The Management And Development Of The Company Workforce

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Starting from the moral welfare role of the late 19th century changes were needed not just to support vulnerable workers but to also support the need for increased manufacturing output. Increased unionisation post world war one resulted in more frequent industrial disputes and jobs such as " 'labour manager' or employeement manager' " (History of HR and the CIPD, 2012,1) were introduced.

The challenges involved in driving organisational performance are complex.

With HR having a more strategic role there is less direct contact with production workers. Techniques to drive organisational performance such as performance appraisels, teamworking, career development and communication have now been devolved to first line managers.

HR must now ensure that first line managers are equiped with the skills and knowledge to manage and develop their teams . This requires increased training and support for first line managers. Senior management may now question increased training budgets and may expect a reduction in HR headcount to offset this.

HR constantly have to justify their existance and their contribution to the profitability of the company, this is possibly the biggest challenge faced by HR.

There are many HR interventions available to drive both high performance in employees and the organisation, these include but are not limited to, pay and reward, recuritment and selection and performance management. The challenge to the HR specialist is that in order to select the appropriate interventions they must first either determine or define the HRM framework in which the organisation operates.

By identifying the appropriate HRM framework we ensure that the chossen HRM interventions do not conflict, for example, individual performance related pay and Team Working.

Beardwell and claydon (2010,:4) suggests that there is some ambiguity in the meaning of HRM and as a result that in various attempts have been made to more accuratly define aspects of HRM.

This has resulted in People centric and Business centric definitions.

People centric HRM is concerned with obtaining employee cooperation, involvment and comittment and has been called 'soft' HRM. Unions and works councils are encouraged by 'soft' HRM policies allowing a dialog between Management and Production Workers

Business centric relates "to policies for managing people that are designed to further the strategic goals of the business" (Beardwell and Claydon,2010:4) and has been termed 'hard' HRM. There is little support for Unions as every employee is expected to be working for the aims and objectives of the organisation.

It may appear that 'hard' and 'soft' HRM are incompatible but (Legge,2005) challenges this by suggesting this is not necessarily the case. This view is supported by experince within Goodyear as there are elements of both 'hard' and 'soft' HRM, for example, Performance Management (hard) and Talent Management (soft).

From a political perspective (Legge,1989) states that 'hard' HRM suited the ideological stance of Reagan and Thatcher (as cited in Bratton and Gold, 1999:27) as it does not recognise any benefits to having unions or significant worker representation

In the academic world, two broad models have been devised to based on 'soft' and 'hard' HRM.

The Michigan Business School developed the 'matching' model that is comparable to 'hard' HRM ie achieving business objects by the appropriate utilisation of human resources. This concept links the HRM policies to "formulation and implementation of strategic corporate and/or business objectives" (Devanna et al.,1984:34)

and therefore requires close alignment between business strategy and HR strategy.

This concept forms the basis of what is known as the "best fit" model.

According to Price(2004: 45-46), the key areas requiring focus are:

" Selection of the most suitable people to meet business needs.

Performance in the pursuit of business objectives.

Appraisal, monitoring performance and providing feedback to the organisation and its employees

Rewards for appropriate performance

Development of the skills and knowledge required to meet business objectives."

The other academic model was developed by Beer et al. (1984) at Harvard University and was influenced by the 'soft' approach to HRM. The model accepts that an organisation is built around different stakeholders and that HRM policies and strategies will reflect their interests.

Guest (1989:42) defined "Strategic integration, High commitment, High quality and Flexibility" as the recommendations that an organisation should adopt to become more effective.

The theory of universalism that supports this 'best pratice' model of HRM requires a set of procedure, policies and processes to generate either high performance or high commitment, as a result, any organisation will benefit.

Pfeffer (1998) identified seven best practice elements that included Employment Security, Sophisicated selection and Teamworking. According to Beardwell and Claydon (2010;10) Pfeffer's best practices "are widely recognised, if not universally accepted", yet Beardwell and Claydon (2010;59) show 6 additional lists of best practices that are all at variance to Pfeffer.

Capelli and Crocker-Hefter (1996;7) comment " we believe that a single set of 'best' pratices may,indeed be overstated… We argue that (it is) distinctive human resource practices that help to create unique competencies that differentiate products and, in turn drive competitiveness "

There does seem to be disagreement in the liturature regarding best practices. Is it possible that the best practices are organisation specific? Could the demographics of the organisation really determine the best practices. Consider this example, would an 18 year old and 50 year old employee rate "job security" top of the list? How would they view "training"?

