Introduction

Human resource management is an important topic in business management, as people is the key assets of an organization that contribute and determine the success or failure of an organization in the ever challenging and competitive marketplace today. In most of the outstanding organization today, the key reasons for the high performance are often due to the talented people working in the organization. Thus, it can be argued that human resources management is critical to any form of businesses; no matter in any context, and in fact, proper management of human resources does add values to the organizations (Ming, 2002).

This paper is arranged as follow. Firstly, the reasons that human resources management is important and adds values to any form of businesses at different context are discussed. Then, the various roles of human resources management will be discussed. Examples will be given, whereby how the respective roles of human resources management add value to the different context will be provided. Lastly, the paper concludes that people management is crucial to any business, as ultimately, it is people who determine the success or failure of any firm in the world.

Importance of Human Resources Management to Any Business

In all types of business, it is essentially about managing people. This is not hard to understand, as people is the one to make the product, deliver the services, manage the organization, system, create the organizational structure, compete with the competitors, and to implement well designed strategies to compete in the challenging marketplace today. Without human, nothing can be done, and any business will never be existed. Thus, the management of people in any organization has direct linkages to the success of failure of a firm. Proper management of human resources will definitely add value to the organization. Human resources management plays a variety of roles in an organization. In the following section, the various roles of human resources management will be discussed, and examples on how these roles of human resources management add values to organization will be illustrated.

Roles of Human Resources Management

There are many roles played by human resources department. A review of the literature and business textbooks on the topuc of human resources management reveals several common themes on the roles of human resources management towards adding value and contributing organizational performance and success to an organization. Among the several functions of HRM to be discussed in the following section include (a) recruitment and selection of employees, (b) training and development of workforce, (c) formulation and implementation of reward system, (d) motivating workforce, (e) strategic HRM, and (f) HRM in global context.

To Recruit and Select the Best Possible Employees

One of the key roles of HRM is to select and recruit the best employees to work in the organization. The employees selected should be able to adapt to the culture and agree with the values adopted by the organization. Often, the effective management of HR stars with the recruitment process, as if the employees selected are correct, the works involve in managing employees can be relatively easy on the latter days. If the proper, relevant, motivated, committed and talented employees are selected, these employees can later contribute significantly to the operations, marketing or financial management of the organization. Effectively, this will add value to the effectiveness and efficiencies of the value chain, and ultimately will contribute to the achievement of competitive advantage of the organization in the competitive marketplace (Legge, 2004). One of the examples where recruitment and selection process contribute to the performance of an organization is the way that top organization such as Microsoft and Google select the employees. The selection process is very strict, and the interview sessions are filled with highly challenging questions. Google will want to select those employees that can fit into their innovative culture and a lot of testing and observations on the employees’ attitudes, thinking ability and behaviors are performed carefully. As such, most of the employees selected fit into these organization and proven able to contribute to these organization when they start to work (Dessler, 2011).

To Train and Develop the Workforce

Another critical role of HR is to train and develop the employees so that the employees become skillful in performing their tasks in workplace. Besides, HR can also implement the development program to shape the desired behaviors or attitudes among the employees. One good example is that the training and development program in outstanding such as Intel is carried out seriously and consistently (Schuler et. al., 1987). Intel employees are required to undergo training often. The employees can be trained technically, or to participate in behavioral change program such as the team building program organized to educate the employees in non-technical issues. As such, employees in Intel are competent and able to perform up to expectations in the daily tasks, making Intel an outstanding organization for many years (Dowling et. al., 2008).

To Implement Relevant Reward System

In order to manage employees properly, HR is responsible to formulate, implement, check and improve the reward system in an organization to that the employees are rewarded accurately, fairly and sufficiently (Briscoe et. al., 2007). Proper reward system can benefits the organization in various ways. For example, proper reward system can shape the desired behaviors of workforce in the organization. Proper reward system can also motivate the employees, as people will work harder when they are compensated in a fair manner (Schuler et. al., 1987). Apart from that, effective reward system will also ensure employees’ satisfaction and in the long run, enhance employee retention rate. When turnover rate of employees are reduced, employers can save a lot of costs and time to re-train employees. There will be less time spent to select another viable employee to replace a just-resigned employee and that will smoothen the work flow and process in business organizations (Dessler, 2011; Price, 2007).

