Introduction
Human resource management can be defined as a branch of management which deals with issues that pertain to personnel. The branch of management is normally tasked with the responsibility of resourcing employees on behalf of an organization, developing the employees and finally maintaining the achieved efficiency of the employees.
Specifically, human resource management looks into an organization’s issues such as establishing and planning the goals of the department of human resource management, making arrangement for the works and activities to be carried out in the department as well as the organization, filling in of an organization’s vacancies, reviewing and controlling the efficiencies and effectiveness of workers and regulating work-related activities.
It is actually an extensive department in an organization since the human resource is equivalently employed in almost if not all departments of each and every organization. This paper seeks to discuss various aspects of human resource management with specific interest in the management of employees. The paper will look into these issues with respect to the final desired output of the employees.
People-Related Problems Likely to arise due to Changes in an Organization
The changes that could be experienced in an organization are of varied degrees and types. An organization can for instance resort to changing its internal structures. Joining another organization through mergers, amalgamation, or even acquisition are other ways through which an organization can change its structure. The changes could be radical or incremental.
Radical changes involve an absolute transition in the system in which almost if not all aspects of organizations are subject to change. Incremental changes, on the other hand, are transitional changes which are initiated in steps and bits and occasionally take a longer time to be implemented entirely.
The changes initiated in an organization will eventually have effects on its employees in relation to the extent of the change initiated in the organization as well as the time that will be required to effect and finally complete the implementation of the change. The changes in the organization, which could either be radical or incremental, are also diverse.
Change in an organization can be in the form of redesigning the organization’s structures, functions and activities. This could be internal to change the roles of the employees or external when it includes moves like mergers with other organizations or the subject organization changing ownership to another entity (Jackson et al., 2009 ).
When changes take place in the forms of organizations merging, some old problems from the former organizations are brought up in the newly formed organization. There is a possibility of increased workload in the event of such changes. A change in an organization that has downsized will experience problems related to downsizing, which may include issues to do with not meeting deadlines due to overworking of employees.
The laying off of workers could be done in a general trend or based on some criteria such as age, departmental, or even experience. No matter the trend, some people are subject to losing their jobs and the people who remain in the organization might be forced to increase their efforts to cover for the extra work.
Both of the groups of employees in this case, those who lose their jobs as well as those who remain in the organization, are faced with problems. The people who lose their jobs due to organizational change have the problem of foregone incomes in the form of salaries and wages.
This can have an extended negative impact on the families of the affected persons, especially if they were sole breadwinners of their respective families. The individuals retained in the organization’s system, on the other hand, are faced with problems of being forced to work harder or even moved to new departments that they are not familiar with.
The interdepartmental transfers and even promotions pose a threat of stress to workers as they are forced to quickly adjust to the organizational change and increased amount of work due to downsizing of employees, especially if it were a radical change. Changes in an organization could as well have a negative effect on the efficiency of employees.
A change that could be positive towards improving the efficiency of an organization could render an employee redundant or discouraged as the employee would feel outdated in the presence of the improved systems of the organization. This could lead to frustration and stress, which, if not checked, could eventually lead to burning out of the employee. The effect may be as worse as a laid down employee (Labor, 2004).
The human-related problems caused by the organizational changes as discussed above can be avoided or controlled at two levels of administrations. The first, being the organizational level at which the management are to be enlightened on what is right and what is wrong, both legally and morally.
Training and awareness is recommendation for managers to help safeguard the welfare of employees during such changes in organizations. Governments, through policymaking can also pass legislation to ensure that employees’ rights are protected during such changes.
Policies that limit the powers of employers to hire and fire employees at will can help in reducing the number of laid-off employees or ensure adequate compensation is done if an employee has to be laid off by an organization (Labor, 2004).
Components of an Effective Human Resource Policy Designed To Prevent Sexual Harassment
The rate of sexual harassment is significantly noticeable in workplaces, with over thirty percent of women reporting harassment cases. The sexual harassment cases are experienced more by minority women as compared to the majority class of women in America.
