What Concerns Might Be Raised About Endorsing Human Resource Management (hrm as the “best-Practice” Approach to Managing Employment Relations?

                                                                                                                                                 B030265

                                                                                    Business Studies 1

                                                                                        Suzan Thomson

                                                                                                    7/3/2013    

                  Employment Relations Essay

What Concerns Might be raised about endorsing Human Resource Management (HRM as the “best-practice” approach to managing employment relations?

“Human Resource Management is a series of integrated decisions that form the employment relationship; their quality contributes to the ability of the organizations and the employees to achieve their objectives”

                                                            -  George T. Milkovich and John W. Boudreau  ^[1]

Human Resource Management is a strategic approach to managing people which has the aim of helping workers to perform in the most effective way possible, which leads companies and organizations to become more productive and reach their targets. It is also the department of an organization that is in charge of the process of selecting, managing, and guiding of employees to contribute in an organization’s success. It is more common in larger organisations. Some of the main principles of human resource management include making sure that workers have anything that they require to do their work, available at all time.  According to this strategy, workers should also be compensated appropriately for their efforts at their work placement, for example with bonuses.  Also another main principle of this strategic approach is communication, as it is important for information to circulate smoothly around an organization in order to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity. One of the main aims of a Human Resource Management department in and organization is to create, apply and overlook policies to do with the behavior of workers and that of the organization towards its workers. After having described the main features of Human Resource Management, the main advantages of this practice will be analyzed, as will “ the concerns that might be raised” from applying this practice.

As mentioned before Human Resource Management has the aim of helping workers to perform at their jobs in the most productive way. It has many advantages, such as the fact that in the process of Human Resource Management there is training involved, as workers learn new skills, through training programs offered by the company, this leads to employees becoming more complete and developing more skills which in future could mean that they take up a new and better function in a company. Employees are also motivated as Human Resource Management involves rewarding employees for their efforts, which is beneficial for both employees and the organization as motivated and hardworking labour will lead to a successful company.  Human Resource Management aims at creating the best working atmosphere for workers to perform at their highest level, this complaisant atmosphere can be created through treating the employees well or keeping their work placement clean and safe, the idea is to make it the most familiar atmosphere as possible. This is a key factor in an organization succeeding . Human Resource Management departments are also important when it comes to avoiding a conflict to get out of hands , as it is normal for there to be some sort of conflict between employees and employers at some point in an organization, and HRM is there to find a solution. Some experts such as Delany would back up Human Resource Management as being the best approach to managing employment relations,  as he says  "successful organizations keep people issues at the fore front of their thinking and at the core of their decision making and planning ".^[2]

However, Human Resource Management is not as straightforward and as pleasant as it sounds. There are many concerns about this strategic approach. For example, as Human Resource Management is all about worker’s well-being and motivation to get full productivity from them a lot of money is needed to put into it, for bonuses, amount of people per shift etc. and companies struggle to make the correct arrangements so that their budget can handle it.  A Human Resource Management department of an organization can find it hard to advertise a job placement in a way that they awaken people’s interest during the recruitment process.  They also have the added pressure of having to choose the right people for a certain job, because if the wrong workers were to be chosen the business would be affected and would not achieve the set targets. Human Resource Managers are also in charge of organizing a training process for new employees, which is needed in most businesses. This can be difficult as it consumes time and most importantly, it uses up the companies budget , which can lead to financial trouble , one of the biggest problems  faced by companies. Now-a-days companies have their policies and laws against discrimination, and Human Resource Managers find it hard to go through the whole process of recruitment and training without violating these laws. Also employees have more knowledge about their rights as workers , and this could mean that the Human Resource Management department in an organization has to deal with a lot of complaining from workers if they feel their rights are not being taken into account. Human Resource Managers often have to deal with safety issues as well  , as it is not uncommon for some work equipment to not be used properly, which puts workers health and safety at risk, so they have to make sure equipment is safe because if this is not the case they will receive many complaints about it from workers. Companies usually offer their employees some benefits such as life insurance or product discounts ,  but when one of these employees leaves the company these benefits are lost, and it is the Human Resource Managers job to keep track of when an employee leaves the organization to cancel all of his benefits. There are two different types of human resource management according to Storey (1987)  , one of them is the Soft model of Human Resource Management in which employees feelings are the most important factor to take into account if the company intends to succeed, however, other organizations may enforce the Hard model Human Resource Management, in which employees are not seen as people, companies believe that workers are a way of them achieving their goals, they are seen as instruments or just another factor of production. Also, it is normal for conflicts to occur in an organization, and this is a problem for Human Resource Managers as they have to find a solution to these conflicts or else it could lead to having to fire an employee or even abandonments from employees, which costs money to the company as they would have to recruit and train a new worker to take over the job.