To Motivate Workforce

It is also the HR manager’s role to motivate the employees and ensure the employees’ moral is high. Employees’ motivation is crucial, as it will affect the work performance of the workforce, and will ultimately impact the organizational effectiveness and efficiencies in compete with other business peers in the same industry. Besides, as employees are motivated, they will become more proactive in solving issues in organization, and will also deliver better products or services to the customers. Thus, in the long run, more satisfied customers in turn promise repeat customers and repeat businesses for the organization (Price, 2007). For example, it is widely understood that the employees in Southwest Airlines are motivated to carry out the company missions and values, such as caring, friendly and dedication in daily operation and during servicing the customers. As such, the customers of Southwest Airlines are happy with the services provided and many stick to Southwest as repeat customers. The brand name of Southwest Airlines soared and the profitability and performance of Southwest soon become the best in US (Boxall et. al., 2000). Another example is Tesco, whereby the services provided by employees are friendly and has been producing many happy customers of Tesco around the globe. Thus, Tesco has been growing at a fast pace in the past decades, and emerge as a strong name in the retail industry, effectively becoming a serious challengers to powerful retailer such as Wal-Mart (Daniels et. al., 2008; Boxall et. al., 2000).

To Assist Organization towards Attainment of Strategic Goals

In the new business environment, HRM serve to assist, complement and support the attainment of strategic goals, missions and vision formulated by senior management in an organization (Boxall et. al., 2000). By engaging the employees to move towards the strategic missions and direction formulated by the senior management, HR managers can enhance the implementation and execution of policies, practices and operation in an organization. Besides, HR managers also serve to inform, involve and communicate frequently to employees so that they understand the roles they play in assisting the company toward fulfillment of strategic mission, sharpening of core competencies and ultimately the strengthening of competitive advantages of an organization in the competitive marketplace. For example, HRM in Tesco is a good example, on how the employees are engaged and involved in carrying out the company values and fulfillment of company missions. As a result, the employees understand what is to be achieved, so that they understand their responsibilities, duties and tasks to be performed in order to achieve the strategic missions in the organization. Another good example is the case of Google (Legge, 2004), whereby the employees are taught to understand that missions of Google to deliver the next generation technology to the marketplace. As such, HRM in Google is formulated in the way to train, cultivate and develop the employees to become more creative and innovative, though workplace arrangement, organize of special events and etc to let the employees work in manner that enable the employees to become more creative. The working arrangement and the design of workplace encourage the workers to communicate and to exchange ideas more freely. The workforces are allowed to bring their pets and hobbies to workplace, so that they can become relax whenever necessary. Under less stressful environment, the workforce can become more creative and innovative (Legge, 2004).

To Prepare Organization to Compete in Global Environment

Another increasingly important role of HR in organization is to prepare the organization to cope with the increasing demanding and competitive globalized world (Beardwell et. al., 2007). In the new globalized world, organization has many issues to handle, for example, to cater for the social-cultural differences between different countries, to ensure the legal and legislation aspects of different nations are fulfilled, to employ foreign workers as well as to manage expatriate in the foreign expansion business (Brewster et. al., 2007). For example, as the multinational companies are expanding aggressively to many of the emerging countries such as BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), hiring of foreign workers as well as sending expatriate to manage business expansion in the foreign countries are becoming increasingly common. However, the management of expatriate can be highly complicated (Daniels et. al., 2008). HR department must take the lead to train the expatriate properly, so that they are well equipped with the needed mindset, attitudes, knowledge and skill-sets to deal with the complex environment in a foreign country (Legge, 2004). For this, relevant and effective cross cultural management of business units in different regions of the world will be critical to the success of businesses in other countries (Brewster et. al., 2007).

Conclusion

Overall, HRM played various roles in leading, supporting and contributing to superior performance, growth and profitability of an organization (Brewster et. al., 2007). No matter in what sort of businesses, in any context, properly design and implemented HRM policies and practices will enhance a firm competency and performance. This is increasing true in an ever challenging and knowledge based economy. HRM is an area can never be neglected by the management of an organization for growth and success in the future.

References & Bibliography

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