Human Resource Management
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Human Resource Management
Introduction
In today’s business world, it is enough to have Human Resource Management for the purpose to make records of employees’ leaves and keep attendance records. While the role of Human Resources Management is more than just important in today's organizations and the business world. This is so important because many areas are there which would or could be left uncovered and weak when the HRM and the department are kept so limited. Hence it is very important to transform Human Resources Management from being primarily administrative and operational to becoming a more strategic partner.
This research paper is aimed to cover the concept of HRM, put a light view on the activities and core objectives of Human Resources Management. While mainly it is concerned about to cover the reasons why is it important for HRM to transform from being primarily administrative and operational to becoming a more strategic partner. Furthermore, the paper also provides a background of the history of Human Resource (HR) and ensures to provide information about Starbucks Coffee Company that the performance index of the HR Department is 8.963. The information from Starbucks is given for supporting the arguments, concepts or ideas, and opinions about the main point.
It is important to describe the concept of HRM before proceeding to the main concern or topic of the research paper. Hence the concept and meaning of Human Resources Management are described with sufficient details below.
Human Resources Management
Human Resources Management is part of organizational management. Human Resources Management is the process and management that is associated with the management of human resources of an organization or business. The meaning and concept of Human Resources Management are very broad and wide when it is discussed under the entire management or specified management of human resources. In short, Human Resources Management is the approach that is mainly aimed to ensure the internal management of a business or organization.
Human Resources Management is the practice and process that is used to recruit, hire, deploy, and ensure the management of employees of an organization or business or company. Specifically, it is referred to as the concept of human resources. While it is typically concerned about the management of that human resources. There are many activities a Human Resources Management Department of an organization performs. But the common and key activities of the Human Resources Management Department of an organization include creating, putting into effect, and overseeing the policies and procedures that are aimed to govern the employees and the relationship between the organization, organizational objectives, and employees.
The term Human Resources Management has been used for the first time in the 1990s. While, the concept of Human Resources Management got a wider acceptance and application in the early years of the 60s decade (1960) (Langbert, & Friedman, 2002). The concept was firstly meant to describe the individuals or people who work for an organization, to integrate.
In detail, the history of HRM starts round about the early days of the nineteenth century when the welfare officers or secretaries came into being. Those officers were women who were concerned about protecting the rights of women and girls. At that time, their creation was recreation to the Harshness of industrial cases and conditions. Beyond that, their creation was also a recreation to the pressure from the extension of the franchise, influences of labor movements and trade unions, and campaigning of enlighten employers or owners. With time, the role started growth and led to some concerns between the women’s rights protection and the need for high output.
The historical developments in the HRM also has enough credible contribution to the growth and enhancement of the concept of HRM. After WWI the women had been hired in industries and corporation that is reaching to the agreement with trade unions. At the time, women were mostly unskilled (Langbert, & Friedman, 2002). Hence different tactics were required to develop them, make them skilled and manage them to get the outcomes. So from that time (around 1920-30), the concept of Human Resources and Human Resource Management, Labour Manager, and Employment Manager had been introduced to engineer industries. While WWII brought about welfare and personnel work on a full-time basis at all establishments producing war materials. After that, in the 1960s and 1970s employment began to mature expressively. At a similar period workforces practices industrialized by concepts and theories from the social sciences regarding management, motivation, and organizational behavior. After a decade round the mid-80s, the term ‘Human Resource Management’ inward from the United States. The term ‘Human Resources’ is an attention-grabbing concept as it appeared to propose that workers stood as a strength and asset or resource-like machinery, but at a similar stage HR also seemed to highlight employee assurance, commitment, and motivation (Langbert, & Friedman, 2002).
The concept of Human Resources Management is an employee management approach with an emphasis on the personnel of the organization as an asset. In this context, employees of an organization are preferred to the human capital of the organization. With other business objectives such as financial returns, business growth, and increasing market share or sales, etc. the goal of Human Resources Management is to make the best possible use of the human capital of the organization such as Starbucks, reduce the level of any risk associated with the human resource or capital, and maximize return on investment on this particular asset.
