Question

In your own words, answer this unit's discussion questions in a main post (recommended minimum 300 words), and respond to at least 2 peers’ postings (recommended minimum 75 words).



This discussion has 3 parts:

1. In your experience, what is the nature of human resource managerial work?
2. Describe the relationship between employee planning and development. What experience have you had in this area when it comes to personal and/or professional development?
3. How would you measure productivity in the workplace? What would you do to raise morale in your organization?

For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.

Answer 1

. Nature of human resource managerial work:

Human Resource (HR) management is a function that is inherent to management. Managers at all levels of the organisation and with responsibilities of different functions are expected to have people skills. HR managerial work is a continuous process in contrast to managing a project, which is temporary in nature. HR work is result-oriented, wherein targets are set for recruitment, workforce planning and performance evaluation of employees. HR managerial work is integrative in nature as it involves communication and coordination with different departments of an organisation.

2. Relationship between employee planning and development:

Employee planning is a process of assessing the needs of the organisation to determine what type and how many employees of what skills are required to achieve the objectives of the business. It is common for organisations to not be able to get the perfect personnel with skills that match each and every requirement. To fill the gaps between the organisational requirements and the skills of the personnel, organisations have an employee development plan. Employee development would include training programs, setting career pathways and aligning individual goals with business objectives. In this way, employee planning is related with employee development.

Experience in personal/professional development: While working in a leading IT services company, employees are expected to signup for business commitment guidelines (BCGs) at the time of joining. This lays down the principles of how employees commit to the organisational objectives. Once the employee is on the job, the reporting manager discusses the job functions and sets performance indicators and key result areas. The employee then sets individual development plans (IDPs) for a period of six months identifying areas of skill improvement. Managers then evaluate the individual plans and arrange for training programs that are required to achieve the goals.

3. Measuring productivity and raising morale:

Productivity is a ratio of input and output of any given process. In a workplace, productivity can be measured based on how much of tasks are completed against the effort put in by the employees in terms of time (number of hours) or usage of resources (material, machine). Key performance indicators may include productivity metric and be set as part of the plan. Managers can monitor for overtime, production numbers, sales growth, employee work habits, satisfaction levels to measure reasons for low or high productivity.

Morale of employees can be raised through monetary methods (increase in pay, bonus payouts, rewards for performance, etc.) or through non-monetary methods (better work environment, work-life balance, career pathways, recognition and celebration of good work, providing vacations, etc.). Before deciding on the specific method, the level of employee satisfaction must be assessed, reasons for low morale must be analysed, and then a plan must be devised to improve the morale across the organisation.