Introduction
The HR department is mainly concerned with the supervision of a company employees, be it a manufacturing firm, a hospital or even an insurance company. Their work is to ensure that the policies, guidelines and the objectives of the firm are being worked on. They also decide on which systems to be employed, how much they are willing to spend on such systems, which department the system is going be settled in, and things like that.
With that kind of responsibility, the HR department is known to encounter a lot of challenges which they are supposed to solve as the top management. Therefore, the paper seeks to outline those challenges and offer the ideal recommendations so as to keep those businesses running as usual.
The human resource management is faced with a lot of dilemma even after their determination of exploiting Information Technology to manage their department (Broderick & Boudreau 1992 p, 56). Whenever a new system is employed, the HR department is required to employ an extra work force, for example IT experts who will do the maintenance and offer advice regarding the new system to its employees.
Getting the experts can be a little bit challenging if at all the company is trying to cut down on costs after buying the new system. With that in mind, the HR department should consider outsourcing that kind of service from the various firms that have expertise in that domain. With that, the company will only be charged whenever they seek the service from the outsourcing company. More still, they could focus on dealing with the low charging outsourcing firms since their rates vary from one firm to the next one.
Alternatively, the HR can consider training its workers so that they can do the maintenance on their own, which could be another cost cutting measure (Yeung & Brockbank, 1994 p, 45). Here, the trained worker will be equipped with all the necessary skills that can help him/her overcome situations whenever the system in question becomes faulty when being used.
The training also ensures that the personnel are acquainted with the system for example, a manufacturing company experienced positive results after introducing an advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) complemented by training of its workforce (Snell & Dean 1992 p, 489). This move will see the company hiring a training expert from outside to conduct the training sessions.
A training expert can prove to be expensive to a firm that is trying to cut down on costs. The charges normally vary depending with the training duration meaning that, the longer the duration, the higher the charges will be and vice versa.
Therefore, companies that want to avoid this kind of expenses should consider hiring a new work force coupled with the right skills of using the new technology in the company as opposed to training the current workers. However, the move is not highly recommended since it results to the current employees being sent home for lacking the required skills, though it has worked for some companies.
The HR department is also faced with a lot of unrest resulting from the employees who are not ready to accept change. Change in the sense that they are not ready to adapt to the new system, since they are not used to it. The reason for this is that employees are usually aware that their roles, skills and processes will have to change so as to accommodate the new system (Gueutal & Stone 2005 p, 114).
With that kind of dilemma, the HR department should ensure that they have prepared or informed their employees of such plans before introducing the new system and it should not be an abrupt move, but rather a planned one. In the end, this will also give them time of getting used to that idea and accept it whole heartedly. Most of the leading companies employ this strategy whenever they are introducing new systems in their firms.
According to Yeung & Brockbank (1994 p, 56), customers are also known to exert pressure to their service providers since they believe that with technology everything is possible, though this is not the case. They have high expectations whenever engaging with their providers unaware of the numerous challenges they have to endure. Over the years, customers want to be assured that the services or goods to be delivered will be of high quality especially when a firm adopts a new technology.
For example, an e-commerce mobile shop will be expected to deliver the ideal package to its customers once the payment is made. This can be a little bit challenging considering that the mobile firm has to use the normal transportation system while delivering the package unaware of obstacles such as traffic jams and the likes, which could hinder the delivery of this package.
Technology has also seen the HR department being forced to reduce its employees since the new system introduced is required to take over such procedures (Cameron, 1994 p, 86). Companies like IBM have continued to cut down on costs in management levels as well as their staff administration merely because of technology. This move has seen the human resource departments from various companies reduce their headcounts within a short duration of less than one year.
The same is still happening to the successful companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel (Brockbank & Yeung 1994 p, 107). Ideally, technology has a positive side of it while at the same time impacts negatively to the low level of employees. Such companies should try and retain their workforce in the event that the system in use crashes down or there is increment of work load.
Conclusion
As discussed here in, technology has a lot of advantages but in some cases it has a negative impact on some people. The negative way is that it replaces a considerable number of employees who end losing their jobs or messing up with the new system since they are not used to it. Therefore, firms that are intending to introduce new systems into their organizations should first consult their employees so that they hear their responses and prepare them before implementing such systems.
They need to be prepared since change can be a little scary for some people especially if they are not hinted on what to expect. Preparation can be in the form of training, where each worker is given a chance to learn the relevant skills and if they do not succeed, then the HR will not be at fault when terminating their contracts.
Moves like these have proven successful in most companies across the continent. Therefore, the HR department should take note of that since they are the ones at liberty to terminate employees whenever a new system is acquired.
References
Broderick, R. and Boudreau, J. (1992). Human resource management, information technology and the competitive edge. Academy of Management Executive. Vol 6 No 2.
Cameron, KS. (1994). Strategies for Successful organizational downsizing Human Resource Management .New York: Routledge.
Gueutal, HG and Stone, DL. (2005). The brave new world of eHR: human resources management in the digital age. Chicago: Wiley Imprint. CA
Snell S. and Dean, J. (1992). Integrated Manufacturing and Human resource management: A human capital perspective. Academy of Management Journal. Vol 35 NO3 p 467-504
Yeung A. and Brockbank W. (1994). Lower Cost, Higher Value: Human Resource Function in Transformation. Journal of Human Resource Planning. Vol 17