In the modern era, the concept and terminology of Human Resources Management can be seen as a more frequent term than it had been used in the past times. Hence, in the modern business world and the modern terminology and context, the objectives of Human Resources Management are also very crucial and significant when it comes to their role and impacts on an organization’s growth and success, etc. (Levashina, & Campion, 2009). Some of the objectives and practices that Human Resources Management can be found involved and engaged in are described below.
Objectives and Practices of Human Resources Management
Societal Objectives
One of the common objectives of Human Resources Management is concerned about the measurement that put into a place that responds to the social and ethical needs and challenges of the employees of the company as well as the company itself. This includes legal issues such as equal pay for employees and equal employment opportunities etc.
Organizational Objectives
To achieve the organizational objectives, Human Resources Management takes actions for the purpose to help to make sure the credibility and efficiency of the employees and organizations like Starbucks. To cater to these concerns, the activities and practices include training and development of employees, ensuring to hire or hiring the right talent for the organization for the specific position or task, and developing and maintaining high-level satisfaction and retention (Lawler, 2008).
Functional Objectives
Here, the processes and guidelines are used for the purpose to ensure that the functioning of the Human Resources is fine within the organization. In this, the activities mainly include ensuring that every human resource is being allocated to its highest level potential.
Personal Objectives
The resources are utilized for the purpose to support and assist the personal concerns and objectives of each of the employees. This mainly includes offering opportunities for growth, development, learning, education, skills enhancement, and career development as well as maintaining the satisfaction of all employees or human resources or assets (Lawler, 2008).
HR Management as Administrative and Operational to a Strategic Partner
Almost every part of an organization can be found on both low and high levels in the organization such as Starbucks. It means that the departments of an organization are engaged in and perform different activities that range from low-level management to high level and important organizational management. The same is the case with Human Resources Management. It means that Human Resources Management can be seen approached in different functional ways. Human Resources Management can be witnessed performing all of the administrative activities associated with internal management (Lawler, & Mohrman, 2003). Here, Human Resources Management simply performs and facilitates the paperwork that involves practices and tasks such as hiring new employees for Starbucks and managing other activities such as handling the insurance of employees’ compensations. While on the other side, Human Resources Management works as a strategic partner or contributor to the management of Starbucks. In this way, Human Resources Management is seen engaged in the process and practices that have a direct relation with Starbucks’s growth and success. In this role of working as a strategic partner and contributor, Human Resources Management gets huge importance and takes up key roles as well as have highly critical operations to perform. Apart from this, the transformation of the function of the Human Resources Management into a strategic partner would lead to and take the workforce strategies to the next and a high level (Levashina, & Campion, 2009). In this, it shifts the workforce strategies to the level where it is increasing the value of the human resource or capital to accrue distinctive competitive advantages.
In short, there are many reasons because of which the transformation of Human Resources Management from an administrative and operational to a more strategic partner. Hence some of these reasons are as follows.
Competitive Advantages
Executive Sessions
Labor Cost Efficiency
Legal Compliances
Competitive Advantages
The transformation of Human Resources Management to a strategic partner of the organization is important due to several concerns. A strategic Human Resources Management is all about the creation and development of competitive advantage through the effective and productive use of employees or the workforce of Starbucks. For the purpose to the ensure and increased efficiency and productivity of the Starbucks, the employment of highly dedicated, motivated, experienced, and well-trained employees in operation is the key (Tikson, 2018). In addition to this, employing such employees also leads to enhance the quality of the products offered by Starbucks as well as the customers’ experiences get empowered.
Further, Human Resources Management is important to be shifted to a more strategic partners because strategic Human Resource managers and even the entire Human Resources Management department is concerned with the recruitment of employees with the highest possible potential for professional growth and development, then giving every employee enough amount of opportunities to learn things and grow with their job and role. Proceeding further, such transformation of the Human Resources Management is crucial in an era as well (Lawler, & Mohrman, 2003). It is crucial because develops employees with top-level expertise in their fields could grant employees and Human Resources Management department access to the brightest minds in the organization and entire industry. As well as it puts Starbucks on the leading and competitive edge of innovation and development.