Harassment can be experienced from a senior employee of an organization taking advantage of the workplace position or can be due to a hostile environment at the workplace that exposes people, especially women, to harassment. An organization is, however, charged with the responsibility of acts of offensive commissions by its employees (Jackson et al., 2009).
According to Myers (2003), a sexual harassment policy or any other protective policy put in place by an organization should have provisions that will ensure the effectiveness of the policy. A sexual harassment policy, for example, should include an official statement that indicates the organization’s opinion in relation to sexual harassment.
The policy should also illustrate the process of launching harassment complaint by an offended employee. Also inclusive of the necessities of a sexual harassment policy is a code of conduct together with a statement of prohibited behavior. The statement of sexual harassment policy should be clearly spelled and should in addition be consistent with the tradition or culture of the organization.
This is specifically important to prevent conflict of interest within the organization. The next important component of the sexual harassment policy is the procedure of launching harassment complaints. The process should be free from any sort of harassment or intimidation.
An organization is for this matter supposed to acculturate friendly procedures that can motivate employees to report cases of sexual harassments. In legal terms, an employer is liable for an act of sexual harassment by his or her employee if the employer has not provided for protective measures and a friendly environment for reporting such harassments.
The policy should, therefore, provide for adequate measures to prevent and correct the offense. This provision will in case of harassment transfer the liability of offense to either the victim for failing to take advantage of the harassment protective policy or the individual offender employee.
The harassment policy should clearly include its implementation, which should essentially provide for an administrator and personnel to investigate the claims of sexual harassment. Both the administrator and the investigating team should be competently trained to impartially and comprehensively inquire into claims to establish truths before any party can be victimized for alleged offenses (Myers, 2003).
Another necessity in an effective sexual harassment policy is the operational commitment of the organization’s human resource management to the implementation of the policy. Lack of commitment to implementation generally undermines the aim of a policy and even promotes an offense as employees will have the notion of not being penalized for their offenses.
The human resource management should, therefore, put its employees on a tough notice that sexual harassment is strongly condemned by the organization. Effective implementation that involves employee awareness of acts amounting to sexual harassment, encouraging employees to submit harassment claims as well as ensuring that actions are taken against offenders is also critical to the effectiveness of a sexual harassment policy.
The anti-harassment statement must be directed to any party who is in a position to commit the act of harassment. These parties include “all employees, contract personnel, customers” (Myers, 2003, p. 1) and any other third party with whom the employees relate in their course of work.
This notification can be achieved through the organization’s modes of communications like memoranda and other internal circulations. The training of employees on the sexual harassment policy can be achieved through seminars and workshops where employees can be explained to on how the policy works.
Enlightening the employees into changing their attitudes and mentality towards sexual harassment is another effective step towards the effectiveness of the policy. This step can promote the employee’s understanding to view the harassments as immoral, improper and undermining, thereby reducing the offense. The last component of the policy should enforce the internalization of the policy.
Encouraging employees to report sexual harassment by ensuring a free atmosphere for the process of reporting the offenses and ensuring that investigated offenses are properly dealt with will improve employees’ confidence in the management and even encourage victims to raise their complaints as well as sounding a warning to potential offenders of sexual harassment (Myers, 2003)
Effective Integration of Workforce Planning With the General Business Plan
Integration of workforce planning with the general business plan can be effectively achieved by considering the workforce planning as a component of the overall business plan. Workforce planning as a component of the organization’s management shows interrelationship, which forms a basis for its integration into the business plan.
Efficiency in planning and implementation of the workforce processes will, therefore, ensure effective integration of the workforce planning into the business plan. Workforce planning, or in other words human resource planning, is a set of activities that relates to:
Scanning and assessing environment, specifying the objectives to be achieved by human resource activities along with measures to be used to achieve those objectives and developing plans for human resource policies and practices along with time tables for implementing the plans (Jackson et al., 2009).
