Understanding Human Resources in the Business Environment Essay

Abstract

This research synopsis is aimed at understanding how human resources and their managers interact on a daily basis and is meant to give insight on how problems encountered can be adequately solved.

Introduction to Study

Human resources are the cornerstone for the success of any business today. Human capital is the greatest investment that a company should aim to protect as all other resources are either utilized here. Therefore, understanding problems affecting this resource is the first step towards the success of a business.

The Problem Statement

The business environment today is very competitive and therefore, the retention of the most efficient employees with experience, and are faithful to the business is paramount. While retaining staff, it is also important to recruit new qualified personnel to ensure the success of the business in the future.

Objectives

The specific objectives of this research synopsis are as follows:

1. Assessing critically the kind of problems faced by human resource executives in business.
2. Exposing problems faced by human resources in the course of operations.

Significance of the study

Trained staff members are always at risk of being lured from their original business settings by other businesses. No company, however, likes to loose their most qualified personnel to another. Therefore, despite most companies adopting the Business Process Outsourcing model (BPO), they always fancy keeping those they have already trained and hence there is need to understand staff needs and address them accordingly.

Scope of the study

Human resource executives are faced with a major problem of deciding what affects their staff and how to correct the problems while observing the cost. Existing studies have exposed a number of problems that human resource executives face but there are more problems arising daily as technological advances become regular.

Limitation of the study

The synopsis will only look at the common problems from the perspective of the human resources and the human resource executives. This is not exhaustive as the number of problems in any business goes beyond this and also encompasses other resources in a business and the nature of their interactions.

Methodology

Sources of data

Primary sources of data were used in the research. The data was directly collected from the human resource executives and managers, customers and the employees and entailed the use of:

1. Surveys and questionnaires: a number of close ended questions were selected which required a choice of limited responses for easy analysis.
2. Interviews: interviewers were trained before hand and were equipped with a number of both open ended and close ended questions.
3. Sample Size: the sample constituted 20 human resource executives, 100 employees and 100 customers.
4. Sampling Technique: Random sampling was used.

All data collected was paramount in the formulation of the case study, which in turn helped deduce important facts useful in understanding the problem in question. Sample units were interviewed in their individual work setting so as to get genuine responses and were personally contacted.

Conclusion

Researchers concluded that human resource executives are faced with a multitude of different problems in the work place daily. The major concern however was competition. Most of the executives interviewed admitted that they dread loosing their best workers to their competitors and strive day in day out to ensure that staff members remain content and are comfortable in the work place.

There are many problems that were expressed by workers in the work environment. However, the major problem encountered by many workers was conflict. Conflict was broadly either between the human resources themselves, between human resources and new technologies or between them and their superiors.