Execute Succession
The second reason that clarifies that Human Resources Management should be transformed into a more strategic partner is the executive succession. In a small scale business or organization, the success is mostly found completely dependent on the passion, experiences, and personal contacts of owners of the company or business. Hence and due to this, the executive succession planning takes a key and vital role in small scale businesses. While it is almost a fact that administrative Human Resources Management does not usually think about the replacement of top-level employees and managers while the owners of the company can be found much slower as well. So in such cases, the organization or company such as Starbucks may be pulled into bad times. So based on this fact, the transformation of Human Resources Management to a strategic partner may become and lead to take decisions that improve such weakening areas. In other words, these areas can be covered when the organizational structure gets changed in a way where the operational Human Resources Management is transformed into a strategic partner (Tikson, 2018).
In addition to above, the strategic Human Resources Management department and managers work with the owners of the organization or company such as Starbucks to spot the top and potential successors early, groom them by years of experiences, and enable them even for mentorship to make them ready to take the reins of the organization in the case when owners of the company or organization retire or resign. So in short, when the Human Resources Management is transformed into a more and even a high-level strategic partner, strategic succession planning can be ensured which can help in keeping the organization heading in the right direction after a key and major leadership empowerment and change.
Labor Cost Efficiency
Another reason behind the reason for transforming Human Resources Management to strategic partner is the labor cost efficiency. It is so because the administrative and operational Human Resources Management department dispenses rises in employees’ pay almost as a matter of course, using different arbitrary metrics such as the level of experience only based on a number of years worked with Starbucks and determine the compensation based on these factors. While on the other side, a strategic Human Resources Management department promotes employees based on their performance, efficiency, and contribution to the growth and success of the Starbucks (Tikson, 2018). It means that the strategic Human Resources Management department and managers compensate and promote top performers, not the longer period stayer. As mentioned above, this includes the employees that have a huge contribution to the accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives as well as long term success of the Starbucks.
Furthermore, a philosophy of a strategic HR partner makes it sure that the highest level promotion is given to top performers and the highest compensations are given to the employees who have the hugest contributions to the rest. While sometimes prefers to ignore those employees who have warmed and warm their chairs in the office longer than some other employees.
Legal Compliance
According to the statement of (Lawler, & Mohrman, 2003), the purely operational and administrative Human Resources Management works to manage and handle legal concerns and issues reactively while these issues must be catered proactively. Hence in case of having such importance of a particular activity, a strategic Human Resources Management can be found as a credible contributor to meet the goal. The Strategic Human Resources Management can be found helpful in such cases because a strategic Human Resources Management department and managers proactively put procedures and policies in the place for the purpose to keep the Starbucks on the very right and fine side of the employment laws such as issues regarding workplace discrimination, laws of equal employment opportunity, and other critical issues like workplace harassment, etc. (Tikson, 2018). In addition to this, a strategic HR or Human Resources Management department also helps to define the reality and facts that a platform does not give access to a handicapped person or individual until an issue arises. For example
Based on all reasons listed above and the statement is given, I think that the Human Resources Management has to be transformed to being a more strategic partner to the organization e.g. Starbucks because the different and crucial demands of the workplace and changes in the process of the Starbucks some of which have been explained above. Additionally, the Human Resources Management should be transformed to a more strategic partner from an operational partner because it can be a more vital asset to help the Starbucks if it works as a strategic partner instead of operational.
References
Langbert, M., & Friedman, H. (2002). Continuous improvement in the history of Human Resource Management. Management Decision, 40(8), 782-787.
Lawler, E. E., & Mohrman, S. A. (2003). HR as a Strategic Partner: what does it take to make it happen? Human Resource Planning, 26(3), 15-29.
Lawler, J. (2008). Strategic Human Resource Management. Handbook of Organization Development, 353.
Levashina, J., & Campion, M. A. (2009). Expected Practices in Background Checking: Review of the Human Resource Management Literature. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 21(3), 231-249.
Tikson, S. D. S. (2018). Human Resource Policies and Work Culture: A Case of Starbucks. Jurnal Bisnis, Manajemen, dan Informatika, 15(1), 1-12.