The first step of the planning involves the process of scanning. Scanning looks into the internal and external environments to determine the features and nature of the workforce. After scanning, analysis is done into the objective of the workforce planning, which in this respect is dependent on the objective of the business plans.
A plan by the organization to increase its productivity or sales will for instance, influence the workforce plan to increase the number of employees in the respective departments of production or sales. After the metrics of the workforce, environment is taken into consideration, a human resource objective is set.
The objective will both be quantitative and qualitative to express the value and efficiency to be achieved by the workforce plan. Again the achievement of the workforce objectives is as well achievement of the entire business plan. Planning is then done on human resource.
The planning stipulates the roles of individual parties to the planning as well as the timing of activities to be carried out. The process of workforce planning is, therefore, an outline of how workforce policies and procedures are to be integrated into a business plan and how the policies and procedures are to be implemented into the workforce (Jackson, 2009).
The functions of the human resource management are to source, develop and maintain the productivity of employees of an organization. The human resource department, therefore, following its organization’s business plan, carries out its qualitative and quantitative surveys to determine the business’ need for workforce.
Workforce planning makes sure that the organization gets the workforce that it requires in terms of qualifications, number and time. According to Jackson et al. (2009), the alignment of business planning and workforce planning have increasingly been enhanced over the past years.
The human resource managers are currently being incorporated in the planning activities for their organizations as well as other departments in organizations. The authors further established that human resource management is being incorporated in a variety of aspects in an organization. Some of the aspects include:
Development of business goals, creating strategies and processes to drive business results, alignment of business goals, implementation of strategies and methods to drive business results, creating and implementation of business strategies, among others. (Jackson et al., 2009, p. 1)
In its evaluation and assessment of internal and external environments of an organization, workforce planning looks into factors such as “economic globalization, labor markets and legal institutions” (Jackson et al., 2009, p. 1) among other factors.
The workforce planning team, therefore, determines and communicates the possible effects of these environmental changes to an organization. It then helps an organization in planning to adjust to these changes (Jackson et al., 2009).
Erasmus et al. (2003) on the other hand argued that effectiveness of a workforce plan depends on the business plan and the mission statement of a particular institution. The workforce planning relies on the business plan from which it plans and addresses the workforce needs of the organization.
The workforce planning and implementation which forms the structure of an organization is always a reflection of the business plan due to its scope that determines the number and category of people to be employed into the organization’s system.
Some of the benefits of workforce planning include: planning to ensure that labor costs are maintained at the lowest cost possible while the human resource supply is kept sufficient for the organization’s operations improvement of the general business plan (Erasmus et al., 2003).
Important Factors Considered when developing a Recruiting Policy
The recruitment policy is an outline developed by the human resource management relating to the process of recruiting employees. The policy describes the requirements for a person to be recruited into the organization and can sometimes include issues related to gender or marginalized groups.
The recruitment policy is an essential document to both the human resource management and the organization’s management as it is a determinant in the achievement of the goals and purpose for which the recruitment is to be made. The essential factors that affect an organization’s recruitment policy can either be internal or external factors.
One of the important factors considered when developing a recruitment policy is the human resource policy of the parent organization. The human resource policy of an organization normally outlines the guidelines for all aspects of human resource activities. This means that the human resource policy outlines aspects of recruiting, modeling and keeping employees, among other things.
The human resource policy is, therefore, an essential factor for consideration when developing a recruitment policy to avoid conflicting of policies within an organization. Another factor to be considered in developing a recruitment policy is the nature and type of the vacancy to be filled.
The nature and type of vacancy may relate to the administrative level to be filled in the structure of the organization, the type of vacancy to be filled and even the number of vacancies. The administrative level of the vacancy, for example, will outline the recruiting process and policy.
