To begin there is a difference between personnel management and human resource management.
While there is no "clear agreed upon distinction" between the two, personnel management is primarily concerned with staffing (i.e., recruiting, hiring,), determining job decription, developing and informing about compensation and benefit packages, applying employement laws and regulations, aiding in performance evaluations, handling work greviences, etc.
Human resource management (HRM) or human resource development (HRD) is about having the "right people" in the "right jobs." It is about managing and developing talent, and enabling managers to lead and empower their staffs and teams in accord with the organization's mission an goals. It is about developing the resourceness of employees, aligning their talents with the organization's culture and objectives, developing leadership capabilities, increasing productivity, and unleashing innovation.
Often both of these functions exist in an enterprises Human Resource Management Department.
In my opinion, the Human Resource Department has both the business enterprise and the employees as "clients." It must be "loyal to" and an advocate for both the organization and its workforce. While it must safeguard interests and the investments of the company, it must also create a safe, fair, and humane work environment that justly compensates and rewards workers.
Both personnel management and human resource management are challenging. Check out the HRM Guide for current issues.
The Human Resource Department, in working with executives, company leaders, managers and staffs, must provide value add to the business enterprise. The practice of human resource management, in actuality is a "decentralized" function. While there may be a VP for human resource management, and a department, it is the responsibility of all managers to "manage" personnel, develop employee skills and potential, foster success planning, coach team members, encourage training, etc.
Some key points to keep in the fore front of your mind regarding an empowering and employee-centric perspective of human resource management:
Employees...
1. Are talented human resources that need to be place in the "right" position, and continuously developed over time.
2. Need to be adaptable, continuously learning, and able to work in a variety of settings, as well as take leadership roles appropriate for their job and position.
3. Need to feel part of the company, be valued, feel authentically appreciated, and be acknowledged for their insights, service, and contributions.
4. Must take ownership of their jobs and the business enterprise's quality and success, expect to give feedback on organizational operations, their jobs, and "leader-managers," and have a open and safe work environment in which to provide honest feedback and suggestions.
5. Must be able to find ways to set work-life boundaries, and establish a balance between work and life so they remain healthy and can meet their personal and civic responsibilites.
Managers...
1. Need to develop open and honest working relationships with their employees and teams.
2. Need to coach or mentor employees, and strive to empower them, allowing them to do their best work, and aiding them to stretch beyond their present knowledge, skill, and capability levels, and grow into appropriate leadership and job positions.
3. Must be able to work collaboratively with colleagues and staffs.
4. Must be able to engage employees develop their loyalty, commitment and work pride, as well as encourage and accept well-founded feedback, and be able to implement valuable insights and suggestions as applicable.
Organizations...
1. Need to be both diverse and inclusive, and draw upon the creativity and innovation that comes from diverse leaders and staff members working together from diverse viewpoints and ideas.
2. Have adaptive and flexible work schedules that are created in an open dialogue between managers, staff members and team members.
3. Be structured so employees can be cross-trained, and rotate jobs.
4. Provide satisfying and meaningful work opportunities, and enable employees to develop and advance their careers.
5. Understand performance "appraisals" not merely as evaluations but methods for employee growth, and organizational development
In a dispersed workplace and with a global workforce, such practices demand leaders to establish organizational cultures, human resource philosophies, management practices, and operational procedures that:
1. Can effectively enable managers to lead at a distance, and build working relationships across time zones and national borders, and cultural, ethnic, language barriers.
2. Be sensitive to and respectful of differences, and value the insights and creativity that arises from diversity of worldviews, values, lifestyles, leadership perspectives, etc.
3. Acknowlwdge and address prejudice that is part of organizational structures, management styles and practices, cultural traditions, work and career development perspectives, etc.
4. Be creative, and willing to break traditional ways of structuring businesses, engaging workers in collaborative or team-oriented processes, enabling employees to network and communicate in order to get their job done, hiring employees and staffing departments, teams and projects, and enable employees to be an integral component of the organization.
5. Tranform the organization into a spirited workplace community that is comprised of leaders and employees from around the world--a global workforce.
Now, with a business enterprise's functional units distributed around the world, an increase in companies being a configuration of business partnerships with other companies, and components of business functions being outsourced or off-shored, HRM must be understood from an international perspective.
How do you think that empowering, employee-centric human resource management prespectives can be accomplished in a globally distributed, and culturally diverse business enterprise? What do you think are the challenges of creating an international HRM vision and set of principles?
Chuck Piazza
11 comments:
One way that empowering employees is through communication. In a dispersed workplace, communication is key because people don't work physically with each other. A manager needs to be comfortable with both using electronic means to communicate and to be aware of the different cultures of the people that are working for him or her.
Challenges for an international HRM vision are: dealing with people that are from different backgrounds and getting them to work together effectively, understanding the business well enough to be able to find the right people for the job, figuring training programs that people can actually get something out of instead of wasting time and being aware of the different laws and human resource practices that go on around the world.
An empowering, employee-centric HR management perspective can be dispersed globally by empowering leaders/management on a global scale. Management should be implemented on a local level to ensure a better understanding of local culture and how to engage employees.
An international vision is difficult to create because of various cultural backgrounds that emphasize different values/traditions. But as western/eastern cultures collide and countries begin to assimilate to one another (especially in terms of technology) there will be larger themes that workers/employess can base an international HR management vision on.
I think that empowering employee-centric human resource management perspectives can be accomplished in a global distributed and cultural diverse business by doing three things: 1.) Hiring talented workers with balanced lives, flexible schedules and an eagerness to grow. 2.) Managers must create an environment where worker-manager relationship is based on trust and communication which enhance pride from the worker in the workplace. 3.) The policies of the organization must be flexible and respectful to be adaptable to any situation, supporting diversity, opportunities to grow, and open schedules.
