Introduction
Sound recruitment and selection systems are more important than reward systems. The presence of qualified staff in business enterprises has a lot of benefits, with regard to increasing market share and growth, as well as maximizing on profits by organizations.
Innovation is a key factor to success for any businesses. It is essential that the human resource departments of all organizations pay close attention to the strategies that enhance innovation (Cohen, 2009, p. 8).
This paper discusses reasons why sound recruitment and selection systems are more significant compared to reward systems.
Recruitment and selection systems vs. reward systems
Effective recruitment and selection of employees are instrumental to success of organizations, particularly in meeting their visions, missions, goals, and objectives (Wylie & Jolly, 2013, p. 10). This can be achieved by integrating recruitment and selection systems.
Poor recruitment and selection of workers can lead to increased costs (Gilmore & Williams, 2012, p. 89). These costs include increasing labor turnover and lowering morale of the existing employees among other costs (Linz, 2004, p. 261).
Hiring the right people for the right jobs can be a significant challenge without recruitment and selection systems (Carless, 2007, p. 155).
Reward systems are not necessities in organizations, considering that there is no need of rewarding employees particularly when they perform poorly.
For instance, the findings of survey data on recruitment and selection systems in the USA confirms that most established companies depend on these systems for improved performance or productivity (Piotrowski & Armstrong, 2006, p. 489).
Through interviewing HR managers of these companies, the researchers found that over 90% of 1000 organizations in the US integrate recruitment and selection systems. Most of them preferred having recruitment and selection systems over other systems including reward systems.
Their simplicity also enables the management to monitor and adopt them easily through a continuous practice and experience (Gregory, Meade & Thompson, 2013, p. 1950). In other words, employees must improve their workplace performance in order to be rewarded.
To increase the rate of performance, human resource managers ensure that employees get trained and assigned jobs that they are good at, within their respective organizations (Hart, 2006, p. 263).
As aforementioned, efficient recruitment and selection of employees helps organizations meet their strategic goals and objectives.
Rewarding employees does not contribute to this achievement. The practice is an additional cost that organizations incur (Stern, 2011, p. 11). For instance, Bruce (2013) reports on Starbucks’ plan for its employees and customers during holidays.
The company’s strategy of rewarding employees and customers frequently and making holiday gifts cheaper can be pleasing to them, but it affects the company in one way or the other. It is like an additional cost that the company will incur.
According to Howard Schultz (Starbucks CEO), the company has made that step as a positioning strategy to make customers and employees loyal to the company.
It is way of making them feel that the company cares about them. I agree with him, but in the real sense, the company will incur costs. This clearly confirms that reward systems are not as important as recruitment and selection systems.
It is recommendable that employees be rewarded after showing exemplary improvements in their workplace.
This should include changes that lead to higher sales, profits, and revenues. In reference to Gross and Friedman (2004), modern organizations utilize reward systems in influencing employees to support organizational culture.
The authors discuss the importance of reward systems in regard to persuading, and influencing workers to support the goals and objectives of organizations (Gross & Friedman, 2004, p. 10).
However, the reward systems can only be more efficient in organizations, which employ the best recruitment and selection systems, than those that do not (Braddy, Meade & Kroustalis, 2008, p. 2995). This confirms that recruitment and selection systems are more important in organizations than reward systems.
Recruitment and selection systems enable human resource managers to examine and align employees with an organization’s culture and change (Thirty-One New Hires Come Aboard, 2008, p. 44). This enables workers to adopt and adhere to specifications of organizations.
This helps them to focus and align their work with goals and objectives of companies (Khosla, Goonesekera, & Chu, 2009, p. 1320). Rewards come after employees have shown their commitment to helping organizations achieve their visions and missions.
Most of the U.S organizations value recruitment and selection systems. For instance, they use Web-based software systems to make in-house recruitment easy and friendly (Klaff, 2004, p. 78).
Reward systems contribute to organizations incurring costs, but recruitment and selection systems help organizations acquire innovative staff, cut on costs and makes work efficient. Organizations also use recruitment and selection systems in attempts of developing innovations.
Many organizations employ innovation strategies in their operations to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors (Shih, Huang & Shyur, 2005, p. 1550).
For instance, companies such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi-Cola use recruitment and selection systems to hire innovative workers (Wade, 2007, p. 10). These innovative workers contribute a lot to the success of these companies.
These companies occupy large market share in their respective industries. The innovative staffs are instrumental to the companies’ high performances.
For instance, Google uses recruitment and selection systems hire innovative staffs to help the company come up with creative innovations in technology.
It is true that rewarding employees raises their morale in workplaces and leads to an improved workforce performance (Galanou, Georgakopoulos, Sotiropoulos & Dimitris, 2011, p. 490).
According to Wilson (2010), HR managers use sound reward systems to influence employees to accept transformations in organizations (Wilson, 2010, p. 91). However, this cannot compete with recruitment systems in helping organizations to become innovative.
In most cases, companies reward employees who have worked for a long period, but not new employees (Parmalee, 2004, p. 11).
Therefore, it is obvious that reward schemes are not more important than recruitment and selection systems. The latter plays a significant role in making organizations innovative (Cooper & Robertson, 2001, p. 184).
Conclusion
In conclusion, recruitment and selection systems are more important than reward systems. Sound reward systems help organizations to influence their staff to adopt organizational changes. It attracts and retains workers, as well as raises their morale in the workplace.
However, the role played by recruitment and selection systems exceeds those of reward systems. For instance, it helps human resource managers to place employees in jobs that they perform best.
Employees get trained and engaged in activities that correlate with the goals and objectives of organizations. Through sound recruitment and selection systems, organizations become innovative and hence gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
The recruitment and selection systems also enable human resource managers to delegate duties to competent workers. This keeps the employees motivated and focused on meeting organizational goals and objectives.
If an organization has the right people, working on the right jobs, it can easily expand in terms of growth, market share, and profits. The roles played by recruitment and selection systems are many, and more significant than those of reward schemes.
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