Filling the vacancy of an organization’s top manager, for instance, requires a lot of skills, expertise and experience due to its sensitivity in the organization’s decision making. A recruitment policy that is extensive will, therefore, be adopted to widen the recruitment scope so as to increase chances of getting the finest candidate for the job.
A lower position in an organization could on the other hand adopt a very simple policy for recruiting a local resident of the region. The number of vacancies to be filled also determines the recruitment policies to be formulated.
Recruiting for a single vacancy may enlist a single panel and process policy while a large number of vacancies may call for the decentralization of the recruitment process to departmental levels of the organization (Durai, 2010).
The main objective of the recruitment process is to source for applicants to fill a vacancy. The recruitment policy must, therefore, ensure that the process will bring on board a sufficient number of job seekers from whom the organization can select the individuals to employ. The reputation of the organization plays a very critical role in attracting applicants.
An organization with outstanding reputation in its human resource management in terms of remunerations, benefits, security among other factors will easily attract applicants as compared to an organization that lacks the confidence and good will of the pool of job seekers.
A simple recruitment policy will, for instance, be sufficient for a reputable institution while the organization that lacks confidence and goodwill of the job seekers may be forced to make extra efforts to attract applicants. Conventional practices and organizational culture is another internal factor that affects the recruitment policy of an organization.
An organization’s human resource management will tend to follow its traditional practices in recruiting unless the practices have proved inefficient. A consideration is, therefore given to the conventional recruitment practices before formulating a recruitment policy as it provides a basis for identifying the successes and weaknesses of past policies (Durai, 2010).
External factors to be considered when developing a recruitment policy include the nature of the labor market, legislative provisions on labor recruitment as well as the socio-economic factors.
The nature of the labor market in terms of demand and supply for human resource is an influential factor in the formulation of a recruitment policy. A shortage of applicants is experienced in instances where the demand for human resource exceeds the supply. In this case, the recruitment policy should be intense, aggressive and probably lucrative so as to attract the required pool of job applicants.
A more relaxed policy may be used when there is a labor surplus as people will even be searching for employment opportunities before a recruitment policy is developed. Governmental and other legal policies together with economic and social factors also influence the recruitment policy formulation in order to fit the organization’s recruitment process to these external requirements (Durai, 2010).
Advantages and Potential Problems to Consider when using Assessment Centers to Select Managers
An assessment center, as a method of selecting managers, involves subjecting the potential managers to a “standardized set of behaviorally based exercises” (ADOA, 2003, p. 2) from which the subjects are observed and rated in the various exercises. The different exercises are independently rated by professionals in the different fields and points awarded.
The ratings are then combined and the overall point scored by each candidate considered (ADOA, 2003). The assessment center method for selecting managers has a variety of advantages over other selection methods. One of its advantages is that it is found to be “more reliable in evaluating supervisory, managerial and administrative abilities” as compared to other selection techniques (Hale, 2010, p. 8).
While other methods like the oral or written interviews tests on the knowledge of the candidates and their abilities to present and express themselves and ideas, the assessment center examines one’s ability to performance. The assessment centers pose imitations of managerial situations which the candidates are put to work out. Their skills are therefore tested on performance of the actual managerial situations.
Hale (2010) further claimed that research indicates that people with recommendable performance in the assessment centers exhibit the same performance in the actual field of work. Another advantage of the assessment center is its flexibility in the scope of application.
Assessment centers can be used in the selection of candidates for any type of jobs, whether managerial or non-managerial, government or private sector. It is also applicable at both initial levels of entry into an organization as an employee as well as a tool to assess for promotions.
This flexibility gives it a diverse scope which can promote its acculturation due to its sufficiency in application for both selections of employees and promotion of employees. The assessment method is also normally appreciated and accepted by the candidates. This gives it an advantage of not demoralizing the candidates subjected to the process.
A typical illustration is a case where some organizational employees are to be promoted. An unappreciated method of selection used for promotions might severely discourage employees who felt that they deserved the promotion but were unfairly treated or even discriminated against. This discouragement can affect the employees to redundancy.