The challenges I think is that we overestimate the cultural power of other nations. In many cases, corporations left countries because they could not adapt to their culture and customs. In other words, they could not read the behavior of the people. However, we see more successful corporations abroad, like Wal-Mart in China. Wal-mart decoded the needs of the Chinese people. In the same way, the international human resource vision of businesses could copy the Wal-Mart model to succeed.
Human resource management in a globally and culturally diverse organization will be effective only through an elaborate communication system where information and ideas can be exprssed and shared.It will require extra effort to build relationships in a virtual world in order to foster a sense of community as well as the company's shared visions and goals.
A challenge of manager in a global and diverse environment will be to remain flexible and be adaptive to the needs of his employees. Extra energy will required to determine how to get people to work together effectively when they are not physically in the same place at the same time.
Managers in this type of environment wil also have to be more imaginative in developing ways of engaging empl0yees to work as a team independant of each other.
I think that empowering employee-centric human resource management perspectives in a globally distributed, and culturally diverse business enterprise would require strong communication and team-building. Workers and leaders would need to understand cultural differences. time zone differences, possible language barriers, and find ways to connect and learn about co-workers to establish team cohesion. Leaders must find ways to keep workers engaged, and also to ensure that everyone understands projects and expectations.
Keeping time commitments and deadlines would also be a challenge for international team-work and HRM.
To empower employees in a globally distributed enterprise you will need the right people for the positions, not just bodies. You will need communication (various types) and you will need to be adept and aware of the cultural and time barriers. There must also exist a level of trust, honesty and openness between the manager and employee so that there is a flow of useful information and the ability for the each person to air there issues and grievance's without fear of retaliation.
Challenges for this type of organization would be lack of consistent communication, having the wrong person or persons in the wrong positions, people who don't work well in virtual teams, poor follow through on assignments or requests for information. There exists the potential for the whole operation to come crashing down if any one of the above is not implemented.
An empowered workforce begins with good recruiting practices. If an organization hires individuals who can buy into a clear vision and purpose expressed by the HR team, then a lot of the heavy lifting is already done. Considering all of the tech based communication tools available, it maybe be language and cultural frictions that challenge HRM. Religious or traditional practices can stand in the way of productivity, especially when Westerners are dealing with cultures that they are not familiar with.
The Indian call center culture continues to be controversial both in the US and India. Many of my relatives hang up the phone the moment they hear the Indian accent. In Bangalore, workers in these call centers are beginning to "westernize" themselves, perhaps losing touch with their traditions. HRM must continue to monitor, adapt, and advise as organizations and cultures transform.
Human Resources Management in a Brave New World...
From what I can tell, the greatest challenge to HRM global strategies can be gleaned from the issues that organizations have faced in the United States.
Remember that the United States is still an "experiment." Beginning with the migration of Mongols from the east, who evolved into Native Americans, through the Viking influences of the ~900's - 1200's, and all the way beyond Columbus and the great immigration of the 1900's - the United States is the only country in the world that was populated from almost the beginning with MULTIPLE races and cultures.
What does this mean for the 21st century? It means that for the first time ever, traditional, modern, and postmodern values are attempting to co-exist with one another.
How many times have you seen an HR department that had to be brought in to settle an issue that had culture at its root?
I believe that a lot of what passes for race or sex issues actually has culture at its root (but, in our PC world, we are not allowed to acknowledge this; and so, we focus on something that we CAN talk about - race and sex - in order to avoid the more difficult conversations about culture).
This is just the United States, where the employees are very likely to come from middle to upper middle class families, regardless from where they are in terms of the globe.
We may find that there are LESS issues with culture in global companies, because the employees there are so grateful to have a job, they are willing to overlook offenses that we feel are a slight to our ever so fragile egos.
We need to wish ourselves good luck competing with that!
-David
International HRM is the most difficult piece of a globalized work force. All countries’ laws, cultures, and customs must be taken into account when forming a vision and setting principles. It is also important for HR to recognize the training, company wide, that will need to be done to mitigate any cultural clashes. Just because 5 weeks of paid holiday leave is normal for a European subsidiary is the norm, may not mean that it can be applied to the customary 2-3 weeks in the us, and visa versa.
At the same time, they must be cognoscente of managers in their positions. If HR is really finding the right person for the right job, as company expand and contract globally, the dynamic that takes place must be watched closely. The right fit in America for a bi-costal company may not work if a Canadian or even Asian department is added. It is also important for HR to recognize these differences to unit the company. By showing employees that they are valued for their differences and expertise in their countries is a real morale booster.
The empowerment of employees is through the granting and distribution of trust throughout the organization. Managers historically were placed in organizations to "protect" the interests of the owners while they were absent. As many things this has morphed over the years and lost its meaning or convoluted it's meaning. Now, as a global workforce any type of effective vision will have to be open and trusting enough to allow for self - managed participants to act in best interest and on behalf of the organization. The idea of protecting must evolve to trusting before any type of self managed human resources can exist.
This will be challenging for obvious reasons: structure may not allow for this type of behavior, leaders may not be willing to give up this much control and human resources themselves may not be ready or capable of self-management.
This can be accomplished the same way that it is done today. People are people. Treating them as such, and not just as widgets with a goal of producing something, will help get and keep them engaged. Keeping an open mind and understanding the nuances of electronic communication (without the benefit of body language).
The challenge of creating an HRM is to keep a global perspective. The headquarter country will have natural bias towards theier people and their culture. Keeping an awareness of that and moving toward a more global view can help get a better non-biased group of principals.
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