management are all part of modern HRM.
Moonlighting by employees who work for multiple jobs at the same time has lead to developing moonlighting policies by some firms in the contemporary times.
“Basic moonlighting policies generally contain the statements addressing: interference with the primary job, conflicts of interest and approval of the additional employment” (Your moonlighting policy, 2010).
Conventionally, compensation was given on individual pay based on job evaluation.
However in today’s terms, pay is being increasingly linked to skills and mastery. Contemporary HRM also focuses on employees being multi-skilled rather than being trained and mastered to a specific task all throughout their career.
Contemporary HRM practices typically sets out elements of both hard and soft models. Hard HRM prioritizes logical profit maximizing while soft HRM places a higher value on the human resource as a valued asset and foregrounds their proactive capacity, motivation and commitment.
According to modern human resource management, people are considered as a unique asset. People and their skills is one thing that a competitor cannot imitate.
Therefore human resource management is an important strategic lever to ensure continued and sustained success of a business entity.
Soft HR implies to treat the individual with attention to work stress, well-being and family needs. In the past employees were hired simply based on a contract, where none of the two parties; employer or employee, had any interest to go beyond the contractual minimum.
However, employees of the present period are intertwined with the firm’s activities to such an extent that they go way beyond the work contract towards having a psychological contract. This results in transforming employees into committed, self motivated and loyal work force. These human resource management outcomes would lead to higher levels of job performance, higher levels of innovation and change, whilst lowering turnover, absence and employee grievance rates.
A variety of people-oriented cultural management practices have come up in the contemporary times and have been able to enhance employee commitment and faithfulness to the organization so that employees might act flexibly and exercise their ideas towards meeting organizational objectives.
Such feeling oriented practices create an attractive working place for its employees. The development of virtual working teams and home working also has made some changes in HRM in modern times.
This is one instant where control is not much of an importance, since the ‘physical presence’ factor is unavailable. This is where the commitment based modern HRM which enhances employee morale comes in to play with great importance in driving the work force to be productive.
Many laws, regulations and policies have also amended HRM in the contemporary times.
Issues on equal employment opportunity, religious protection, safety in the workplace and privacy rights have been accounted for, through major employee laws.
Such laws have given an elevated status to the work force and HRM in the contemporary times have taken these laws in to account due to legal reasons.
Business entities are becoming increasingly responsible not only to legal but also ethical obligations as well.
“Ethical concerns in the contemporary HRM have changed human resource management over the last two decades, in particular, the preoccupation with flexibility, commitment, culture, quality and performance, raises a number of ethical issues” (Storey, 2001).
Another modification in the HRM field is ‘whistle blowing’. Although ‘whistle blowing’ against unethical behaviour at the work place is encouraged, employees are somewhat unwilling to put it into practice since the ‘whistle blower’ is not protected by the letter of the law.
Whatever said and done, HRM in the contemporary times have been brought up to a level where employees are treated with dignity and is treasured as a valuable asset by whom other resources are managed. There have been many modifications in the eras in managing people and HRM still continues to evolve day by day. The future progression of HRM is talent management.
“Talent management may be defined as the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to improve processes for recruiting, developing and retaining people with the required skills and aptitude to meet current and future organizational needs” (What is talent management, 2010).
The differences in the management of human resources were mainly due to the heightened changes in the external business environment.
However it should be noted that the environment has always been uncertain even in the past but it is only now that we’re able to fully appreciate and realise it, due to technological developments and globalisation efforts. It can be foreseen that HRM is evolving by taking people’s commitment and loyalty in to concern.
The future of human resource management might as well end up transforming forced slaves into willing slaves.
Courtesy - Daily News - Umeshka Ratnaweera