The assessment method, however, eliminates this dissatisfaction due to its acceptance among the candidates. There is also an advantage of development in the field by the assessment center candidates, which is attributable to their selection through assessment center.
This implies the possibility that candidates who are selected using this method are likely to develop in their management career faster than candidates employed through other selection criteria (Hale, 2010).
The method of assessment centers, on the other hand, has potential problems associated with it. One of the possible issues that could arise from the use of this method is that it can fail to identify the best candidate for the appointment. This is because the assessment test factors in the ability of the candidates to perform given duties but does not look at their abilities to relate to other employee and the entire work environment.
In excluding elements of personal attributes such as “attitude, emotional maturity, and personality characteristics” (Hale, 2010, 9), the process might end up selecting an individual who cannot control or influence his or her juniors. This can generate a leadership crisis which can lead to inefficiency in the productivity of part or whole of the organization (Hale, 2010).
Other advantages of assessment center include its comprehensiveness in evaluation of candidates. The assessment of the candidates that is done over a period of time gives the assessors more time to learn about the capacity of the candidates as opposed to the shorter durations offered by other methods like the oral or written interviews.
The comprehensiveness also yields more information about the candidates from which informed decision over their abilities can be made. The additional problems that could arise from the use of assessment center include lack of expertise to develop the candidates for selection.
This is because a number of technocrats are required in the various aspects of management in which the candidates are to be developed and assessed.
It also requires a large number of these specialists, a fact that could as well pose financial problems to the institution that seeks to recruit the candidates. Other problems likely to occur include administrative difficulties and the rigidity in schedule of the assessment process (Coffee, n.d.).
Managing New Employee Orientation to Create Maximum Positive Impacts
The orientation of a new employee is the process of familiarizing the employee with the environment of an organization by introducing employees to where he or she fits in the organization’s structure and objectives. The orientation process is supposed to show the employee how he or she is supposed to contribute to the activities of the organization by showing him/her what is supposed to be done and how.
For an effective orientation to be achieved, the organization must show the significance that the position of the new employee has with respect to successful realization of the objectives of the organization. The orientation process should also consider the psychological nature and impacts of the new employee’s mentality.
This is because starting a new career is occasionally demanding. Necessary steps must, therefore, be taken to ensure that the orientation process is properly managed to induce positive impacts on the new employee. The effective management of the orientation will entail a plan for the orientation program and its subsequent implementation to ensure that desired objectives are obtained at the end of the orientation process.
Effective management of an orientation of an employee recognizes orientation as a process rather than a single one-day event. The orientation program is actually supposed to be part of the wider process of employee recruitment, selection and development (Wallace, 2007).
A properly managed employee orientation program should in essence yield a number of benefits such as enhancing the employee’s commitment towards the business entity, which reduces the rate of employee mobility in the organization.
It also helps in outlining the organization’s expectations over the employee, enhancing the confidence, relations of the employee in the organization and helps the employee in settling down into the organization’s environment.
It also improves the learning and adjusting process of the employee into the organization. This consequently saves the longer period that the employee would take if inefficient or no orientation was done to the employee. An effective orientation management must clearly outline the goals to be achieved by the orientation process.
The goals could include, though not limited or restricted to, building the confidence of the employee that the decision to work for the organization was actually a good idea, expressing the organizations expectation of the employee and making the new employee to feel like he or she is an integral part of the organization.
In respect to the objectives, the management should ensure that the new member is sufficiently introduced to the essentials of the organization. Effective management of the orientation will also personalize the process with respect to the new employee.
The orientation management must also not assume any knowledge of the organization’s culture by the new member but rather introduce the member to the culture and values of the organization fully (Wallace, 2007).
The management should also ensure a well outlined “timing, pacing and sequencing” (Wallace, 2007, p. 2) of the orientation process. The effective orientation process can actually begin before the employee is hired into the organization. This is occasionally done by providing information about the vacancy to be filled by the recruits.