The previous models link and therefore change in line business strategy. However, in HRM terms, these models may be considered "static" insofar as they do not appear to be either adaptive or dynamic.

(Kochan and Baroci,1995; Lengnick Hall,1988; Sisson and Storey,2000) recognise the static nature of these models and suggest HRM adopts a a lifecycle model much like a product has a lifecycle. The policies and procedures are planned to adapt over time. So, for example, the startup phase may focus more on Recruitment and Training rather than Performance Management and Talent Management.

The initial challenge is identifying where an organisation is in the cycle and the therefore the appropriate set of policies and procedures. The next challenge is how to measure when the organisation is transitioning from one phase of the cycle to next and hence the triggering of the next set of procedures and policies. Ultimatley there will be a transistion to the 'Mature' phase of the buisness.

"Retaining viability and sustaining competitive advantage in the 'Mature' stage of an organisation's development is at the heart of much SHRM literature" (Beardwell and Claydon,2010;42)

It has been sugessted by Abell (1993) that organisations adopt 'Dual' HR strategies so they are ready for the 'Mature' phase whilst still managing the present.

It is apparent that these models differ in terms of "practices" but one thing they have in common is the alignment to business strategy. This has evolved to be called "Strategic HRM" (SHRM) This is a significant change for the HR specialist, moving from the traditional "personnel" role to a business partner role. SHRM needs to demonstrate a contribution to the "bottom line" via competitive advantage.

The best fit and best practice models demonstrate competitive advantage by aligning to the external context of the organisation.

An alternative model that uses the internal context of the business to acheive competitive advantage by "careful analysis of the firms skills and capabilities; characteristics which competitirs find themselves unable to imitate " (Bratton and Gold ,1999:51) is called the Resource-based model or Resource Based View (RBV)

The Resource Based View is characterised by Barney (1991) as having resources that have value, are rare, difficult to imitate and specfic to the organisation.

By fostering and developing these resources not only can SHRM demonstrate value to the business but also assist in sustaining competitive advantage.

Wright et al (2001) make the distinction between HR practices and the actual human resource arguing that "HR practices could not form the basis for sustainable competitive advantage since any individual HR practice could be easily copied by competitors".

With SHRM practices widely known it must be the application of these practices and the strategies that gain the competitive advantage.

The major distinction between the RBV model and other models is that it focuses on the actual organistion at a local level. Whilst in a multinational company such as Goodyear, the policies and strategies are global, the implementation is local.

HR specialists can assist line managers to implement practices, line managers knowing both the strengths and weakness of their reports are able to feedback to the HR specialist development opportunities. This feedback is essential for the HRM department in order to devise training to enhance employee skills and thus drive invidual performance.

In a manufacturing environment, the skills development of production workers (AKA Bluecollar or Shopfloor workers) forms part of what is known as "High Performance Work Systems" - HPWS.

The concept of developing Production Worker skills , was unheard in the post second world era of "Fordism" where cost minimalisation was the key buisness driver. However, in the early 1970's , countries such as the USA, whose manufacturers followed the "Fordism" style faced increased competition.

Surprisingly, the first discussion of High Performance and Skills development for production workers did not happen till 1990 when a public report, America's Choice:High Skills or Low Wages! (Commission on the skills of the American Workforce, 1990) (as cited in Boxall and Macky, 2009;3) was released. Appelbaum and Batt(1994) further recognised and populaised HPWS in their book The New American Workplace.

The component definition of HPWSs is confusingly varied but the influential study by Appelbaum et al.(2000)

define performance using the established AMO theory (Boxall and Purcell, 2003;20).

AMO theory states that people perform well when they have the Ability, Motivation and Opportunity.

In their Bath People and Performance model, Purcell et al.(2003) developed the AMO concept by identifying

'11 HR practices that contributed to organisational performance' (Beardwell and Claydon,2010;63)

These practices included Teamworking, Training and development, recruitment / selection and Performance appraisal.

Recruitment and Selection

In computer circles there is a phrase "Garbage In - Garbage Out" that signifies that even with perfect systems, if the quality of data input is poor then the resultant output will also be poor. A similar view may be taken with recruitment. If the qualtity of the input (recruit) is poor then the output (organisation performance) will also be poor.

It may therefore be argued that recruitment in a new organsiation is the most important part of ensuring high performance and that in an existing organisation it is one of the most important.

Failure to recruit workers with appropriate competence will doom the firm to failure or, at the very least, to stunted growth ' (Boxall and Purcell, 2003;140)

Performance Management is the structured setting of objectives, reviewing results and identifiying training and development opportunities.