Done during the recruitment process, the job description availed to the recruits provides information that helps a new member to understand how he or she fits into the organization. Further information can also be provided to the new member before the reporting date by sending necessary information to the member or even just a congratulatory note to help the person feel welcomed into the organization.
The process is then extended to the employee’s initial moments in the organization. When the new employee reports to the organization, the organization’s top management should outline the orientation method and delegate the orientation roles to responsible parties in the organization. The departmental leader should be a significant though not a dominant element of the orientation process.
The effective methods that could be adopted by the administration include “one to one conversation, group meetings, self-guided exercises and activities” (Wallace K., 2007, p 7 of 11) among others. The final element of an effective orientation program is the evaluation of the success of the orientation process with respect to the goals and objectives that were set by the management for the process.
The evaluation should involve the assessment of the success of the management, the orientation process, as well as the individual employee in terms of achieving the goals and objectives of the orientation process. A final satisfactory evaluation of the process will be an indication of an effective process with maximum positive impacts (Wallace, 2007).
Organization’s Benefits: Should Companies Offer Uniform Benefits or Flexible Benefits in Which Employees Choose Their Preferred Benefits
In flexible benefit plans, employees are offered the freedom to choose from a variety of available benefit packages the benefits that best satisfy their needs and interest. In this type of benefit, an employee is allowed to choose a package of choice subject to a limited value set by the employer.
The flexibility also allows the employee to utilize more than the prescribed value of the benefit and pay back the excess amount or even utilize a lesser amount to the offered advantage and claim the balance as income. The flexible type of benefit has over time experienced the challenges of employees being unable to choose from the variety of offers due to indifference.
According to Globler and Warnich (2005), the flexible benefit plan has a variety of advantages over the fixed benefit plan. One of the advantages is that contrary to fixed benefit plan which can offer a package that the employee could already be possessing or which an employee might not be interested in, the flexible benefit plan allows an employee to choose a package that he or she feels will provide the best satisfaction.
Another advantage of the flexible benefit plan is the fact that it helps in containing rising costs. Research conducted by Globler and Warnich (2005) indicated that a significant percentage, about fifty percent, of employees who were under flexible benefit plan had met their targets in medical costs.
The research further provided that about forty percent were not sure as to whether or not the flexible plan could help them achieve the same targets while only eight percent had the opinion that the benefit plan could not help them meet the said target. The research portrayed the idea of effectiveness, to a greater percentage, of the flexible benefit plan to meeting medical cost.
By extension, the plan can help employees in meeting other costs apart from the medical one. The same survey also indicated that almost ninety percent of employees were satisfied by the employers’ provision for flexible benefit plan.
Other advantages of flexible benefit plan include improvement in variety of the available benefits, ability as a tool to attract and retain workers, containing employees from joining unions as well as providing a variety to enable employees choose new benefits that they don’t yet have (Globler and Warnich, 2005).
The flexible benefit plan is also effective in the sense that it gives room for consideration of diversity among employees. The choice of benefits by young employees might be totally different from the choice that will be favored by the elderly. It, therefore, gives the satisfaction of all employees in their diversities as relates to age and other diversified interests.
The flexibility that is further enhanced by employees communicating their preferences in advance extends the benefits to almost anything that the employees may want. The fixed benefit plan is, however, becoming unpopular among both employers and employees. The disadvantages associated with the fixed benefit plans are that they are more cost demanding as compared to flexible benefit plans.
The fixed plans are also subjected to legal requirements which are equivalently tiresome to the employers. The uniform benefit plan is therefore considered to be rigid, costly to the employer and surrounded by a number of legalities. Comparing the two benefit plans, the flexible plan has a variety of options from which the employees can choose while the uniform benefit plan is fixed to a predesigned option.
The availability of options on the flexible benefit plan can allow an employee to adjust plans and shift or focus benefits to meeting a particular cost while the uniform benefit plan is predefined to meeting a specific cost and cannot be transferred to meeting other needs.
The flexible benefit plan also has a variety of available offers that ensures employees satisfaction from the benefits while the uniform benefit plan is not open to choices and might not yield satisfaction at all especially if it leads to duplication of benefits.
The uniform plan puts burdens on the employee in terms of costs involved and the government regulation surrounding it as compared to the flexible benefit plan, which is free from these two aspects.
The flexible benefit plan is, therefore, more advantageous to both the employer and the employee as compared to the uniform benefit plan. Companies should, therefore, offer the flexible benefit plan to their employees and not the uniform benefit plan (Sims, 2007).
Factors to Consider when Establishing and Monitoring an Employee Assistance Program
Employee assistance program is a service offered to employees to help them in efficiently managing issues that affect them at the workplace. The issues could be affecting the employees in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness at the workplace, their health and satisfaction derived from the working processes.
The factors affecting the establishment and monitoring of the employee assistance program can be identified from the features, necessities and nature of the program. The program is normally associated with high level of expertise that has seen organizations enlist the services of professional institutions for the service of employee assistance. The employee assistance process is always confidential and is not even availed to the employee’s file.
The process is also voluntary and is supposed to be autonomous from the organization’s administration, non-partisan and readily available. The enlistment of employee assistance occurs when the employee has identified his or her problem. The employee can then directly seek the help of the assistance program or can be referred by his or her supervisor. For the effectiveness of the employee assistance program to be achieved, the employee, as well as the administration, must fulfill certain responsibilities.
The responsibilities of the employee include commitment to effective work productivity and enlisting the assistance in case of experienced problem that affect the employee’s productivity.
The administration’s responsibility, on the other hand, includes educating its employees on the assistance policy, ensuring confidentiality is upheld, identifying cases of personal problems among employees and upholding the voluntary policy of the employee assistance program (Justice, n.d.).
The establishment of an employee assistance program by an organization, therefore, requires the provision for the fundamentals of the program as well as the need for the responsibilities of both the organization and the individual employees. The first likely factor to be considered in establishing the program is the need for the program among the employees.
The organization needs to evaluate and identify the trend of arising needs for employee assistance. The obtained data will then help the organization to determine whether to establish its own employee assistance program or to rely on an external provider of the service.
A large number of cases of employees who need the assistance program may influence an organization to establish its own assistance program while a small number of reported cases may result into the use of an external specialized body to provide the services.
Another factor to consider when establishing the assistance program is whether or otherwise the organization can afford the expertise to offer the services. Being an independent process that requires competence in expertise, the cost of establishing it within the organization may be much more than that which could be incurred if the organization referred its affected employees to seek the services from an external provider.
The employee’s attitude towards an internal assistance services should also be considered before establishing one within the organization.
Due to the psychological involvement of the assistance process and the need for privacy of the whole process, an organization’s employees may not be willing to take the assistance from within the organization for fear that their problems or secrets might be revealed to the administration or other employees.
Once the employee assistance program is initiated, whether within the organization or enlisted from specialist body, the organization needs to evaluate the program in order to identify whether or not the application is effective among the organization’s employees.
This is the reason why organizations require data of their employees who enlists the services of employee assistance program. In evaluating the assistance program, the organization needs to consider the productivity level of the employees before and after seeking the assistance. This will indicate whether or not the program is significant on the employees.
The trend of response by the employees to the assistance is also a considerable factor. The organization should also consider the behavior of the employees during the periods before seeking the assistance and the behavior after enlisting the employee assistance program.
This together with the trend of behavioral changes as a result of the assistance program will help the organization to establish whether or not the program is effective. It will also be important in helping the management to check whether the employee’s problem is resolved or there is need for further assistance (Justice, n.d.).
The Effect of Changes in Product and Service Markets on the Relationship between Labor and Management
Changes in the market refer to the variation in trend of mechanisms that alters the demand or supply or both of goods and services. The background of production involves manufacturing and service-providing industries employing human resource that in turn apply labor to yield the goods or the services. The producing organizations on their merits also employ labor only when there is need for applying the labor.
The relationship between labor and management can be examined in terms of how the two parties react to each other after changes occur in either labor market or product and services markets. The changes in product and service markets, for instance, affects the labor markets and changes the relationships between the management that employs labor and the people who supply or are willing to supply labor.
The relationships can be influenced in either a negative or positive direction. According to Gwartney et al. (2008), a change in either the labor or the product market has an effect on the other, which is to say that these two markets are interrelated. Increased demand for commodities normally has the immediate effect of rising prices of the particular commodities.
The rise in prices consequently triggers the producers to increase their quantities of productions in order to capitalize on profit. As a consequence, there will be demand for labor to facilitate the increased production levels. In this chain, an increase in demand in the product market results into an increased demand for human resource.
It is the increased demand of the human resource that changes the relationship between the labor and the management. The forces of labor market are similar to those of the product market hence an increase in demand for labor would mean an increased price for labor as well as increased employment rate.
The labor force, in this case, will view the organizations’ management as friendly job providers who offer reasonable remunerations (Gwartney et al., 2008).
A reverse change in the product market, on the other hand, reduces the demand for labor. A reduced labor demand will consequently lead to reduced wages and salaries for the workers as well as lying off of some employees as organization tries to cut costs in a bid to minimize or avoid suffering losses.
The employees will under these circumstances perceive the organizations managements as inconsiderate of their employees’ welfares. The change in trend of the product market, therefore, results in both negative and positive relations between the labor force and the management (Gwartney et al., 2008).
The products and service markets can also be changed by forces other than the normal demand and supply. Other forces that are normally encountered in the product and service markets include market regulation that could arise from national policies.
According to a study by OECD (n.d.), it was established that market regulations have an inverse relationship with the rate of employment in sectors that are not aligned to agriculture. An increase in market regulations in these sectors, therefore, implies a decrease in employment rate and opportunities.
Increased market regulations will for this case strain the relationship between labor force and organizations’ administrations as employment rates reduce and some workers are laid off. Reduced market regulation, on the other hand, will have an effect of increasing the rates of employment by the industrial sectors.
The increased employment opportunity improves confidence and satisfaction among employees, thereby promoting a positive or friendly relation between the workforce and the organizations’ management. The confidence in this situation is built by the increased security provided by higher employment rates in the labor market.
Examples of relatively regulated markets included markets in countries like France and Italy while the relatively liberalized markets included the United States and Australia. Another effect of change in products and service markets that affects the relation between labor and management is the impact of market regulations on income inequality (OECD, n.d.).
References
ADOA. (2003). Assessment centre related exercises. Staffing and Recruitment. Web.
Coffee, K. Assessment Centres. Google Documents. Web.
Durai, G. (2010). Human resource management. Noida, India: Pearson Education India
Globler, A and Warnich, S. (2005). Human Resource Management in South Africa. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Gwartney et al. (2008). Economics: Private and Public Choice. New York, NY: Cengage Learning
Hale, D. (2010). The Assessment Centre Hand book for Police and Fire Personnel. New York, NY: Charles Thomas Publisher.
Jackson, et al. (2009). Managing Human Resources. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Justice. Employee Assistance Program. Justice. Web.
Labor. (2004). Voices of Canadians. Seeking Work-Life Balance. Web.
Myers, W. (2003). 2004 U. S. Master Human Resource Guide. Chicago: CCH Incorporated.
OECD. The Cross-Market Effects Of Product And Labour Market Policies. OECD. Web.
Sims, R. (2007). Human resource management: contemporary issues, challenges, and opportunities. New York, NY: IAP.
Wallace, K. (2007). Creating an Effective New Employee Orientation Program. Google Documents. Web.